Floating Flame Balls - Flames Explored

more A candle flame on Earth (left) and onboard the space shuttle (right).

Because this research is so fundamental, it touches on many aspects of combustion: lean-burning engines for cars and airplanes; explosion hazards in mine shafts and chemical plants; emissions from cars and coal-burning plants; arson investigations. The list is long ... and it doesn't stop on Earth.

Flames act differently in space, so fire safety is also different. If you see a fire on Earth, you might run over and stomp it out or use a fire extinguisher. In orbit, rushing over and stomping on a flame might accelerate combustion, at least temporarily, because you are creating an airflow that did not exist before. Flames in low-gravity tend to spread slowly, so stomping might cause a flame to jump to something else when it wouldn't have otherwise. Furthermore, flame balls are stealthy: they give off no smoke and little or no visible light. It's hard to extinguish something you can't find. What happens if a loose flame ball runs into something? Will it ignite? SOFBALL-2 could answer many such questions.

SOFBALL will also set the stage for longer-term experiments aboard the International Space Station inside the Fluids and Combustion Facility - yet to be installed in the US lab module. That's a long way from Ohio, where Ronney discovered flame balls in 1984. But he says it's worth the trip to find out how else "those ridiculous little flame balls" might surprise us.

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