QA5 - Brainstorming fire safe Mars habitats with Ruben van Coile, Jaime Cadena Gomez and Szymek Matkowski

You've heard me Speaking on things that I believe had some experience , and today what we have is a topic that None of the people involved in the discussion are experts at , because that's actually fire safety of mass habits . I'm not sure if anyone is an expert on that , and we gave us liberty to just talk about the topic .

We called it the brainstorm session , because that's literally what we are doing here brainstorming some ideas , and it's just a nice conversation between people who love fire safety and Are thrown on a very abstract subject of providing fire safety to a mass habit .

It I have to express with me professor Ruben van Koil from Ghent University and Hi McKadena Gomez from Trans Urban . Both were on the podcast already and I have a friend who started this discussion , schmek Matkowski , an architect who is involved in Nexus Aurora community , whose hobby is our passion is to design Mars habits . So please join us in this conversation .

That that's what it is is a conversation where we all , as The discussion goes , try to figure out what the safety on a Mars habit that could look like , of course , disclaimer Don't build Mars habit to our Specification . This requires research and an expert expertise . Well , let's spin the intro and I hope you enjoy this discussion .

Welcome to the fire science show . My name is Vojty Wynchinski and I will be your host . This episode of the fire science show and the whole podcast in these years , brought to you in partnership with OFR consultants , a multi award-winning independent consultancy dedicated to addressing fire safety challenges . Ofr is the UK's leading fire risk consultancy .

It's globally established team has developed a reputation for pre-eminent fire engineering expertise , with colleagues working across the world to help protect people , property and environment .

In UK , that includes the development of printworks building in Canada , water , one of the tallest residential buildings in Birmingham , as well as historic structures like the National Gallery , national History Museum and a national portrait gallery in London .

Internationally , its work ranges from Antarctic to the Atacama Desert in Chile and a number of projects across Africa . In 2023 , ofr will grow its team and it's keen to hear from industry professionals who want to collaborate on fire safety features this year . Get in touch at all for consultantscom . And now back to the discussion on Mars habitats .

Hello buddy , welcome to fire science show . I am here with three gentlemen . Let me introduce them first , my dear listener and and the person who triggered this discussion , shemeck Matkowski . Hello , shemeck , great to have you .

Hi everybody , thanks for Dropping those questions and and starting this interesting conversation , and I also have two experts with me that I've invited my former guests of the show , who I found very suitable for this podcast episode .

First I have Jaime Cadena Gomez from Transurban , and Jaime is known from his episode on maximum level damage methodology and that was published in fire science show and was very well received . Hello , jaime , great to great to have you back in the fire science show . Thank you Well .

So short disclaimers before since the first time we're doing a brainstorm session in fire science show . This is not a typical episode . We're not presenting our research in here and we are giving ourselves liberty to just go wherever our thoughts take us . So please don't take this episode as a as an outline on how to build a Mars Habitat .

Anyway , we're brainstorming here , we're coming up with ideas , we are challenging the concepts and we will see what comes out of that . So first I would like to give the air to Schmeck to Very briefly tell to the listeners what the hell is a Mars habitat and how does one more or less look like Masterly .

This is the pioneering place where you can , when you start to conquer Other celestial bodies like moon or Mars Hopefully we will go to office entirely one day And this place is has completely different and also environment around , so you need to text people in a better way so they can survive and develop colonies .

So in the beginning , when we think about comparing the Mars , we are thinking about Movie Martian , when you have six people living in the base and everything could wrong or good and they develop the base .

But in fact we are facing in the next , i hope , 40-50 years We'll be facing many more people on the Mars and on the moon is already started and with Artemis and We will be facing development of such habitats and I believe it is now time to start discussion about the safety mostly fire safety , not only and how to deal with the problems , how to define fire

safety , how to define the safety of the people , who are the Principles of the human stay and human safety in such places .

So we are analyzing the basis , like 115 people which are the starting base , when they you have the very small society , very survival oriented society with very close Relations and they know each other and in the future development goes to the colony . We are thinking a colony is something defined also by my society .

It's just like 1000 , 2000 people And when you have many buildings spread around but still the community More or less no knows each other . But possibly you have already tourists .

