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Asked by smileysoph to Adam, Catherine, Karen, Leila, Nazim on 16 Mar 2012. This question was also asked by izzypeter.
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Catherine Rix answered on 16 Mar 2012:
You could light a fire in a spaceship – although it would be a really bad idea because it could damage the ship and consume a lot of oxygen which you need to breath. In space though you couldn’t light a fire because there is no oxygen.
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Leila Battison answered on 16 Mar 2012:
Fire needs a fuel and oxygen to burn. In outer space there isn’t much of either (except in stars where they burn without oxygen), so you wouldn’t be able to get fire. Phew!
But the danger of fire on spaceships is a really big one, because they are pumped full of oxygen to keep the astronauts alive, and there are lots of electronics that could create a spark. The fire would be even worse than on earth because the air in the spaceship is even more pure oxygen, so it would go up with a bang!
I learnt recently that without gravity, fire looks really odd because it doesn’t make flames that rise off the ground, it makes a ball, like this!
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Adam Stevens answered on 16 Mar 2012:
What they said.
Also explosions can’t happen in outer space! Screw you science fiction!
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Karen Masters answered on 16 Mar 2012:
If there is oxygen things will burn. But in space there’s no gravity, so the flame would be spherical, and cut itself out from the oxygen quite quickly.
They did some tests of this on this ISS (like described here: http://www.space.com/13766-international-space-station-flex-fire-research.html) – but very carefully, for the reasons the others gave! 😉
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Nazim Bharmal answered on 19 Mar 2012:
Yes, as long as their is oxygen you can have a fire. There was a horrible accident (on Earth) in a sealed ship that was a prototype for the Apollo space programme and the astronauts were killed in a fire.
In outerspace, you might be able to have a small fire if there is a a leak of oxygen at the right place but it would go out as soon as the oxygen went out.
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