NASA Will Intentionally Burn Unmanned Orbiting Craft In Space (phys.org) 81
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.
Btrn in soace (Score:1)
wheres the oxygen?
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Inside the craft....
They will be simulating a manned atmosphere inside the craft before igniting it.
Re:Btrn in soace (Score:5, Interesting)
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Now that's a claim not many people can make!
I've read a bit about how it behaves in the past and looked at some amazing videos. Everything I saw had almost no visible flame. I really wonder what the heat signature would be like as it doesn't look concentrated at all.
What to do if you're on fire... IN SPACE! (Score:2)
So instead of "stop, drop and roll", it's presumably "stand perfectly still so the flames will starve quickly"?
On the other hand, since astronauts aren't routinely passing out in a cloud of their own exhaled CO2, I guess there's enough forced air circulation to keep the flames going more than long enough.
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I'd expect "gravity free" flames to be more chaotic / less predictable... I wonder how many times they'll have to burn the capsule before they get a representative sample.
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Fire in space is an incredibly arcane subject, with almost nothing known.
and probably something that needs extensive study, earthbound building fires have been mitigated (read some magazines by Society of Fire Protection Engineers) but many lessons were learned the hard way throughout the decades. But asking for fire experiments on ISS surely makes everyone cringe as extensive measures must be used to keep it well contained. Problem is need to do experiments to see when fire gets out of control (i.e. take a couch with smoldering cigarette and video all the way to fully engulfed
Re:Btrn in soace (Score:4, Funny)
They invented a whole new concept called the "inside". This craft will be equipped with one such feature. It will contain oxygen.
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Haven't you seen Star Wars? Just because you're in a vacuum doesn't mean you can't have huge fireballs and thunderous explosions.
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I actually think you could have some really really cool looking massive fireballs in space. If you have a flammable mixture being ejected from a central point and ignition starts from the centre point fractionally after the start of the ejection you would have two expanding fronts. The first would be what ever the flammable mix is, the second is the ignition front chasing it. While the mixture remains dense enough for ignition to spread it would look really really cool.
Obviously flammable mix in a vacuum
It doesn't have to be oxygen. (Score:1)
ANY reactant that is exothermic will work. We on earth have "plenty" of O2 and so we use things that oxidise quickly. Plenty O2 compared to the excess amount generally found in the universe.
Re:Btrn in soace (Score:4, Funny)
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Fire and balls are two words you don't want to be used in a sentence describing your pants.
Jack nimble, jack be quick,
Jack jump over the candle stick
Goodness gracious, great balls of fire [youtube.com].
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and where is your spell checker ?
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Ummm, you're aware that our atmosphere touches space, right?
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We are now intentionally polluting space.
Now?
http://pics-about-space.com/nasa-space-junk?p=1 [pics-about-space.com]
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We set a nuke off in space.
Seriously...
You might not know about it so I'll share it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The thing is - they had no fucking idea what it would do, not really. They had some guesses and one guy's theory.
We trashed 7 satellites - some of them not belonging to us, in 1962. Yup... We nuked mother-fucking space, not knowing, based on a scientific guess (that there'd be belts, now known as Van Allan belts I believe), and might have ignited the fucking atmosphere.
The world was PISSED. I
Re:Great (Score:4, Interesting)
More like the US has set off 10 high altitude nuclear bombs. It just depends on which ones you want to count as space. Starfish Prime was not the furthest out either, one of the earlier ones was at 570km as opposed to the 400km of starfish. That said starfish was a 1.4Mt bomb so it made the biggest impact.
One of the soviet ones managed to push out an EMP measuring in the thousands of amps. It melted hundreds of kms of telephone and power lines and caused a power station to burn to the ground. It went off at about 290km.
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More like the US has set off 10 high altitude nuclear bombs. It just depends on which ones you want to count as space
If they took out an orbiting satellite, I'd say that counted as space.