Okay , we have people with the money that they income , that two to three weeks , no , but a year based on , and they can pay for getting back , and then we go to jump to the bigger stages and the color grows up and converts into the sea .

So , my dear expert friends , we're approached with a concept of defining safety for Martian habitat or fire safety . I've met Schumacher , the conference last year and was presenting evacuation studies and some stuff related to applying human concepts or earth concepts to designing safety in the space of mass habitat .

And I wonder , like , should we really apply the earth concepts like acid acid in there ? maybe It's a nice place to brainstorm something new , like if we had no preconception of what fire safe habitat is . Let's try and do it from scratch , and that's the topic we're brainstorming right now . So I know where to start .

I guess that the whole concept of safety is perhaps a good starting point .

If you're talking about single units or possibly any loss of containment would be an issue . So I'm still trying to get myself my head around . Are we talking about individual parts where they just divide in different zones , compartments , whatever we want to call them , and outside there is an inhabitable space ?

How should I see that and how does that some link with other requirements for safety ? can you can maybe say something about that ?

It's like a submarine Moles in the biggest scale underwater city . So this is this is a kind of a kind of a base example of how you deal with the looks like a metro system .

You say that you want to have a bigger space . Well then probably your critical systems would not go into that . Those kind of big spaces , the big spaces would be , but I mean gathering areas potentially , but not the ones which you want to have , with redundancy available all the time . So that's really interesting .

I'm curious about what came is going to add to that snow .

But yet there's another component which is also related more closely to process safety engineering , which is what we would mention loss of containment . so you will have a lot of pressurized cryogenic substances , hazardous substances . you will potentially have water treatment plants of some sort .

You will potentially have hazardous waste management of some sort , and that means you will have a lot of hazardous chemicals floating around . no pun intended . You will have a lot of stuff .

There will be things that will be able to burn , and that's what we were discussing just before starting the recording . How much do we want to actually extrapolate from earth fire safety into these kind of spaces ? Because in earth we have a lot of layers of protection .

Whether it's in a hazardous fertility that is processing , let's say , methane , natural gas , or if it's in a building , in a hospital or in a tunnel , like the ones that I work in right now , we have a lot of layers of protection that deal with fire risk and with other risks fire explosion , process risks up there .

Potentially your layers of protection are going to be much more expensive And potentially a lot of them will not even be suitable . They might be completely ineffective .

So , before going into the solution mode of thinking about the tools , the engineering tools that we might use to demonstrate a particular safety level , for me the conversation is more about what is the acceptance level that we're going to discuss .

What is the acceptance , the risk acceptance criteria that would be suitable for such a facility , and we kind of were brainstorming a little bit about that . Is it about compartmentation ?

Are we willing to sacrifice a particular area and even if that burns to ground and completely destroyed , are we happy with that as long as people can evacuate , or do we want people not even to have to evacuate ?

We don't even want to compartmentalize , we don't even want to read any vital system for being compromised And without having that goal post , i think it's very hard to go any farther than that . In earth we have this implicit acceptance of a certain degree of injuries .

If there is a fire , whether we like it or not and whether it's explicit or not , that's just the reality . People will get injured when they breathe smoke and that will be potentially very minor or it could be really bad .

But we don't really accept people dying , although they do die in fires , but we don't accept it necessarily And there's never an explicit recognition of well , this is how many people we actually accept could potentially die . Now , in this scenario , that would be completely unacceptable The death of any person .

You were giving an interesting example of a very vital person , a medic , someone from maintenance , who has very specific knowledge , technical knowledge . You cannot let these people be affected by the fire , almost , or by whatever happens an explosion , a leak But Jaime let's think about acceptance .

. It might be tempting to say at first we define what we want to achieve and then we look how we do cause . But to make a very simple example , if you say about falls , people fall all the time . They break their legs Also . This can be horrible in the Martian environment .

So you say we should avoid this , we don't allow people to fall over and break their legs , we will not have any steps , we will not have any stairs and so on . But then the question becomes what does this mean in physics wise ? What does it mean to fall in a Martian environment ? I'm dropping that there .

The other thing is what does it mean for your structure ? And then , if you put everything like single story , massive , what does it mean for How much material you need ? What does it mean for everything ? It's probably the most efficient shape you could have for your Martian environment .

