Fire Question on LV223

It wasn't a LACK of oxygen, but a high concentration of Carbon Monoxide that made the air unbreathable.

And fire only needs about .2 percent oxygen to burn in any atmosphere

Okay sure, that's plausible enough - which part of the film did they mention that? I want to look that up again, thanks.

@cypher, Thanks, that's cleared that up.

21% oxygen per the initial scans on the ship.

When they were arriving on the planet someone is describing the atmosphere. I think it was the doctor, but it was far too uninteresting to recall exactly who said it. I do recall that it was mentioned you wouldn't last more than 3 minutes without a helmet.

@Hadley's Hope, Yeah, I recall - it was the Scottish woman I think, she said you'd last about 2 minutes...

@Hadley's Hope and Promethian Man It was Ravel (the co-pilot) that described the atmosphere.

Oh, cool, thanks!

So in reading over the posts there seems to be scientic evidence that fire can be used on the surface of the moon. But based on the breakdown of the atmosphere would fire as we know it on earth be burning in the same fashion and quantity that we are familiar with? I watching the scenes after Juggernaut crash while Shaw was running to the shuttle and spised a bit at the number of fires throughout the scene with some examples even into the hills. Couldthe fires be larger or smaller than on earth given the same material? Could the atmoshere explode as an atomic bomb because of the contents of the atmosphere. I guess if the moon's atmosphere is different than Earth's how would the fire as seen by the crew be different if at all. if there are indeed vast differences this would lead more to the 'everything is a dream' that we are seeing on the screen Making us wonder just who is dreaming and what is real. I just wanted a clearer scientific understanding of the fire we see depicted in the movie.

According to Ravel there was 21% oxygen in the moon's atmosphere. That's the same as earth. No probs with fire but Ravel left out a whopping 8% of the atmosphere. Another blunder. Ford pipes up and says there's 3% CO2 (why didn't Ravel mention that?). Three percent CO2 won't kill you in a few minutes - you could stay alive for a long time in only 3%. Of course, it seems Ford was confusing CO2 with carbon monoxide given the mention of the tailpipe. Another mistake. Probably doesn't mean anything though. Just another writer error....

Thanks for some explanation of the fire numbers. I was just glad that if based on the actual numbers, the moon would explode into flames once ignited. If the atmosphere was a fire hazard then just the Prometheus landing would have caused problems. Actually i thinking back to the flyover there was nothing to burn(in an earth sense) I didn't see any forest/woods/trees or even grass that could be fuel. It seemed to me that the surface of this moon was covered if not by vapor cloud then it must have been smoke. But with fuel for burning and seemingly very lkittle surface water..just how did all of the clouds form? What is the clouds composition? I mean if it is not water vapor and it's not smoke what is left?..