DMRussell@PARC-MAXC@sri-unix (11/29/82)
From: decvax!utzoo!henry at Ucb-C70 Subject: Re: Spacecraft environments Article-I.D.: utzoo.2635 Fire is not a serious risk to spacecraft in operation. ..... In addition, it is very difficult for a fire to keep going in free-fall, since there are no convection currents to keep a steady stream of air going into it.... I wouldn't have thought that this would be a problem! Sure, there wouldn't be any convection currents, but there is a steady flow of gas thoughout the spacecraft. I believe that they install fans to move the air around and thereby avoid sleeping astronauts dying from anoxia. (Without the fans, exhaled breath would tend to sit in a O2 defficient pool around a sleepers face in zero-g.) Thus, a flame might be able to exist in the shuttle because the fans would supply it with enough O2. The air circulation system had an interesting side effect in Skylab. Since the net flow of air was in one direction (i.e. toward the intakes), anything that was dropped or lost would end up on the fan's covers. So, whenever Joe astronaut lost something, all he had to do was to wait for a while, and it would eventually turn up on the intake gratings. -- Dan Russell --