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#1
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What if Apollo fire in orbit?
Actually, although Dan Goldin made exactly this claim,
he was (amazing to say!) misinformed, or misinforming. This is what I found when I researched the issue, first for IEEE Spectrum magazine and then as a chapter in 'Star-Crossed Orbits'. Further, according to ISS engineers involved in building the NASA Laboratory Module, news of the Mir fire prompted them to add firewalls (partitions in cable runs to allow adequate concentration of fire-suppressing chemicals) along the standoff conduits that carry cables and plumbing along the length of the module. Steven D. Goo, Boeing's chief space station engineer at NASA's Marshall Space Center in Huntsville, Alabama, told the McGraw-Hill publication Aerospace Daily in November 1997 that the Mir fire sent his engineers "back to the drawing board" to improve fire-suppression systems. However, these descriptions of improvements may be garbled, or at least exaggerated. Also, the role the Mir experience played in their development is not so clear-cut. First, according to space station engineers, there still was not going to be a single panic button. Although the fans in the U.S. modules are wired so that a smoke alarm or a thrown switch will trigger a shutdown, the fans and air ducts in the Russian modules are not connected in this way and must be shut off manually (this was confirmed four years later, when a false fire alarm struck the International Space Station in March 2001 and there was still no "all fans stop" button to push). A single cutoff button had been featured in the design of Freedom nearly 10 years earlier. Another such button had been installed on NASA's Skylab space station a quarter-century ago, so the idea is not new. Nor were the firewall changes on the U.S. Laboratory Module for the ISS added because of the fire on Mir. "It was already in the design," ISS operations director Kevin Chilton told me in 1998. "We had a good design." "Henry Spencer" wrote in message ... In article et, Greg D. Moore \(Strider\) wrote: Note, I believe one lesson learned from Mir was in the event of a fire on orbit the procedure is to shut down all fans. Indeed so. And at the time, the SSF/ISS control systems did not have a "stop *all* fans *now*" command. This was quickly remedied. -- spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. | |
#2
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What if Apollo fire in orbit?
Jim Oberg wrote:
is not so clear-cut. First, according to space station engineers, there still was not going to be a single panic button. Although the fans in the U.S. modules are wired so that a smoke alarm or a thrown switch will trigger a shutdown, the fans and air ducts in the Russian modules are not connected in this way and must be shut off manually Here is what TD9702 familiarisation manual has to say: 6.3.4.2 Fire Indication A Caution and Warning (C&W) Panel mounted in each USOS module features lighted emergency buttons. If smoke is detected, flight software will light the “FIRE” button, sound an alarm, and shut off Temperature and Humidity Control equipment in the area to minimize oxygen being fed to the fire. Crewmembers may also sound (or silence) a fire alarm by manually pushing the button on the C&W Panel or on the Portable Computer System (PCS). 6.3.4.3 Fire Extinguishing Fires on the USOS can be extinguished with handheld Portable Fire Extinguishers, which are filled with carbon dioxide. These function very similarly to typical fire extinguishers here on Earth. Two different nozzles allow the Portable Fire Extinguisher to be used on both open area and rack fires. The ROS uses fire extinguishers filled with a non-toxic nitrogen based substance that can be dispensed as a foam or a liquid. And if you look at high res pictures of the ISS, you will see "fire ports" here and there and I had been told that crews would insert an extinguisher's nozzle in there to send the gas (CO2 for US segment) into the space behind the wall Note that the text implies that only the affected module's ventilation is stopped, and the rest of the station's ventilation is implied to continue working. However, I would suspect that should there be a fire in a module that has air support (such as Destiny and Node2), all other modules would stop their ventilation which implicitely draws air from the nearest ECLSS module. In the caution and warnings chapter, there is no mention of selective transfer of alarms from US to russian segment. In fact, it mentions that prior to arrival of Destiny, all US alarms are sent to the russian segment for processing (since Unity didn't have a caution&warning system). |
#3
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What if Apollo fire in orbit?
John Doe wrote: The ROS uses fire extinguishers filled with a non-toxic nitrogen based substance that can be dispensed as a foam or a liquid. So are the ones that were such a flop in the Mir fire; some didn't work at all, some barely worked, and some couldn't even be removed from their mountings on the wall. Pat |
#4
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What if Apollo fire in orbit?
Pat Flannery wrote:
John Doe wrote: The ROS uses fire extinguishers filled with a non-toxic nitrogen based substance that can be dispensed as a foam or a liquid. So are the ones that were such a flop in the Mir fire; some didn't work at all, some barely worked, and some couldn't even be removed from their mountings on the wall. It's all about maintenance Pat. D. -- Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh. -Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings. Oct 5th, 2004 JDL |
#5
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What if Apollo fire in orbit?
"John Doe" wrote And if you look at high res pictures of the ISS, you will see "fire ports" here and there and I had been told that crews would insert an extinguisher's nozzle in there to send the gas (CO2 for US segment) into the space behind the wall And a goodly number of them are routinely covered up by equipment and boxes of consumables, and would take several minutes to gain access to. |
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