In constructing a science fiction tale, authors often find it useful
to employ gimmicks—constructs employing technical or physical
impossibilities—as devices to propel the story into new settings
and inject it with certain qualities. Such commonly understood
gimmicks include superluminal flight, artificial gravity, and time
travel (arguably a subset of faster-than-light travel.) One such
gimmick may seem a minor detail, but has much room for technical
discussion: the activity of smoking while on-board a spacecraft. It
has occurred in many forms of science fiction media from early to
recent. The current technical consensus on the matter rules the act
as an impossibility. However, examination of the pertinent literature
reveals that this may be a technical impossibility rather than a
physical one, implying a potential future possibility for the
practicality of smoking in space. Literary, technical, and
physiological aspects of space smoking shall be considered.
The problems presented by smoking in space have understandably not
been overcome or even attempted by present or prior generations of
astronauts. Smoking is an inherently recreational act (excepting a
sharp minority of medicinal cases) with what are typically considered
neutral to negative physiological effects upon the participant,
depending on the plant matter in question. It requires continuous
combustion, which in turn draws on finite oxygen supplies, releases
pollutants into a closed-air environment, and presents a fire risk.
Given the current government-operated spacefaring regimes' collective
emphases on mission safety and astronaut health, such questions were
not likely to arise (at least to be taken with any seriousness.)
However, as the 21st century has witnessed the birth of
viable privatized spaceflight, the aspirations of private residence
and pleasure travel in space seem near at hand. Private individuals,
and not solely government employees, will begin entering space for
their own purposes. Questions pertinent to the creature comforts of
these future private spacefarers will inevitably arise. There has
never been a better time to have a serious discussion about the
prospect of smoking in space.
Robert Heinlein provided one of the earliest science fiction
explorations of smoking in space in his
1939 short story Misfit,
wherein a character affixes a “smoke filter” to his face prior to
lighting his cigarette. No further description of the device is
given, but Heinlein here presented the idea that the problem of
smoking in a sealed spacecraft could be solved in some fashion via a
specialized device. As it was used by the smoker and not other
passengers, it is perhaps implicit that this device confined the
smoke to the user's person and the apparatus. Containing the
cigarette, the combustion, and the smoke in a face-affixed apparatus
may be a viable—however unwieldy—solution, given the invention of
such a device. It would need to be capable of sealing in the smoke
produced as a byproduct, and then either filter or otherwise dispose
of both the secondary smoke and the primary exhalation from the user.
Efficient filtration of smoke may be a simpler technical matter in
microgravity environments than it is under the influence of
terrestrial gravity, for reasons discussed below.
The probability of dangerously rapid
combustion of any hydrocarbon ignition upon a spacecraft was once a
gravely prohibitive risk for smoking in space. Early spacecraft
environment systems, such as those of the Apollo era, used
low-pressure atmospheres composed predominantly of oxygen with some
water vapor and carbon dioxide. Keeping atmospheric pressure low by
leaving out common buffer gases like nitrogen and argon allowed for a
lighter, more airtight spacecraft. However, the absence of buffer
gases and high oxygen concentration created such a deadly fire hazard
that all modern pressurized spacecraft use nitrogen-buffered
atmospheres of approximately terrestrial pressure (Friedman, 1999.)
Thus, the risk of runaway combustion reactions from cigarette
ignition or smoking is negligible for modern spacecraft.
Barring the implementation of an unwieldy containment vessel for the
combustion (or presuming its inefficiency in containment,) the
pollutants in smoke must be addressed with respect to their effects
on the environment. Smoking produces such pollutants as carbon
monoxide, hydrogen sulfide, butadiene, benzene, and styrene (Huber,
1989 and Moir, 2008.) No direct observation of dried plant matter
burning in a microgravity environment has been made, but analogs can
be found in paper and candle smoke observed in smoke detector
experiments on board the International Space Station. Smoke of the
sort produced by paper, candles, and cigarettes is of a sooty nature.
In the ISS experiment, soot particles condensed to more than twice
their average terrestrial size due to an absence of the buoyancy
effects that typically draw smoke particles quickly from their
high-temperature formation zone (Urban, 2005).
The ISS presently uses lithium
hydroxide canisters containing activated charcoal in the air
revitalization subsystem of its Environmental Control and Life
Support System for removing carbon dioxide and biogenic or trace
contaminants (Dumoulin,
1988.) Were such filters increased in number relative to the habitat
size (or concentrated in an airlock-segregated designated smoking
area), they could filter cigarette smoke with a safe level of
efficiency. Such filters would likely be used in such settings as the
Zion
torus space station from William Gibson's 1986 novel Neuromancer,
an entire space colony of ganja-smoking Rastafarians. Such cannabis
smoke, especially in the concentrations a colony of space
Rastafarians would likely produce, would quickly become toxic under
normal conditions. In terrestrial filtration schemes micropore
density in the activated charcoal filter would need to be increased
above that of typical filters in order to address the smallness of
cigarette soot particles, but the size change that microgravity
endows soot would likely negate this need.
It
is worth noting that the carcinogenicity of tobacco smoke is a
function of the heterogeneity of smoke particle deposition within the
respiratory tract, which in turn is a function of particle size
(Balásházy, 2003.) Whether this makes smoking in space safer or
more dangerous may be the subject of future study, but that a
difference should exist one way or the other makes this a potentially
significant subject of scientific inquiry. Future smokers may find
their lifestyle choice more or less deleterious to their health
depending on the gravity of their setting.
Smoking
in space presents a technical challenge for spacefaring
pleasure-seekers, but it is far from an impossibility. Given adequate
safety and health precautions, technological development, and perhaps
a bit of preliminary clinical research, spacecraft can become a
relatively safe environment for smoking. Future astronauts may not
need to altogether shirk their earthly pleasures in order to set off
for the stars.
Works Cited
Balásházy, I. (2003). Local particle deposition patterns may play a
key role in the development of lung cancer. Journal of Applied
Physiology, 94(5), 1719-1725. Retrieved from
http://jap.physiology.org/content/94/5/1719.short
Dumoulin, J. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, (1988).
NSTS 1988 news reference manual. Retrieved from Kennedy Space Center
website:
http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/technology/sts-newsref/stsref-toc.html
Friedman, R. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, (1999).
Fire safety in the low-gravity spacecraft environment. Glenn Research
Center. Retrieved from:
www.asi.org/adb/04/03/14/spacecraft-fire-safety.pdf
Gibson, W. (1986). Neuromancer. Ace Publishing.
Heinlein, R. (1939, November). Misfit. Astounding Science Fiction.
Huber, G. L. (1989). Physical, chemical, and biologic properties of
tobacco, cigarette smoke, and other tobacco products. Seminars in
Respiratory Medicine, 10(4), 297-332.
Moir, D. (2008). A comparison of mainstream and sidestream marijuana
and tobacco cigarette smoke produced under two machine smoking
conditions. Chemical Research in Toxicology, 21(2), 494-502.
Retrieved from http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/tx700275p
Urban, D. (2005). Detection of smoke from microgravity fires.
International Conference On Environmental Systems, doi:
10.4271/2005-01-2930
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