fire and space?

Question

what does fire look like in space? i asked my bio 2 teacher and she asked her "teacher" friends, and they didn't know so they were going to research it and now she has professors looking on it. anybody know??

well, i mean if you were up in space in an aircraft where there IS oxygen, then what would the fire look like?

To Lee s:
Why would I need a new teacher/district?! You were the one who didn't even answer my question. She thought about it for a while, but didn't know. A lot of people don't know. Which is why they are still researching it in NASA too. (I found out all of that today)

Answer 1

Fire on Earth is simply a low temperature plasma (also called the 4th state of matter) made primarily with oxygen.

In space, there are numerous elements that can form plasmas, and you can clearly see them as nebulae and stars. The sun is itself a ball of plasma, made of mainly hydrogen and helium, but also containing heavier elements. "Fire" is too limited of a term, and perhaps your question should refer to plasmas in general.

Answer 2

The above answerers doesn´t seem to know about rocket propellants and that big shiny thing called the ISS that researches, amongst other things, how fire burns in a zero g environment...

On earth the gasses that are the result of combustion rise upwards as they are heated. More gasses, oxygen mainly, is sucke in from below and keepd the flame going for as long as there is fuel. In space there is no up. So a flame will form a sphere that eventually smothers itself as no more oxygen can reach the flame. But that is only in a controlled environment like the flame lab aboard the ISS. Air ventilation will feed a flame in space as it keepd the air agitated making it possible for oxygen to reach it. A fire aboard the MIR spacestation came very close to killing the cosmonauts until the fire was eventually put out.

Answer 3

Fire is fairly common in space, in the form of rocket engine exhausts from the main engines of the Space Shuttle and other types of rocket propelled space craft.

Fire burns in a rocket engine combustion chamber because it has a forced supply of both fuel and oxidizing agent (oxygen is only one example). The forced supply of oxidant and the venturi shape of the rocket engine exhaust nozzle gives the flame a characteristic "blowtorch" shape.

Combustion can take place without gravity in a number of forms, though it will not burn well unless there is some kind of forced delivery of fuel and oxidant. This kind of burning is done frequently in scientific experiments on board the ISS and other spacecraft.

Accidental fire is a constant worry on spacecraft, and there have been a couple of near-disasters. A flammable fabric in an oxygen rich atmosphere could become a conflagration in short order. In this case the "forced supply" would take the form of the flexibility of the fabric fuel and the atmospheric pressure in the spacecraft.

For this reason, spacecraft are mostly designed with minimal use of flammable materials.

Answer 4

Things like match heads and gunpowder contain their own oxygen in solid form, so they would burn in a vacuum. As soon as the match head burned away however, the fire would go out because there is no oxygen in space. A lighter would not work at all. The sun contains trace amounts of oxygen but it doesn't burn because the temperature is too high for molecules to combine. The sun's source of energy comes from nuclear fusion, not fire.

Answer 5

It looks like a spherical ball of heat and smoke. And it tends to go out pretty fast as the combustion byproducts don't move 'up' to allow oxygen to come in from 'below' and allow the combustion process to continue. There has to be some sort of 'draft' or air motion in 0-G to allow a fire to burn.

Doug

Answer 6

"Fire" requires oxygen, and there is no oxygen in space. No oxygen, no fire.

In a zero-gravity environment with oxygen, flame (for example a candle flame) looks very different---a sphere of hot gas that can suffocate itself with its own exhaust fumes.

Answer 7

There is no fire in space, as your teacher should know. Fire requires oxygen to burn.

Answer 8

There cant be fire in space because there is no air in space. Fire needs oxygen to burn.

Answer 9

you need one of two things, possibly both, a new teacher, and a move to a new schhol district, because that question does not require a forum to answer

Answer 10

at space nothin burns it needs oxygen lol
but somthin may explode lol