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No question Starfish Prime was space. But there were 10 high altitude detonations. However some of those are under the 70 or 100km altitude that people count as space, so of the 10 high altitudes how many you would count as space depends on your definition. Altitudes are 26, 76, 43, 200, 240, 540, 50, 400, 147, 97km.
You would easily count 5 of them as space, the other 5 maybe not.
Re: Great (Score:2)
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They couldn't not know. Do you have any idea what that did to the sky? There were brilliant Auroras that lasted for ages, a giant friggen fireball visible from thousands of miles away, and then light continuing to spread from there, lighting up areas across the globe but not directly - it made the dark sky light(er).
There was no hiding this one. There were others that were higher and others that were lower. Some could be seen, some not so easily noticed with the tech they had back then. They still had plane
Where have we heard this? (Score:5, 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.
Re:Where have we heard this? (Score:4, Insightful)
Hint: "Hot air rises" looks very different in zero-G.
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If they said, "We are going to build and then burn a house in Scotland for you!", you might consider that a tad excessive in evaluating your safety in the event of a future emergency with an infinitesimal chance of occurring.
But. If it's space travel and long term habitation, FFS, I say err on the side of caution.
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It's not like this is gonna be the first time NASA has set something ablaze in a blinding fireball of doom. They've kind of got a history of putting people in confined spaces, mixing in some O2 of varied volume, pressure, and purity levels only to set it alight and record the results. So, it's not like they're inexperienced at this or anything.
Too soon?
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Yes, but appending 'space' to 'pyro' makes this perfectly reasonable and a good thing. Don't the old supply ships contain trash, so basically they are just dropping a burning ball of trash at Earth, friendly. But space-pyro.
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Burning an orbiting spacecraft inside an orbiting spacecraft?
You are missing something here. It is simply the orbiting spacecraft.... catching fire on the inside of that same spacecraft.... in space!
It is like a Beowulf Cluster of Linux servers........ in space!
That is why this is so impressive..... in space!
Unmanned spacecraft (Score:2)
From TFA, that appears to be exactly the plan.
Only, don't you suppose it is a good idea to place this capsule and run this experiment on board an unmanned spacecraft? So if something goes terribly wrong, you don't have an exploding capsule on board a manned spacecraft such as a Soyuz ferry or the International Space Station?
Sounds Great (Score:2, Insightful)
This sounds like one of the more useful things I've ever heard nasa do.
Re: Pinto's (Score:2)
They are not burning a spacecraft (Score:2)
They are setting off the fire inside a box inside the spacecraft. They are storing the data during the burn and transmitting it after the burn, so clearly they expect the spacecraft to survive.
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Yes and no. The craft is intended to survive the fire, but will later burn up in re-entry.
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Yes and no. The craft is intended to survive the fire, but will later burn up in re-entry.
That's not part of the experiment, that's the expected return mode of the spacecraft, so that would happen regardless of whether they conducted the experiment or not.
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They could set the Van Allen belt on fire.
OMG we will all be crushed by Van Allen's pants.
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It's basically been a 'we know it's bad, so we do everything we can to prevent it' type of thing. They're getting to the point where they can afford to risk a craft to see exactly how bad.
Some small scale experiments have been done in the past, of course. And one or two 'uncontrolled experiments' as well...
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Come in Houston... (Score:2)
Apollo 1 (Score:4, Insightful)
I just hope they do this in the memory of Grissom, White, and Chaffee. That was one of my first early childhood scars.
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I just hope they do this in the memory of Grissom, White, and Chaffee. That was one of my first early childhood scars.
Absolutely.
Extinguishing fires in space is easy ... (Score:2)
Anyone who's played FTL will confirm that.
Is the word unmanned really necessary? (Score:1)
Just saying, I can't see NASA burning a manned spacecraft.
Bigelow should do this as well. (Score:2)
Well that's a relief (Score:2)
Unmanned, you say