[Science] Oxygen Candles
Recently I watched the excellent smarter everyday episode on how submarines make oxygen as a part of Warden research for an underwater scenario I'm working on. Now my expectation was that the video would talk about electrolysis machines and how CO2 scrubbers work to filter the air. Both of which it does. However, what I wasn't prepared for was the alternate way to make oxygen: Solid Fuel Oxygen Generators or candles that, when burning, produce oxygen!
I won't be going into the details of the chemistry behind this too much as the video does a decent job at this anyway. However, it has given me thoughts on how interesting it would be for a Mothership (or other scifi ttrpg) scenario to involve the crew burning candles to keep the oxygen supply going rather just monitoring tanks of oxygen. One cool table prop could be to actually burn candles at the table to represent these oxygen candles burning, and if they all get blown out then you run out of air. Obviously this would also fit in perfectly with a crew of doomed astronauts in a game of Ten Candles.