So while you might want to say I do not allow anybody to fall over those 151st people , i don't want stairs , i don't want this , i don't want that , no one , that Your physics might actually constrain you there , and the same thing in a way about physics , but then sooner or later and it's the same argument with different perspectives is the thing about costs

really also . That is something you cannot just throw out of the window and say we'll think about that later And then cause some things , at least my first impression . Some things might be much cheaper to achieve in a Martian environment when safety-wise , than others , and the opposite as well . So I wouldn't immediately split the two .

It's really about the iterative process where you think about okay , how do what can we achieve ? What does it mean for safety ? Is this what we want ? Can we do it better , and so on .

There will be different physics of smoke flow , There's different gravity , So you will have much slower smoke blooms , much slower smoke movement , which essentially allows you to extract more concentrated smoke , if I may . So it has less entrainment , so it dilutes less , Perhaps .

But I'm just wondering if , because of other constraints and other requirements and the physics of it , you might indeed be in a situation where your fire risk acceptance can be extremely strict , i would say , in those early stages , and not just because you say , oh , we don't want any fatalities , because this is always the tricky thing to say , and , however you put

it , in the end you say I won't keep investing in this single issue , while you have many issues to handle , but maybe because of the physics and because of the entire concept there , by doing smart engineering , you might actually indeed be able to have , in effect , a kind of vision zero strategy there .

So here your consequence will span anywhere from a personal harm and injury to a person losing an important part of the infrastructure that decreases the quality of life at the habit of perhaps or , you know , brings new challenges , up to losing infrastructure that challenges the survival of the , of the whole colony As a whole thing .

Like , your consequences range from small damage up to the complete destruction , death of all inhabitants and inability to recover from that right .

You can even take it a little bit farther back , because if you lose , let's say that you come up with some smart engineering as room was hanging , and you come up with this design that allows you to have a fire , sizeable fire , a big fire that you could have , and then it happens and then you lose part of the systems that you originally had .

So at that point , would you want to keep those people there ? would it be suitable , would it be safe enough to keep them there ? Maybe there won't be any or option , because that's where they live , but I think it could also . Be well , how reliable do we want those systems to be ?

whatever the systems are and whatever they're accomplishing , how reliable do we want them to be over time and this is Simon , i don't know how long is there is a life expectancy of let's say the smallest one day , the 115 people . How long do you expect that structure to be operational first ?

The structures I don't know if it didn't make any proper estimation of how long the structure will last , because this is all about the maintenance and while producing the resources from in city resources , producing the materials . So as soon as you have a kind of industry able to produce parts , you can live quite a long but sorry , but but .

So so It's like international space station .

And also , after the first fire , you have a new zero which is much lower than zero , right .

It could be multiple acceptance criteria , but yeah , and that what I was talking about reliability of those systems becomes much more important over there than in Earth . But if you even look at the systems here on Earth , on the built environment , fire safety is done as a snapshot .

You gauge your fire safety or the level of fire safety Based on what you're designing today , based on what you're constructing today , what you're certifying today , and then it's kind of set and forget . You have these standards that look after maintenance .

You have these standards that look after how technology changes , but you're potentially not going to change much during the lifetime of the building . So it's kind of a set and forget . If it pass the first test at the beginning in the design stage , you're good to go .

But the reality is that all the systems are great with time a lot and maintenance is not easy on them and one big issue that a lot of fire safety engineers have , or the profession as such , is that fire safety engineers do not really have exposure to What these systems actually look like the machines , the circuit boards that you have to use , the cabling , the

fiber optics that communicate . All these , the proprietary software , which is not made by people who make software but by people who make electronics , which is a big difference . People are not aware of phase proofing , which is a big area in tunneling and could be a major issue in these kind of situations

.

now you have different parts . So how much tolerance will you allow in your design for for those kinds of uncertain situations ? So all of those kind of considerations are not taken into account in our current fire safety frameworks .

It's kind of if it worked today , if we managed to demonstrate that these design is safe enough , whatever that means , whatever jurisdiction you find yourself making this argument . That's it . Over time there will be changes in use , there will be changes in technology , there will be changes in maintenance And we don't really account for that really well on earth .

