Comment by Jerrrrrrry 10 months ago
The atmosphere isn't homogenized perfectly, leading to turbulent condensation.
Micheal Crichton's Sphere mentions this (actual) fact in regards to certain gases, such as Helium, being needed in high pressure environments to counter act oxygen poisoning and nitrogen narcosis, but due to differing thermal properties, can lead to hot/cold spots, thermal turbulence, etc.
The spaceplane had an completely imcompressible hull, no synthetic atmosphere was required - in fact, serendipitulously an overkill herring, was the perfect atmosphere for humans.
It was the underwater habitat that had the possibility of extreme temperature gradient fluctuations.
It was at standard pressure (sea level ish)? And the nitrogen's fine for coming and going to the habitat as you wish (without the bends) because the pressure's so much lower? What about the oxygen toxicity from breathing normal air? Is that also fine because of the low relative pressure of the oxygen containing gas?
I'll have to revisit the chapter but I believe there was a few pages about the door, and a large hiss.
I assume the spacecraft detected and matched the artificial habitats - that's what I had meant, not surface atmosphere.
I never understood why the spaceplane had an atmosphere with helium in it, though. Either Crichton messed up or got confused about the mixing issues there (as well as the massive logistics problems, the plane was huge).