A Straight Dope Classic from Cecil's Storehouse of Human Knowledge

Was the Mir space station being eaten by a mysterious fungus?

July 13, 2001

Dear Cecil:


Cecil replies:

It's worse than you think. We're not just talking about metal-eating space fungus — we're talking, potentially, about mutant metal-eating space fungus. Some see in this a cautionary tale about the bizarre dangers awaiting us in outer space. I see the inevitable result of letting unescorted males run a space station for 14 years. What's the story, comrades — you never clean out the fridge?

The fungal infestation came to light in 1988, when Mir inhabitants noticed that a porthole was obscured by what one alarmist described as "an unknown film that was spreading like some horror-movie scum." Closer examination revealed green-and-black encrustations behind control panels, inside air ducts, and in other nooks and crannies throughout the spacecraft. The stuff didn't literally eat metal and plastic but did give off corrosive chemicals such as acetic acid. Acetic acid is basically vinegar, so one doesn't want to become unnecessarily alarmed. Still, the acid pitted Mir's titanium, plastic, and glass, suggesting that the spacecraft's structural integrity might be threatened if the fungus were left unchecked.


Meanwhile, back on the ground, biologists began to fret that even worse things could happen. Since the space station's exposure to cosmic radiation was 500 times more intense than what we experience on Earth, the fungus might mutate into something more virulent. People began envisioning blobs of protoplasm asphyxiating the cosmonauts as they slept. It never got that bad, of course. The main problem from a practical standpoint was that the fungus oxidized electrical contacts, which in at least one case caused a communications device to malfunction. There's no evidence that the fungus actually mutated (although some scientists noted an unusual aggressiveness). Nor did it make anybody sick or cause other severe problems.

Last year Russian space expert Yuri Karash raised one last specter of doom: the fungus might survive the heat of Mir's reentry and infect the earth! This doesn't seem to have been taken too seriously, and I haven't seen any reports of dire consequences since pieces of the dilapidated spacecraft crashed into the Pacific last March. But it's been only a few months.

Fungus was hardly the worst of Mir's many problems. Whatever one may think of male housekeeping practices, some fungal infestation seems inevitable in a spacecraft occupied for long periods. Keeping the stuff from being carried aboard is close to impossible, and it can live on nothing more than flaked-off skin. Even fumigating the spacecraft with toxic gas won't kill it all.


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