So accounting for that in outer space probably will be much better because of the criticality and the all the money that is being put into it . Like the International Space Station is a very good example . That's why it has Outlipped its , its original design life , so it can be done .

But I don't think it should be something that is done as we go and we kind of hope for the best , because at some point there needs to be some hard boundaries on what we actually design these things to to withstand , whether it's from a reliability point of view in terms of systems , whether it's from a survival point of view in terms of occupants , and whether

it's a survival of the structure itself . How much do we want ?

If the window is , let's say , next two years that you can have a new resupply , you have to live with the consequences of that fire And you lose that capability to just reset . Like fire stops being a singular event , and the second fire will perhaps be be worse , and the third one , when you're already destroyed by two of them , it's even worse .

That's a cascade of consequences that we don't , i think , consider that much in like , perhaps in underwater tunnels , i would consider that's the only space where I would maybe , maybe in some very highly valuable process industry , you think about the damage like that , but I think it's some sort of ultimate resiliency of the systems that perhaps could be goal on their

own , like It's not about just getting people to safety and shutting off a part of the colony , it's about what , the where the colony can go with this new set of people and resources and spaces now destroyed by the fire .

Then , somewhere in the back of my mind , by the way , you make a distinction between fires which are actually oxygen controlled and other ones which are just Unconquered runway thermal effects .

So if something is oxygen controlled , and especially if it's in a small space and everything which is critical is in a small space , then I , my feeling now is that you do have something like okay , whoever is there there should be almost nobody there , because it's technical space , or just like a one person But for sleeping whatever out flooded , as in you

completely cut it from all oxygen if it is an oxygen based fire , and so I'll and now I'm taking making assumptions there but my point being you're going to avoid ignitions , you're going to extinguish as possible , you're going to avoid fuels as much as possible as well . At some point we talked about the fact that things burn furniture and methane .

Well , yeah , but you have a choice to at least in the early stages . Well , as long as you're not talking about the city style thing which starts to look like earth , basically , and earth problems In the early stages . Why should you have any combustible furniture ? if you talk about methane production , yes , but why shouldn't be in any way ?

I mean , it is still a problem , but why would it be within any of your structures ? It is deep . The containment of this outside of your main structure is a separate area . It's small , it's outside .

There's like no big risks to related to fire , because the fire is a risk where humans are present , because human presence requires oxygen .

So perhaps , like when you think about complex or a colony , a base or something , perhaps the design should really strictly separate the human space , the oxidated space , from the space in which Oxygen is absolutely not necessary or critical , and just put the stuff that we've discussed for like production , things that burn .

However , jaime brought that you'll have decorations , architecture . That's going to be a difficult trait to have them completely non-flammable .

But again , for me it also goes back to water . We prepared to accept And I was going back to Ruben's original question about the boundary conditions Say that everything goes bad .

We decided the best we could , we did all these calculations , we put all these systems redundant systems , independent redundant systems , very good compartmentation , everything worked out as it should have . But unfortunately it all went really bad And there was a massive explosion or a fire that caused an explosion . Everything went bad , but people were able to evacuate .

Let's say that at least we achieved the evacuation . So what would happen then ? Because if those people evacuate to a space where they basically cannot be rescued or a , then it's kind of pointless , right ? Why did we do all of that ? I mean , if the end result is going to be the same dramatic result , well , what's the point Now ?

if they do have escaped strategy or rescue strategy that might change it All right . Well , the whole thing is lost , but those people are still safe and they can be rescued or they can go away .

So I think that's also why the acceptance criteria is important , because if we define those boundary conditions , then we might be able to say well , you know what , let it all burn , let it all float .

As long as people make it safe to these particular set of compartments , where they can stay for one , two months while they're being rescued , then that's good enough Or no . No one will be coming to rescue anyone . So this thing actually has to withstand and be able to enable leaving even after a fire .

Then the whole thing changes , because I do think that even if it's cost prohibitive , then you will start to find out ways of identifying those places that have to survive no matter what .

