User blog comment:Damac1214/Some Zombie Polls/@comment-1263839-20130424212251/@comment-90.217.242.157-20130425222102

It's implied throughout the map that at one point the entire space station was breathable, especially if the power was on. This would mean Samantha could have breathed easily in there.

As for how she knew how to control it, when Richtofen touched it for the firs time he claims he 'got a spark' before hearing voices in his head. We now know the voices were telling him what he needed to do to gain access to the MPD. Upon completing that and having Samantha enter instead however, the voices told him how to regain power, thus beginning our journey from Shi-No Numa onwards. It can be safely presumed that, like Richtofen before, upon Samantha's interaction with the MPD for the first time she too gained knowledge, but seeing as she was already in the machine, she likely gained the knowledge of how to operate it.