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-9 points

100% oxygen in the suits would cause them to spontaneously combust.

But ok. Whatever.

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6 points

Pretty much all modern EVA suits (like the ones used by US, China, Russia) run a pure oxygen at about .20 ATM so that the internal pressure is lower but the amount of oxygen the astronaut is breathing is the same density of oxygen as at 1 ATM. This allows much better maneuverability in the space suit, because any air mixture at 1 ATM makes it nearly immediately to move in a space suit (they become too stiff).

Point is, we have been doing spacewalks like this since spacewalks started and no one has spontaneously combusted on one.

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4 points
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Ok fair enough. My dilettante knowledge of chemistry let me down.

A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing, unlike pure oxygen at only a little bit of pressure.

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3 points

With 100% oxygen you will be fine down to 4 psi or so. Mixed gas would need substantially higher pressure and that would likely make those suits too stiff to move.

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3 points

That’s what they said in the interview. And didn’t Apollo also had a pure oxygen environment? As long as there isn’t a spark it wouldn’t combust, right?

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3 points

Even the command module was pure oxygen at 5 psi. There was the Apollo 1 fire, but otherwise I don’t remember that there were any major issues.

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3 points

The pressure in the Apollo 1 capsule was 16.7 PSI or 1.14 atmospheres of pure oxygen. That’s almost 5.5 times the partial pressure of oxygen at sea level. At 5 PSI, the Polaris crew will only be at 1.6 times the partial pressure of oxygen at sea level.

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2 points

100% oxygen doesn’t cause humans to spontaneously combust. It does make them more flammable, but that’s already controlled for in spaceflight.

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