I do believe "evenly" is another instance of saying something not meant to be taken literally. Their point, I believe, was that there should be some division or distribution for safety. You yourself mention backup LS in your first post.F33D wrote:Not feasible to be "distributed evenly across the spaceship". No more so than doing that for a power plant would be possible.
The base unit is not so large or costly that one wouldn't have multiple systems. In fact cost wise, if I understand it right, it's the same cost to add two people to a single system as to add an addition system for every two people. This makes me wonder why it takes 2/7th (hope I got that right) the space but costs the same?
It's mentioned not wanting a system in the stateroom so that passengers can't access it. What if they try to access the life support at one of the points it traverses from the central system to the bridge? I could see some ships designed with a system that supplies the bridge and is on the bridge or nearby in non passenger area for security.
Someone might design a ship with one system to service each deck.
Someone might have separate port and starboard systems with things like engineering and the bridge being important enough to be serviced by both.