Fires can't start in space itself because there is no oxygen – or indeed anything else – in a vacuum.
Without gravity, hot air expands but doesn't move upward. The flame persists because of the diffusion of oxygen, with random oxygen molecules drifting into the fire. Absent the upward flow of hot air, fires in microgravity are dome-shaped or spherical—and sluggish, thanks to meager oxygen flow.
On Feb. 24, 1997, the six crew members aboard the Russian space station Mir faced significant danger when a fire ignited in an oxygen generating system. The searing flame, lasting several minutes, not only cut off access to one of the two Soyuz escape vehicles but also filled the station's modules with smoke.
No it will not. Combustion needs oxygen to happen.
The vacuum experiences no heat, because there are no atoms in a vacuum, so no atomic vibration, thus no heating. Anything subjected to radiation while in the vacuum will heat up, however, because the atoms that make up that thing in the vacuum will vibrate in response to the radiation energy.
Conduction of heat needs a material medium so that molecules in that medium vibrate and pass the energy to the surrounding molecules. Hence, conduction cannot take place in vacuum.
When we remove the air pressure, the most energetic water molecules become water vapor gas. This is the same reason it is easier to boil water in the mountains than it is at sea level: you need to add less energy to get the water boiling when there is less air pressure on it.
Complex, multi-cellular life wouldn't be able to survive in a vacuum, but microbes might. Microbiologists have discovered extremophiles – microbes that can survive in extreme conditions – such as Deinococcus radiodurans, which can survive high levels of radiation, as well as a vacuum, a lack of water and cold.
In zero gravity, where heat does not rise, candle flames take on a uniform oval shape instead of the teardrop one seen on Earth. In space, because there is no up and down, the flame shapes look similar even when inverted. Upright, the flame is primarily next to and above the wick, where the fuel comes in.
Air is made-up of about 21% oxygen, 78% nitrogen and less than 1% other gases including carbon dioxide and water vapor. Fire only needs about 16% oxygen to burn. Without oxygen, fires won't burn. Water vapor in the air, or high relative humidity values, help to keep fuel sources moist.
Fires can't burn in the oxygen-free vacuum of space, but guns can shoot. Modern ammunition contains its own oxidizer, a chemical that will trigger the explosion of gunpowder, and thus the firing of a bullet, wherever you are in the universe. No atmospheric oxygen required.
Astronaut Thomas Jones said it "carries a distinct odor of ozone, a faint acrid smell…a little like gunpowder, sulfurous." Tony Antonelli, another space-walker, said space "definitely has a smell that's different than anything else." A gentleman named Don Pettit was a bit more verbose on the topic: "Each time, when I ...
The answer, In short, is yes — but they wouldn't be very pretty, Stefan Bossmann, a chemist and rocket enthusiast at Kansas State University, told Popular Science. “There may be some color in the initial explosion, but it wouldn't be half as spectacular as what you see on the Fourth of July.”
In space, hot and cold air weigh the same: nothing. Heated air just expands outward in a sphere. Because the air doesn't rush away in one direction (up) like on Earth, the fire burns hotter and doesn't produce as much smoke and soot, making the whole flame blue.
A candle can burn in zero gravity, but the flame is quite a bit different. Fire behaves differently in space and microgravity than on Earth.
Smoking is not allowed on the ISS for several reasons: Smoking is a fire hazard and since the station is an oxygen-rich environment, it would be very easy for a fire to get out of control. Even without the risk of fire, the ISS is too small a place to permit astronauts to smoke freely.
In space, there is no gravity to pull things straight down, so the gas and liquids in the astronauts' stomachs don't seperate. This means the gas can't come back up to create a burp! Or, at least, a burp like we would known on Earth.
A cool flame or invisible flame is a flame having a maximal temperature below about 400 °C (752 °F). It is usually produced in a chemical reaction of a certain fuel-air mixture. In contrast to an ordinary flame, the reaction is not vigorous and releases little heat, light, or carbon dioxide.
Ethanol fires are nearly invisible and burn incredibly hot. The fire “flashed” almost immediately filling the nearly 1,500 sq. ft. room with invisible flames and creating intensely high heats.
First, the good news: Your blood won't boil. On Earth, liquids boil at a lower temperature when there's less atmospheric pressure; outer space is a vacuum, with no pressure at all; hence the blood boiling idea.
In space we can assume that there would be no external organisms such as insects and fungi to break down the body, but we still carry plenty of bacteria with us. Left unchecked, these would rapidly multiply and cause putrefaction of a corpse on board the shuttle or the ISS.
Once you get below about 210 K, you're going to enter the solid phase for water — ice — no matter what your pressure is. So that's what happens: first the water boils, and then the very fine mist that it boils away into freezes, giving rise to a tenuous, fine network of ice crystals.
Instead, you would face another gruesome fate first: your blood, your bile, your eyeballs –will boil furiously, since the low pressure of the vacuum massively reduces the boiling point of water. It is only then that you would freeze.
Water poured into space (outside of a spacecraft) would rapidly vaporize or boil away. In space, where there is no air, there is no air pressure. As air pressure drops, the temperature needed to boil water becomes lower. That's why water boils much faster on a mountaintop than it does at sea level.