Preventing Sick Spaceships

An anonymous reader writes "The official NASA home page has a writeup on one of the lesser-known dangers of living on a Space Station: space germs. 'Picture this: You're one of several astronauts homeward bound after a three-year mission to Mars. Halfway back from the Red Planet, your spacecraft starts suffering intermittent electrical outages. So you remove a little-used service panel to check some wiring. To your unbelieving eyes, floating in midair in the microgravity near the wiring is a shivering, shimmering globule of dirty water larger than a grapefruit. And on the wiring connectors are unmistakable flecks of mold.' The article goes on to describe the unlikely circumstances that form these micro-ecologies, and what astronauts do to deal with the situation."

Comments

They cut the power

[DragonHawk]

Is this going to be a standup fight, sir, or another bughunt?

Given the lead-in to the article, wouldn't "How could they cut the power, man? They're animals!" be more appropriate?

:)

Re:Anti-Microbal concerns

[M. Baranczak]

Then again, I know nothing about this branch of science. Has that ever stopped anyone on slashdot?