NAS and the Associates Research Foundation will lead a group in charge of a new fire shelter design that uses standard aerospace materials, KSAZ-TV in Flagstaff, Arizona reported Saturday.Linda Williams writes NASA researcher Steve Miller and the U.S. Forest Service have introduced a new fire shelter design to Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona) and a group of wildland firefighters in July that USFS aims to test in the summer.
The Convective Heat Improvement for Emergency Fire Shelters team’s fire shelter design will use fiberglass insulation, high temperature plastic film and a gas barrier designed to help firefighters have time to deploy a tent and address convective heat concerns.
“When we learned about the tragedy at Granite Mountain then we began to wonder if some the material we were working on could improve fire shelters and NASA independently had the same idea and when we realized we shared that common interest we began to work together,” said Miller, a member of NASA’s fire shelter design team.
The fire shelter design project will continue in the research and development phase and will be ready for final testing next year.
