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the international space station is home

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to scientific research in many

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disciplines which is being conducted by

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many researchers from academics as well

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as the business sector for example

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recently the station crew members worked

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on a combustion experiment called bass m

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the best part is for burning and

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suppressions of solids and the m is from

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milken the international chemical and

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textile company which has a clear

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interest in learning more about why

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things burn as they do recently my

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colleague brandy dean spoke with chris

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de soyza the vice president of millikin

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research and asked him what they hoped

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to learn about combustion and

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weightlessness that they couldn't learn

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you know that's a that's a great

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question i actually had several people

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uh here at milliken ask us well why are

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you interested in doing that what can

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you learn uh interestingly enough things

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are are so different in terms of zero

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gravity versus non-zero gravity there

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are some key aspects

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of burning that you can't really get

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unless you're in zero gravity things

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like the air convection effect and air

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buoyancy and those two things

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actually affect some key parameters one

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the ultimately what is the temperature

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of the flame that's burning

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second what is the spread rate or the

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rate at which the fire is moving along

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the fabric and then third it can

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actually affect the combustion products

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so if you can affect

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those parameters or understand those

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parameters you can get some insights

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into things

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about the burning process or inhibiting

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the burn process that you really

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couldn't get in gravity and in fact

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what's what's most important probably is

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we ran the experiments both

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here on earth exactly the same as the

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ones we did in space

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and therefore the delta between the two

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actually gives us a lot of insights into

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that and it's it's pretty important for

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us to understand that so what did you

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think to try and do this on the

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international space station then how did

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you get set up with that that's actually

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a very interesting story um

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we have a place here called the gibbs

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cancer center and research institute and

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one of the gentlemen that's over that is

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dr tim eatman

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and dr eatman also was the interim chief

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scientist at cases

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several years ago

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dr eatman is a friend of one of the

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executives at milliken and always was

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interested in milliken and gave me a

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call one day and said hey i'd love to

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come tour your place

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after touring and us talking he looked

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at me and said you know what i was

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associated with cases and

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i think this would be something

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interesting

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for for you to consider and we spent a

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day and a half

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covering a lot of deep science and it

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became very clear to us

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that you know nasa and cases were doing

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a lot more than just you know rocket

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research they understood a lot about

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things that that were very interesting

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to us subsequently we took our leader of

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our fr technology area which fr stands

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for fire retardancy

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and had him go up to the glenn research

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center

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and as the story goes really really

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quickly after that it became clear that

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there were some opportunities we could

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do

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on the space station that would allow us

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to

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get possibly some unique insights that

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we couldn't get any other way

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well so tell us a little bit about the

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experiment itself what does basm do

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so

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one of the things that was important to

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us was to design an experiment that was

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extremely repeatable and what was nice

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is

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some other things that actually allowed

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us to do that and the whole idea here

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was let's set up a set of samples that

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are all exactly the same in terms of

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their size and let's vary the

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technologies that we use in terms of

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fire retardancy the way we apply that

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fire retardancy

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and then on various different types of

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fabrics and the objective was let's run

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all those experiments on the same

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equipment here on earth and get all of

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our parameters let's run all those same

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experiments on iss and the idea there

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was it's going to allow us to do a

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couple things

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one

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there was a question mark on whether

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things that could actually burn

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if fire retardants

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would actually cause them to be fire

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retardant in zero g

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so that was one of our things the other

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was airflow

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can you do something with airflow

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that

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lets you control

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all of those parameters that deal with

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things like buoyancy and conviction that

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get

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information about things like

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what causes the propagation what

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interrupts

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burn

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does different air flows

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that are interrupted differently cause

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different things to burn differently and

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one of our key areas

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for us

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that is a very very difficult area is in

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synthetics

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so

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many people are familiar with 100 cotton

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pretty common

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but one of the things about fire

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retardancy is

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you you can't be protected if you don't

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want to wear the garments

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and what we learned was having

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great performance

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great durability

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wasn't worth it if it wasn't comfortable

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and we have a lot of history here at

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millikin with how to take synthetic

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materials and make them

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have all the right moisture management

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properties all of that but unfortunately

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synthetic materials are very very

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difficult

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to

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make fire retardant

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so one of our key objectives

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with the experimentation was to vary the

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synthetic content

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in a variety of these samples

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and see if

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through this controlled process

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of air flow and also in xero g we could

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get some insights on a maybe a molecular

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level

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on ways in which we could

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get a breakthrough in synthetics because

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if we could get a breakthrough in

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synthetics

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you could now create probably the most

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durable product from an fr standpoint

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anybody's ever seen

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and get all those comfort features like

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you see you know

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all the football players and baseball

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players and all the runners talk about

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you know it used to be they wore cotton

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today they're wearing highly engineered

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synthetics because they're very

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comfortable

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and if we can do that with fr you've now

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got all the people in the military

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industrial work that want to wear their

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protective clothing which is really

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really important and and

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these experiments were one that we

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thought would give us

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insights into the synthetics

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that we couldn't get another way

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so the the point here is you i'm

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guessing sent some samples of these um

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up to to test on is that right well yeah

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we sent uh

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uh a lot of samples they were all about

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100 millimeters long

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and about uh i don't know 25 30

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millimeters wide and they're all exactly

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the same in other words they all started

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with an ignition a control something

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that you knew would burn

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and it was attached to the material that

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was supposed to be fire retardant

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okay and what it was attached to either

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had a different technology

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was a different fiber or fiber blend or

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the application technique was different

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so every single one of those was the

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same so there was no variation in how

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those how those

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products were put together which was

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nice and we ran those exact same

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experiments here on earth

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as well as there and

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it went really well much greater than we

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could have hoped for

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the preliminary results we got have

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given us some really surprising

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information uh one i'll tell you about

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that was just very interesting to all of

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our scientists 100 cotton is usually

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used as a control because it burns

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really really well now it forms a char

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but it burns really fast so if you were

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to take a 100 millimeter long sample of

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100 cotton and ignite it like we ignited

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it here on earth that sample would burn

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in several seconds in space

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the big surprise was it burned

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completely like you would expect but it

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took 10 times as long which really told

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us that the buoyancy the air flow and

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all that has a very significant

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controlling factor because the control

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which had no fr on it just took so long

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to burn

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so it gave us some insights into what

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can you do

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to affect that affect that here on earth

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in a different way and that that

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when we get into that information a

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little more again it's a little

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preliminary we'll figure out whether we

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need to go run another set of

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experiments but right now we've got more

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data than than i think we can handle

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trying to go through it all

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thanks so much for joining us and again

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this was chris de souza who is the vice

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president of millikin research thanks