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NASA Will Intentionally Burn Unmanned Orbiting Craft In Space (phys.org)

Posted by BeauHD on from the to-go-where-no-man-has-gone-before dept.

An anonymous reader writes from an article on Phys.org: NASA said it will test the effects of a large fire in space by setting off a blaze inside an orbiting unmanned space craft. NASA has set off tiny controlled fires in space in the past, but never tested how large flames react inside a space capsule in space. The goal is to measure the size of the flames, how quickly they spread, the heat output, and how much gas is emitted. The results of this experiment, dubbed Saffire-1, will determine how much fire resistance is needed in the ultra-light material used in the spacecraft and the astronaut's gear. It will also help NASA build better fire detection and suppression systems for their spaceships, and study how microgravity and limited amounts of oxygen affect the size of the flames.

3 of 81 comments (clear)

  1. Where have we heard this? by rmdingler · · Score: 4, Funny

    The goal is to measure the size of the flames, how quickly they spread, the heat output, and how much gas is emitted.

    Said every pyro ever.

    --
    Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

    Ernest Hemingway

    1. Re:Where have we heard this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Hint: "Hot air rises" looks very different in zero-G.

  2. Re:Btrn in soace by Skewray · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I spent a year or so working on fire detection for the Orion project, which was, at the time, sending folks to the moon. Fire in space is an incredibly arcane subject, with almost nothing known. On Earth, convection is everything, but in space, there is no gravity to drive convection. In other words, hot air doesn't rise. So flames do really weird, unexpected, unintuitive things.