[Pat Ryan] And Flight Engineer Andre Kuipers is busy with a software update
on the space station's Agricultural Camera.
Flight Engineer Don Pettit is scheduled to be back at work
in the Destiny Laboratory preparing the work space
at the Microgravity Sciences Glovebox for the BASS experiment.
BASS is an acronym for Burning and Suppression of Solids.
It's a physical sciences investigation into both the burning
and the extinction characteristics of a variety of fuels in space.
The principal investigator for BASS is Dr. Paul Ferkul.
He's a staff scientist at the National Center
for Space Exploration Research in Cleveland, Ohio.
And he joins us on the phone this morning from the Telescience Support Center
at the NASA Glenn Research Center.
Dr. Ferkul welcome!
It some excitement for you today to get to see your experiment being prepared for use.
[Paul Ferkul] Oh, thanks.
I'm glad to be here and I'm glad to be talking with you.
[Pat] Is this your first experiment to be performed on orbit?
[Paul] I was, I participated in an experiment about 15 years ago as a co-investigator.
But this is the first time I'm the principal investigator.
[Pat] For you, how did you become interested in this field of burning things?
[Paul] I think like many of my colleagues here at NASA I had a good mentor when I was
in college and there was a, I had an engineering background, engineering degree.
And it was an opportunity to do work at NASA here in Cleveland.
I went to school at Case Western Reserve University and my advisor
at Case Western Reserve had a position here at NASA for me to do some work.
And I sort of, went through this fortuitous sequence of events that led me here an area
that I really wanted to work in, mainly the space program.
[Pat] Do we know much about how things burn differently
in space than the way they burn on Earth?
[Paul] We actually do know quite a bit.
We know that on Earth we have buoyancy which is the tendency for hot air to rise.
Whereas in zero-gravity there is no buoyancy.
And on Earth we can do testing on drop towers and aircraft,
zero-gravity aircraft to get some ideas.
So we have a good idea of how things behave in zero-gravity.
But what is lacking for us is actual experimental data for long duration burns.
And that's what we hope to gain in the space station tests we're doing.
[Pat] Now there have been experiments with burning previously
on the station and on shuttle missions too.
But this one is going to have more of an extended period of time?
[Paul] That's certainly true.
There've been other, earlier experiments even going back to the 1980's.
There were some simple solid fuel combustion experiments done.
They were limited in scope.
They were generally very small samples and not very numerous.
So what we hope to do, and there have been other tests as well that have looked at combustion
on either the space shuttle or the Russian Mir space station.
But this one we, we're trying to build a database.
We have many samples we're flying, actually, a total of 41 samples.
We're going to burn multiple times and try to really build a database
and get some experimental knowledge of how things behave
for long-durations in zero-gravity.
[Pat] Is there a central hypothesis that's driving your operations here?
[Paul] There is.
The basic applied hypothesis is that we believe that in certain conditions a material
in zero-gravity will actually be more flammable than it is normal gravity.
And there's some theoretical basis for this and we've done some drop tower tests
to begin to verify this phenomenon.
The testing we do right now to select materials for,
for use in space for the astronauts' safety all the tests are done in normal gravity on Earth.
And so it's always assumed that normal gravity tests will be conservative and that things
in space will burn less dangerous.
But again it turns out our hypothesis is
that there may be conditions where the opposite is true.
That actually in space things could be more dangerous.
And of course, that's a concern to NASA.
[Pat] I mentioned that Don Pettit is going to be working this morning setting
up the hardware for, where this experiment will be conducted.
Can you describe what hardware is involved here?
What work is Don doing today?
[Paul] Sure.
He's working in a facility called the Microgravity Science Glovebox.
It's essentially a large glovebox that you might see in an ordinary laboratory
with gloveports in a fairly big working volume.
Our experiment will plug into that volume.
So it's a level of containment.
And our experiment is relatively small.
It's about the size of an ordinary toaster.
It consists of a flow duct.
So there's a fan in our experiment module to generate airflow.
We install fuel samples inside our experiment module which are then ignited,
observed with video cameras and burned either to completion or until we decide to put them out.
[Pat] So there's some, you don't know how long they'll burn?
[Paul] We have a limit generally of a two minute maximum.
Because within two minutes we should be able to reach the information that we need to get.
That should be achievable.
And were trying to you know, use our fuel judiciously so we'll try to have them put
out the fuel at that point so we can continue in the future with additional tests.
[Pat] At the time that the experiment is operating, how is the flame lit?
I mean Don's not up there striking matches is he?
[Paul] That's correct.
They'll be remotely igniting them.
Actually, we use a hotwire igniter.
So again think of a toaster and you have heated elements in there that glow red hot
when you apply electrical current.
So it'll be the same idea.
