How about a summary of what we’ve learned about fires in space?

Almost everything about fires is changed in microgravity, and many of the differences are counter-intuitive. Some examples: microgravity fires may spread faster upstream than downstream, opposite to the behavior seen on earth. While fire in space is often weaker than on earth, more inert may be needed for extinguishment. Turbulent flames, commonly thought to be completely independent of gravitational influence, have been seen to double in size when tested in weightlessness. As Prof. Gerard Faeth of the University of Michigan has said, these findings show that gravity has impeded the rational development of combustion science in much the same way that the atmosphere has impeded astronomy.

Combustion processes on earth naturally generate buoyant flow (i.e. light gases rising) that dominates mass and heat transport. In microgravity, transport is primarily by molecular diffusion or by fan-driven convection. The net result: certain materials considered non-flammable on earth can become flammable in microgravity, for example when low-speed air flows, at velocities below those induced by buoyancy on earth, are provided by ventilation systems. Without this air flow, thermal radiation in microgravity is often (but not always) a heat loss that cools the combustion process to the extent that the fire stops producing any smoke and may even self-extinguish. Thus the first line of defense against ongoing fires in spacecraft is to turn off all local power and ventilation, and wait until heat loss and the diminished rate of reactant transport eliminate the fire.

The nature of smoke (soot emitted from a fire) is also different, because buoyancy on earth rapidly accelerates the soot through the flame. In microgravity reactant flow rates can be controlled to yield prodigious amounts of soot and large aggregates of particulate. Recent Shuttle experiments began to map soot production processes as the particulate moved slowly along tractable pathlines; the data suggest the existence of universal relationships known as the soot paradigm, a controversial hypothesis that, if proven, will be used to model and control many practical combustion systems on earth. These data apply to the astronauts' fire safety as well. Smoke detectors on the Shuttle and planned for the International Space Station (ISS) are sensitive to the amounts and types of soot produced. The sensitivity of the detectors to particulate produced by a material burning on earth is not an indication of its sensitivity to the particulate produced by the same material burning in weightlessness.