Holy Crap! (Score 2)

I guess this means a manned interstellar journey is out of the question, in the near term, anyway. Such a journey would surely succumb to a choking fungi invasion long before they would reach their destination. Even the slightest mishap with contamination would spell certain doom in a matter of days or weeks. Think of the overloaded air filters trying to scrub out the dead skin cells, the little flecks of snot and spit, food and hair, all of it fit for fungi consumption. A veritable cornucopia, a veritable horn of plenty for spacewort ,as I've taken to refering to it.

The only surefire means of avoiding this fate, that I can think of, is for such interstellar ships to feature a balanced ecosphere with plants, animals, microbes and insects, co-mingled with the crew quarters and the ship common areas.

This story offers up pretty solid indication that the risk of fungi infestation aboard long-term spacecraft is very real. The ecosphere ship is the only obvious solution, as mechanical filtering and sanitization services are almost garunteed failure at some point. I'll be certain to point all this out to any Hollywood writer-types I bump in to.