I wonder if radiation will become an issue at some point. It is being irradiated all the time, doesn’t it also start to leak inside? Can that be an issue in the future for inhabitable objects in space?
That depends on what you mean by radiation, and 'leak inside'
On the ground, most radiation 'leaks' are mostly chemical contamination problems.
In space the volume of free material, and the pressure gradient should prevent anything outside coming in. Except perhaps on the exposed surfaces of the airlocks/docking adapters.
Come types of particle radiation might cause transmutation/activiation of the hull material - that could be a concern. I doubt it's major issue.
Suits can bring material
in, and do. I forget if it was the "smell of space" or the "smell of the moon" they were talking about, but I remember reading that one astronaut described the odor as like that of burnt gunpowder, and that suitborne particulates proved to be the source.
Yeah, Mike Mullane has a lot to say in his autobiography about the earthier odors of spaceflight. Suits probably aren't all that bad by comparison with what the Shuttle cabin got like near the end of a long mission, especially if the toilet was acting up - a circumstance I gather was regrettably less rare than might be imagined by the naïve.
It's something that science fiction doesn't really explore - jokes about Trek's near-total lack of sanitary fixtures aside, even self-consciously grittier fiction like the Expanse series seems generally very disinclined to go there. I understand why, but that doesn't stop me thinking it'd be fun to see some hard-sf author really get into the weeds of why and how space makes something as elementary as the cleanly voiding of bodily waste into a surprisingly complex and difficult engineering problem.
i think we,re kidding ourselves about human space exploration. machines are taking over and soon they,ll be able to do it autonomously or near so. we,ll be stuck on earth for a good while... with this biome we,re so intent on wiping out right now