And that's why I was bringing it up that in process safety there are concepts such as facility layout okay , that we don't really use in fire safety , but basically facility layout means that you can distribute the different units or functional modules that you have in your habitat in this case , so that if there is an explosion in one or a fire in another one ,

it won't affect whatever you don't want it to affect , and there's a way of designing this is not too fancy . It involves a little bit of optimization and consequence modeling , but you can implement some of that . It will cost more , though .

if you do it in a more prescriptive way or in a more cost effective way , it will potentially be cheaper , but you will have all the risks grouped together , and when risks get together they might be bigger than just their sum . So there are ways of doing that . But the question for me remains how far do we want to go , depending on what is acceptable ?

if we want to make it to ensure people are safe , to make it to that rescue module or standby module , that's one thing . If we actually have to ensure the whole thing continues to function as usual , that's a different thing For me , one thing that could be potentially crazy and really different from the earth .

So humanity would have to stop war to go to space on an infinite budget And there's too many people living from the war business to do that , so there is limited resources . And to provide these ultimate redundancies , like you can , evacuate the whole 115 people into a second redundant space in which they could achieve the self sustainability .

you know that to me means that you would have to double the cost of the base . let's say it's a very like stupid assumption , but you'd have to build maybe two bases so they have another one to evacuate to .

But this means you have to send twice more kilograms to Mars , which means the cost of the operation is exponentially larger , which means that the time when we reach the Mars delays in time because we would have to accumulate those resources on earth .

you know , build bigger rockets , send a bigger armada to Mars or perhaps spend more times with unmanned exploration , sending you know robots to build the base for us . you know it delays it in time And I think there would be a pressure to have this rather quickly .

you know , the time is also a factor in here , because we would like to have this type of permanent position before we destroy our own planet , which we seem to be quite good at Now . I would also like wonder the people who go there like we are applying a very healthy concept in here . you want to rescue them or you want to save them .

The question is , are they fine with not being saved ? you know , i would appreciate the first 115 people who go to Mars . It's not going to be a first 115 people you meet on a railway station . It would be 115 people who would be very willing to dedicate their life . if it takes that , i wonder to what expect ?

we could like balance in a way , cost effectiveness of safety , and perhaps the point at which we would put that cost effectiveness would be quite different than the one we would put in the earthly setting , and I guess it would change as the colony grows .

Schemek gave us an example 150 in the smallest self-sustaining colony , but then he mentioned a thousand people , habitat where you would have space tourists and I guess space tourists would not be willing to risk their life that much for a nice trip And then you would have colonies of a million people , a whole city or array of habitats where basically 100 people you

can put in any of them and then the shelter them and it will be self-sustainable . So many different levels , many different layers . Very , i want to be a space fire engineer now .

Of course it will . unlike Ruben said , it will differ from the number of people and definitely it will change and the level of individual risk will be diminished by the society . I think it's available .

when you were talking about rescue areas , yes , they should be like that , but maybe not the double base , but the smaller ones .

I call them , and my simulation , i call them Fuji areas , when they are equipped like a fully like a bunker , when you have all independent life support system , you have independent , you have food , you have some no flammable , maybe no flammable .

The more areas , the better . You are prepared for any additional rescue actions And I don't think that of course , you can evacuate everybody to the starship and fly back to the earth , but you will have to , let's say , fight back . People don't want to die , people want to survive .

They have a very strong need to survive , at least the pioneers because they think the other side will grow .

A whole society has identified there , but it's a different thing . I think focusing on colonies in this talk is the best option we have , because I think this brings also the biggest challenges in here .

So my , my feeling is , in a way , that we at some points We have been talking , maybe in the back of my mind , about different stages already and what we Need to go , i mean much forward in this fire safety is a more like of like a timeline , hmm , where you say , okay , i mean , what is there ? How many humans are there ? is it all ?

just it's a construction being done by some Robots or by a special team which has an external bolts available because they're coming back to earth in a couple of months after some work . Because this really will then define Very much what what Hemmels mentioned also about what your fire safety objectives will then probably be in those stages .

I mean the first people who arrive and who do the construction , assuming it's there are some humans available . I there in the early stages . Yes , i mean you cannot have much redundancy probably in those very , very early Stages , or at least it's almost impossible , except if you have multiple rockets , as you were saying , where you have this .

Let's just immediately send multiple teams , just because then they can help each other . Yeah , okay , but that's maybe challenging .

So if you make this timeline and then probably up to the point where you have the hundred people colony , or maybe even beyond but that's a friend should correctly be many , many years , divided in those stages , think about what are what do I want in each of those stages ?

