Combustion physics is the science of burning. This area of research is guided principally within NASA at the NASA/Lewis Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio.

How important is combustion to our nation?

85% of the US energy use is for combustion (nuclear, hydro and solar power make up the rest). Cost is about $450 billion each year. In addition there are over 2500 fatalities each year in accidental fires, and tens of billions of dollars in property damage.

In the first half of 1996, the United States imported an average of 9,285,000 barrels of oil per day.* In addition, to this imported oil, we used about 18,000,000 barrels of domestic oil per day.* On September 9, 1996, a barrel of OPEC crude oil cost $20.34.* One can therefore estimate the yearly expenditure on crude oil as nearly $200 billion. This amount of money would finance one space shuttle mission each day for a year. A mere 1 percent increase in fuel efficiency, like taking your gas mileage from 25 miles per gallon to 25.25 miles per gallon, would translate into a savings to America of nearly 100 million barrels of oil a year (roughly $5.5 million per day), repaying more than the cost of the entire mission every year.

In any area of the economy where a huge amount of money is spent, even the most modest improvements in efficiency can mean savings of very large amounts of money. One goal of the combustion research within NASA's microgravity science program is to generate knowledge that may eventually lead to more efficient combustion, and therefore a saving of fuel.

In the absence of gravity, combustion takes place in a very different manner than in a 1-g environment like we have here on Earth. Gravity plays a role in why flames "shoot upwards", smoke rises, and large air circulation currents are established. These effects can mask many of the physical processes that occur, preventing us from understanding what exactly is happening. Despite the fact that combustion is central to life in the 20th and 21st century - it powers our automobiles, generates our electricity, and heats our homes, cooks our food on the back-yard grill, and can add many pollutants to our atmosphere - we have much to learn about the physics of combustion.