New Space Settlement image

Darren Brown wrote:

>
> Ian Woollard wrote:
> I've a feeling that keeping the humidity low is better
> by and large. It reduces the growth of molds and fungus
> for one thing. (Think: Mir.)
>
> Hello Ian,
>
> Having high or low humidity is really only of interest from a comfort
> standpoint and you will not have the same type of problems encountered
> in Mir, at lest not near a habitat window. Mir has a micro-G
> environment and as such allowed droplets to float in air currents to
> hard to reach places.

True, but condensation is going to form just about anywhere under
gravity anyway. All it takes is some dust as well and you have
bacteria food. You probably want some insects to go around
hoovering up the molds that grow in odd corners. Ecology is
a bit of a nightmare to work out though.

> In a habitat, away from the axis you will have no
> more trouble than you would in a normal environment, providing you have
> no abnormal conditions, which is always possible.

When my parents leave a jug of filtered tap water on the window ledge
near the sun, it gets green patches growing in it. And that jug is
cleaned out every few days. Those same bacteria are going to be in space
too. There's no practical way to get rid of them.

Keeping the humidity down also makes the chances of condensation
much lower anyway. Still, people don't like it too low. No doubt
there's a happy medium. One of the cool things about space
settlements is you get a knob you can twiddle to adjust these
sorts of things.