We have a small group of igniter wire that'll glow red hot or almost, actually,
yellow hot which will be in close proximity to the fuel sample then ignited.
[Pat] Now you said there were 41 different samples.
Each of them is going to be ignited multiple times.
[Paul] That's correct.
Actually, some will be a onetime use.
The vast majority will be multiple use samples.
[Pat] And when are the first data takes going to begin?
[Paul] We begin to operations on Friday.
[Pat] This week?
[Paul] That's correct.
[Pat] Now I take it that there aren't any experiment samples to be returned
since that would have burned I guess?
How do you get your data?
[Paul] Most of our data will be through our photo.
So either 35 millimeter still camera photos or video images
which will be downlinked everyday to us.
It will have the full resolution video and 35 millimeter still pictures.
[Pat] And then your analysis is studying the photographs?
[Paul] That's correct.
We'll basically get flame luminosity data, flame shape,
structure and I guess most importantly how the flame reacts to different changes in flow
or when we go to put the flame out.
How we can extinguish the flame and how the flame reacts as you extinguish it.
Then we could use all this information to compare to our existing models and improve them.
And develop the better models as a result.
[Pat] Is there any way at this point to generalize about what you expect to see?
[Paul] We expect, well we've got, we've seen, we've done some tests
in zero-gravity with these flames.
Generally they tend to be weaker but it's a big function of the flow speed.
So if we, if we blow on them gently we'll probably get a relatively dim blue flame.
And as we increase the flow velocity it will start to transition to a brighter blue
and then ultimately yellow and sooty.
So that's how the flame will look.
We expect, again there will be some cases that, you know,
these materials might actually be observed to burn in zero-gravity and conditions
that we can't get them to burn in normal gravity.
So that will be the exciting finding for us.
So we expect, we've flown some samples that we expect will burn up there
that we can't get to burn in normal gravity.
[Pat] That would certainly be something that would be important to know, if there's something
that does burn in space that we wouldn't expect?
[Paul] That's correct.
And we've done some drop tower tests which are limited in time.
So we're not sure how they're going to go for long-duration.
But we believe they might actually, might burn up there.
[Pat] At this point how would the findings that you get,
how could they be applied both in space and on Earth?
[Paul] I guess as far as NASA is concerned a direct application is for fire safety.
You know because NASA selects, is very careful about selecting materials, configurations
and is concerned about NASA's, or astronaut safety.
There's an extensive set of tests done on Earth to select materials.
And it's all done, all these tests are done on normal gravity.
Now if our findings, if our hypothesis proves to be correct we might need to modify the tests
that we do in normal gravity to consider effects and conditions where, actually,
the materials could be more dangerous in space so we have
to revisit the testing procedure that do on Earth.
And more widely applicable are the results of these, of these experiments to models.
So again computer modelers can use these results to develop sophisticated systems and simulations
that would apply to many different kinds of combustion systems,
not just for these simple fuels and flames but for wide ranging applications
such as engines, boilers and so on.
Anything in our everyday life that relies on combustion,
which is as you could imagine is much of what we rely upon.
[Pat] The obvious question, that of course I saved it for last, how dangerous is it
to be setting fires inside the space station?
[Paul] Well that's a good question.
Generally, speaking we don't want the astronauts to set anything on fire.
But this has been carefully designed so there's two levels of containment.
So as I mentioned earlier, the glovebox itself is one level of containment.
Within that, which is a, that is a sealed vessel,
there's our experiment which is also a sealed vessel.
So there's two levels of containment and there's no way to set the fuel on fire
to ignite it unless all the doors are closed.
So there's many safety constraints in place.
[Pat] And the first of these experiment runs gets started on Friday?
[Paul] That's correct.
[Pat] Besides, we have another, one other question that came to us over Twitter
from @karenofearth asked, "besides rocket fuel, which we know will burn,
what else is self-oxidizing and will burn even in a vacuum."
[Paul] I guess it depends how you define rocket fuel and if there's any materials
that you could imagine that you have fuel and oxygen pre-mixed,
that's how a rocket engine works is you deliver fuel and oxygen separately to the engine
to generate thrust even in a vacuum of space.
So you need to, if you don't have air, like you don't have in space,
you need to supply your own oxygen.
So you can imagine there's other materials on earth that can do that,
that would also basically ignite and burn in space besides rocket fuel,
such as some of the solid rocket engines that are used for the, even simple, you know,
rockets that you might buy in a hobby store to light off.
Those would also ignite and burn in space just fine.
[Pat] Great.
Your experiment gets started, its operations, on Friday.
Good luck.
[Paul] Thank you very much.
[Pat] Dr. Paul Ferkul is the Principal Investigator for Burning and Suppression
of Solids which is a physical science investigation into the burning and extinction,
the characteristics of a variety of fuels in space.
He's with the National Center for Space Exploration Research in Cleveland.