What am I basically , very poorly speaking , design alternatives and then we need to make sure and all this is vague , but okay , still can while something which is the ideal solution in stage one might not be the ideal solution in stage two . So how do you transition from one to the other ?

and maybe you don't go for your ideal solution just because you need that transition . So it's .

the colony , because that will be related to to . So if you wanted to use water base suppression system Let's assume the bigger the colony , the more water you have .

The cost of water perhaps is prohibitive to use it in , you know suppressing . So you have a system that's perhaps perfect for stage two , in a way Imperfect , or backup solution for stage one , and you just live with the risk like , okay , stage one , we're not gonna have the perfect water suppression systems .

But that's the part of the risk of growing the colony and being a pioneer and we understand that in stage two This system will provide equitable safety to everyone around and we're fine with that .

And you don't send a tiny system for stage one , a bigger system for stage three and the giant system for stage five , because the cost of kilogram to Mars is Prohibitive and pointless to do that , or once that's yeah , the time aspect is crazy .

People There are many people there . Evacuations , it seems very earth based , actually mean piling from some , from the gravity issue and so on , if you think about an early stage where Everything , or at least many of the compartments , are extremely small . Basically I'm thinking about the medieval monks , almost the monastery , all different pots and so on .

Okay , but then there is an ignition in one pot . The single human who is there is there is any , has to get out , and it's flooded . We are missotted . It's the oxygen is removed , which would then might be physically possible . So the solutions might actually just be completely different in in the episode about the ISS David Urban .

But but , for example , if they were going on moon , they Didn't have air to do that too many times .

wouldn't there be you kind of HVAC System where I mean you pump out air but you don't just sort away , you don't , you can pump it out , yeah , yeah , yeah so and yeah , that's what would happen on ISS with the , with the smaller fires , so and also on mirror station .

be .

Ruben , tapping into your experience as a structural engineer , i also wonder to what level , to what extent , we would challenge the way how structures appeal , because I mean , we're not gonna drop a ton of brick and mortar on Mars to you know , build a cathedral in there , where I would assume we're gonna either use some pressurized balloons , like We do that for

tennis courts . In Poland , you have a pressurized balloon in which you have a tennis court that the rich people can use in winter time and that works perfectly And it's very interesting to design evacuation and stuff from that . You would have maybe 3d printed stuff .

That's also perhaps interesting because you can send it a regular printing machine on the Mars two years before and arrive into like a semi-printed labyrinth that you can then fit out . Or perhaps Tunneling and using natural caves or caverns Would would be a way , and in this case that the large spaces would palm .

Naturally It's about whether you have air to you know , pressurize it to the level of comforts and , in all of these cases , the structural fire safe . This is not , you know , steel beams Protected to our 30 in no way .

I really wonder , like to what extent we will have to to challenge ourselves with the structural fire , same design of this building , and will it even be an important factor , like because if a fire is Big enough to destroy the structure , perhaps it's already way beyond the acceptability limits , wherever we said they are ?

much later stage Certainly have you change everything again and you get to a more human base . We had go many , many stories and so on lots of oxygen everywhere on building on Mars . On that question , well , the only thing I could do when I was like cool , very quickly , what are the wind speeds on Mars ? and so on , because I have actually no idea .

Massive . So yeah , i have , so I can immediately tell you what that means .

But for many other aspects , once you get in that stage , probably it's just this is a loss and then you have the big advantage that , because so the outside atmosphere , that Fires spread from one area to the other , external fire spread , will not be a big issue . I guess .

Take a look at not the particular solution can be used as a , as a cleaning finding risk Assessment in column . What do you think for ?

But then , defining your vulnerability This is something which we have talked about in effect , a lot today , and So it's not easy to do it . But the concept where you say , first you have to say it's tolerable and then once you say , okay , these are my different alternatives for tolerable designs . What is cost-effective ? Yeah , that basic concept .

I don't see why that . Do you think it ?

You know and measure like in some form of LQI or J value That you would develop based on on the defined goal What's the end goal of your colony and and then measure like your success based on that index .

Maybe that's what we are . Final words How does life safety on Mars look like for you ?

