Shuttle crew set 205 fires in combustion experiments

Web posted July 18, 1997

 Columbia lands after flight `as good as it gets'
 Still to get hero's welcome from Augusta

By Amy Joyner
Staff Writer

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - After a disappointingly short mission three months ago, Columbia's astronauts returned to Earth Thursday proud of all the science experiments they completed.

The crew of the space shuttle Columbia stands outside the orbiter after landing at the Kennedy Space Center Thursday morning. Susan Still is third from right..Michael Holahan/Staff

``The advantage of being on a 16-day flight is that you get faster,'' payload commander Janice Voss said. ``By the end, we were getting very efficient running these experiments and we were able to really accomplish a lot more than we had planned.''

So far, the most stunning results have come from the astronaut's combustion research and the 205 tiny fires they set in the shuttle's bus-sized science laboratory. The astronauts had only planned to set 144 fires on the shuttle, but soon discovered they could set the fires quicker than anticipated.

Setting the fires in a tiny glovebox, astronauts were able to see how flames formed and spread in the near weightlessness of space. In space, fires burn in the ball shape rather than in elongated flames as on Earth.

Scientists believe that this discovery and others will aid in the development of more fuel-efficient, cleaner-burning automobile engines.

Sue Still, Susan Still's stepmother, chats with her grandson, Bret Marsh after the landing of the space shuttle Columbia at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida Thursday morning. Michael Holahan/Staff

The combustion, plant growth, crystal growth and materials science experiments conducted on Columbia also will give astronauts a better understanding of basic scientific principles, shuttle program manager Tommy Holloway said.

``The overall objective of the flight was the pursuit of basic understanding of combustion and basic science related to that,'' he said. ``And in the long term, that science would be able to be applied here on Earth.''

Results of some other onboard experiments, like the manipulation of four loblolly pine seedlings grown by Georgia-Pacific, won't be known until later. The tiny trees will be compared to siblings grown on Earth to see if gravity affects the production of lignin, a natural glue-like substance that must be extracted in the papermaking process.

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