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The Iron Sky -team is looking for your ideas and comments. Join and show your support for Iron Sky.  Fiery HeliumJust some off the top of my head thoughts. You have fire when there is oxygen. So when an explosion happens in space, will be pretty short-lived assuming it's fueled by air rushing out of the spaceship. Assuming Helium 3 has some properties like ordinary helium, helium is normally inflammable so it would not explode like hydrogen, but if the temperatures and pressure gets hot enough it will start a fusion process. Only it will be much cooler than if hydrogen fuses. Instead of blue or yellow, the flames would probably be red. Someone who is a physicist or astronomer could probably confirm my theory, but it's worth considering. |
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But the gas can't fuse unless it is in the reactor. Once out of the reactor the plasma will quickly cool and disperse. It might be bright enough to see outside the ship through a hole but that depends on the amount of plasma and its temperature.
If the reactor is rendered non-functional, any plasma still in the reactor will quickly cool to gas, and the visibility of the plasma will be extremely brief if any escapes. If the reactor continues to function with a hole in the side, it might produce a continuous stream of plasma, but as mentioned previously it won't last long outside the reactor even thought the over all effect may be longer. You can see in fusion reactor videos that the plasma subsides very rapidly once shut down. Although, I don't know if that's due in part to no one having yet made a self sustaining fusion reaction.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7nSmoYoPMc&feature=related
Then I should have written "non-flammable" instead of inflammable. The truth is, helium will not catch fire like hydrogen. That is why helium is used in modern airships. Although without oxygen explosions might be no more than quick flashes, I still think the rupture of the plasma containment system for the helium-3 fusion reactor on a saucer would result in more of an explosion than one might expect. After all, even though there's no oxygen in space, the sun seems to burn quite nicely without it. The point is when you have a fusion reaction at hot enough temperatures, the superheated gasses would glow. The color would range from white, to blue, to yellow, to red depending upon the temperature. I still think seeing the saucers explode in small balls of brief red fire would be cool. :-)
About that Oxygen...
While it's true that regular combustion will not happen in hard vacuum, the UFO's are not powered by diesel engines. Nuclear fusion will generate temperatures high enough to ionize gas. In the end the flashy flamy thing is ionized gas. Plasma. But after rupturing the hull, it would disperse quickly, so any 'bright explosion' will be very short lived.
@John Mieske: Exactly! (minus the oxygen -seems like this is a nit-pick thread)
I've seen this twice now, and I can't help myself. Inflammable means something can burn, same as flammable. I know it's stupid sounding, but the difference is something can be flammable to a degree, while something inflammable is completely flammable. Imagine hard wood, it won't burst into flame at the touch of a match, but with enough fire it will slowly burn. Something inflammable will burst into flame thanks to a teeny spark. Then again, I may be stretching the definition since the basic meaning for both is the capability to be set on fire.
Fusing helium plasma would cool off so fast as not to create a plume of fire. If you're lucky it might kill off the crew before leaving the hull with a quick wash of flame.
I would have to agree.. Without oxygen, explosions in space are short lived.