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. |

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).

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

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

"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.