
Who'd be mad enough to start a 'large-scale fire' in a spaceship? - CarolineW
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/03/16/whod_be_mad_enough_to_start_a_largescale_fire_in_a_spaceship/
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njharman
Stupid headline, but interesting experiment and great example of gaining use
out of something considered "throw away".

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morley
It's strange to see The Register posted here so frequently, since I imagine a
link from the NY Post or Daily News would be removed immediately out of
concerns for bias.

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chiph
What's the oxygen content and pressure of the capsule?

The pure oxygen environment at 16 psi of Apollo 1 meant that the fire was over
in seconds, and that nearly everything burned.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_1)

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oddeyed
ISS atmosphere tries to be similar to earth's - 101kPa, about 20% O2.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISS_ECLSS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISS_ECLSS)

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david-given
That's only a partial pressure of 20 kPa of oxygen. The Apollo capsule was
supposed to be 20 kPa of pure oxygen, so providing the same partial pressure,
but because they were on the ground they couldn't do that or the spacecraft
would be crushed by exterior atmospheric pressure (<tangent>
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4RLOo6bchU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4RLOo6bchU)
</tangent>).

So instead they pressurised it to one atmosphere. Of pure oxygen, thus
providing a partial pressure of 110 kPa of oxygen...

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justin66
Since The Register sucks, they don't mention that Mir experienced a fire and,
presumably, NASA managed to learn a little from that.

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gvb
Ref: [http://www.universetoday.com/100229/fire-how-the-mir-
inciden...](http://www.universetoday.com/100229/fire-how-the-mir-incident-
changed-space-station-safety/)

...which has a link to a very interesting PDF detailing the incident:
[https://nsc.nasa.gov/SFCS/SystemFailureCaseStudy/Details/81](https://nsc.nasa.gov/SFCS/SystemFailureCaseStudy/Details/81)

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justin66
Thanks. I haven't seen this, I did read about the incident in Brian Burrough's
_Dragonfly._

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jkot
Large scale fire on spaceship already happened on Mir. Most critical problem
is still present on ISS today. There is a single route to escape capsules,
which could be blocked by the fire.

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mchahn
Cool. Setting off a bomb would be even cooler.

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mikro2nd
And here I was expecting to read about Anthropogenic Climate Change on
spaceship Earth.

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dredmorbius
Not from the Denialist Register you weren't.

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PaulHoule
They used to have them on Mir all the time.

