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Experimenting With Fireballs in Space

Posted June 18, 2013 2:17 PM

From CNet News:

Here on planet Earth we're used to flames -- whether from a candle or campfire -- reaching upward to the sky with slender limbs hungry for oxygen and driven by rising hot air. But in space, sans our planet's strong gravitational pull, flames are more likely to take the shape of eerie fireballs.

Within the flame of a regular candle wick, there's quite a bit going on. As the video below released this week by NASA explains, molecules from the wick are being cracked apart and vaporized by the flame, then combined with oxygen to produce light, heat, carbon dioxide, and water, as well as soot.

In recent years we've become quite familiar with how flames can extend and expand quickly in their greedy quest for more fuel and oxygen; witness countless western wildfires of the past decade. But researchers aboard the International Space Station have observed that flames in microgravity behave much differently, staying in a small spherical shape and letting oxygen molecules come to them.

Read the whole article and watch the video

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Guru

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#1

Re: Experimenting With Fireballs in Space

06/19/2013 3:36 AM

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Guru
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#2

Re: Experimenting With Fireballs in Space

06/19/2013 8:47 AM

...and the rationale for lighting candles inside a multi-billion-dollar satellite that gets lit through the windows by the nearest star is what, exactly?

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Re: Experimenting With Fireballs in Space

06/25/2013 3:38 PM

hmmmm..... Makes ME "vewwry vewwrrry curious..."

What type(s) of WELDS are capable of being produced 'out there', outside the boundaries of earth's gravitational field?

Certainly Friction-Stud welding would still function (in any position/attitude)

But, what about the other methods, commonly used here for 'superstructures' (or for the little things for that matter)?

Arc-blow is an interesting effect from the presence of magnetic field in a piece of steel that is being welded. How might THAT be affected (if any) under "zero-grav"?

I volunteer to go up for some R&D testing...

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