The Gravity Option

For travel between places where the trip takes a fair while, there
will be automatic quarantine on the trip. In habitats that have to
keep air from leaking out anyway, and limit the effects of any major
air-loss accident, quarantine will be a lot easier than on earth
where ventilation is to the outdoors. So diseases will have to be
able to have healthy carriers. Early on, the size of colonies will
be limited, so diseases will also have to persist in relatively small
populations. Both of those factors will provide selection pressure
in favor of mild strains of infectious diseases over severe ones.

Later, when there are trillions of people, it will probably go the
other way.

--- In spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com, "Combs, Mike"
>
> From: kenjopp
>
> > The
> > challenge for space colony architects will be to create
> environments
> > so sanitized that immune systems are no longer necessary.
>
> That might be quite a challenge. Have you ever read the novel "The
> Andromeda Strain"? (Or seen the movie, though the novel goes into
> greater detail.) I'm referring to the extreme measures the Wildfire
> Facility scientists had to go through just to get to a relatively
> germ-free state.
>
> I think there will be all kinds of space habitats. I think some
will
> guard themselves against diseases (and their crops from blights and
> infestations) with particular vigor, and entering them might involve
> some measures nearly as extreme as what Crichton described for the
> Wildfire Facility. Obviously there won't be a whole lot of human
> traffic in and out. But I think there'll also be other space
habitats
> whose economies are much more dependent on a steady flow of traffic
in
> and out. Maybe their economy is dependent on tourism. Entry into
> habitats like this will obviously have to be much easier, and
probably
> no more involved than what we presently experience flying from one
> continent to another (things like somebody asking if you have any
fruit
> in your suitcase). Those habitats will eventually have every
disease