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ESDMD #0302: Fire Safety Upgrades for Surviving Exploration Mission Environments

Fire safety for the low-pressure, high-oxygen, partial-gravity atmospheres planned for exploration vehicles and habitats: less flammable materials, and better detection, suppression, clean-up and fire-spread modeling (bin 3, rating 22 of 57). Only "very limited small-scale analog experiments" have been done in what may be the worst-case environment. The target references a cabin pressure of 8.2 psia (Tech gaps spreadsheet, ESDMD #0302).

Quotations below are from row ESDMD #0302 of the tech gaps spreadsheet. ADD Rev C's Appendix D prints the same table for this gap, and it matches the row field for field (ADD Rev C, p. 211).

Description

"Low-pressure, high-oxygen environments with partial gravity on the lunar and Martian surfaces and/or vehicles with limited abort or resupply are new, more challenging flammability environments. These environments drive the need for reduced material flammability and enhanced fire detection, suppression, response and cleanup and fire spread modeling compatible with future vehicles operating in these environments. New and upgraded fire safety capabilities targeted for low-pressure, high-oxygen environments are needed for worst-case fire scenarios for habitable volumes. These capabilities are required to mitigate the impacts and likelihood of fire eruption/spread and to enable crew to survive fire breakouts in future missions."

Impacts and benefits: "If advances are not made in fire safety, exploration missions will have an increased probability of loss of crew, loss of mission/element, or result in significant mission constraints or operational constraints. Existing capabilities may not be applicable or compatible with future vehicles or missions. Flammability and safety tests may not be passed for adequate mission safety."

Current state of the art

"ISS and Orion subsystems, materials, and operating paradigms. Very limited small-scale analog experiments to date have demonstrated flammability and fire propagation phenomena in low gravity, reduced pressure, and elevated O2 percentage, which may be worst-case environment. Current state of the art hardware for surviving an event includes the Emergency Breathing Apparatus and Smoke-Eater, both in service on ISS."

Performance target

  • Moon/Mars: "Materials capable of meeting flammability test standards in low- and partial-gravity environments at reduced pressures (8.2 psia) and higher oxygen levels. Fire detection, suppression, monitoring, and clean-up technologies that perform based on the worst-case fire scenario. Enable sufficiently greater capacity by volume of smoke/soot/water droplets."
  • Mars: "In addition, increased reliability compared to the lunar performance target."

Child gaps

  • 0302-01: Material flammability and fire propagation in reduced and microgravity environments, and at exploration atmospheres
  • 0302-02: Non-flammable materials, additives, coatings for habitable volumes
  • 0302-03: Fire detection, fire suppression, and post-fire monitoring and clean-up
  • 0302-04: Fire emergency breathing mask

Traceability

  • Use cases and functions: UC-T-501 L; UC-H-101 M -- All FN; UC-X-101 M -- All FN; UC-X-102 M -- All FN; UC-X-103 M -- All FN; UC-X-104 M -- All FN
  • Definition tasks: none listed

Segments and sub-architectures

Priority

Priority bin 3, overall prioritization rating 22 of 57. The rating is "the gap's location in the prioritized list of gaps", so 1 is the highest priority, and bins group gaps of similar priority, bin 1 highest. Criticality, urgency, breadth and depth set the order; cost is not considered (ADD Rev C, pp. 78, 199; method on the gaps index).

Moon Base relevance

Not established by the sources so far. The Users Guide does not name #0302 among its near-term Moon Base challenges (Technology and knowledge challenges).

Sources

Tech gaps spreadsheet, ESDMD #0302 · ADD Rev C, pp. 78, 199, 211