Quote:
Originally posted by Lebell
the disasterous Apollo 1 fire that killed three astronauts in their capsule during a training session on Jan 27, 1967.
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...which wouldn't have happened either if the American and Soviet space programmes had shared even the smallest amounts of information. The Soviets figured out that you needed to dilute the oxygen to prevent fires long before Apollo I.
The 'natural' shape for a flame plasma is spherical. On Earth, the heat causes a convection current around the flame, causing the familiar tapered shape. In the absence of gravity, the less dense air around the plasma will not move 'up,' so the convection current will not form and the flame will remain spherical.
In the absence of the convection current, the flame will quite quickly use up all of the oxygen nearby, and go out.