But there's also potentially going to be investors behind these , right , because these again , this is not a space exploration , this is a habit , and correct me if I'm wrong , maybe I'm not understanding correctly , but this is not a kind of like oh well , it went up in flames . Well , we'll try better next time .

So that's why and Apologies if I'm being sovereign with the acceptance for dear , but I think that that's a point to at least anchor what the solutions have to achieve It .

Basically , that goal post that we need in terms of reliability , survival of people , survival of the structure and , as Simon was saying , if there are rescue or refuge pods that will give people a chance It doesn't mean that they're gonna make it , but it's there , it's gonna give them a chance Then you have a goal post .

Then , all right , everything can go up in flames Potentially , but people have to make it there . I then you do have to ensure that compartmentation , that life support while people are evacuating is maintained to the very least and the structural integrity of the structure , of the structure through which they are escaping .

So I think that we're well-equipped in Earth , with what we've developed , what we know , to use some tools and calculate what we need to provide those modules so that that is achieved . It doesn't mean that it's going to be easy or cheap , but at least you can aim to achieve that Now .

Whether they make it after the fire , even if everything has gone up in flames , or not , that's a different situation because , again , as Simon said , that's a risk that they're taking .

But if the acceptance that we're happy with is that they're going to make it at least once after a catastrophic event , that's something we can design for I want to believe that that's what we can design , for I think that in the tunnels that you have been involved with , washaking the design , that's the same idea .

We allow for a lot of bad things to happen and we know that the system is not going to be ready for business one hour afterwards , but we know it's going to be good enough so that we clean up , fix a few things and then get it back into work And we won't have a Mont Blanc again in a tunnel , because we've learned our lesson .

The problem here is that we cannot have a Mont Blanc event , learn our lesson and try again , which is why I think we need to be very strict with those acceptance criteria , whatever they are , and from my experience I kind of underlined that point again the importance of maintenance over time , especially in such a complicated space .

Potentially in spaces where you don't have oxygen . You need to go and maintain something in a space that doesn't have oxygen . So these kind of things are very complicated . It might all be working in day one , but what about day 1,000 or day 10,000 ?

Safety for me , fire safety for me in this condition , in this outer space condition , means doing your best , which means setting a very strict criteria and sticking to it so that you give those people the best chance they can have .

It doesn't mean that it's all going to work out , because we know how uncertainties work , but that's kind of what I think would be the best we could do .

but really seeing that you have the early stage , the later stages and how to , when you transition your fire safety requirements and how you achieve it will probably change .

So many of these things apply the ultimate resiliency of your structure , the capability to maintain and repair at the lowest cost , the reusability of systems , like , i wonder , when humans float to space for the first time . No one had expected this will lead to having microwaves and being able to heat up your lunch in one minute .

When people were building large hydrogen colliders , we were not envisaging it . We'll create a worldwide web that will allow four gentlemen to meet and talk about risk and mass someday . So I wonder how brainstorming and working on these abstract concepts on fire safety in a completely different world could change our world .

I have to think that we will definitely come up with different fire control , fire suppression systems , and by doing that because they become , they might be so much more economical in a Martian environment we will actually develop them , and having developed them , we might actually find out that it's actually very smart to use similar approaches on some places on Earth .

Yes , Fantastic .

Yeah , that was fun , guys , thank you . Thank you both . I'm cool And that's it . Thank you for listening . As I said , it's an experimental episode . It's up to you to judge if it's a successful or a failed experiment . I wanted to take you into the middle of a discussion between fire professionals on a very abstract concept .

I hope this helps trigger these brain cells into thinking and coming with unexpected solutions and non-typical approaches to fire safety .

That's what I wanted this conversation to be And I must say after this discussion , i was very rejuvenated by what was said and all the freedom we had to discuss a completely crazy thing which is developing fire safety for the Mars habitat

. I hope it worked the same for you . I hope you've enjoyed it . Please let me know how you look at episodes of this type . Perhaps you have an idea of what next brainstorm could be . Let me know And I'll try to find some people to have this conversation with And maybe we'll have more of those fireside chats on fire safety .

Thank you for listening And see you here back next Wednesday for another interview type episode that's coming your way . Cheers , this was the Fire Science Show . Thank you for listening And see you soon .