I was taught in school that oxygen had to be present for combustion. So say you took a loading setup into a vacuum, loose powder, brass, primers, and bullets and loaded them in the absence of oxygen and then tried to fire them in a vacuum, would they fire?

I don't know how it may work, I remember reading in auto tech in school that an internal combustion engine may burn a volume of 14,000:1 air to fuel. This would be an impossibility inside the chamber and barrel of a rifle.

Chad brought up that powders have an oxidizer on them (admittedly I don't know what that is) I would assume a compound that produces oxygen, but would they even be able to initiate the fire sequence in a true vacuum?

Curiosity, nothing more.

Interesting thought. I’d like to know, as well.

It's the same principal on how rocket engines work in space. There's no oxygen in space, but the rocket engines work because there is an oxidizer in the rocket fuel.

^^Beat me to it.

"Oxydizer" is a D.O.T. placarded Hazardous Material. And there are many, many of them.

Thanks Chad

Years ago in college I read a very technical article about what was called solid state rocket fuels. It made me think about gun powder and the magazine author later equated to modern smokeless gun powder as well.

There's plenty of liquid ones, too. Liquid O2, is one...

Sorry to keep this going, but I'm an aviation nut.

from NASA....

Each solid rocket booster motor contains more than 450,000 kg (1,000,000 lb.) of propellant, which requires an extensive mixing and casting operation at a plant in Utah. The propellant is mixed in 600 gallon bowls located in three different mixer buildings. The propellant is then taken to special casting buildings and poured into the casting segments.
Cured propellant looks and feels like a hard rubber typewriter eraser. The combined polymer and its curing agent is a synthetic rubber. Flexibility of the propellant is controlled by the ratio of binder to curing agent and the solid ingredients, namely oxidizer and aluminum. The solid fuel is actually powdered aluminum -- a form similar to the foil wraps in your kitchen -- mixed with oxygen provided by a chemical called ammonium perchlorate.

The three main components of the External Tank are an oxygen tank, located in the forward position, an aft-positioned hydrogen tank, and a collar-like intertank, which connects the two propellant tanks, houses instrumentation and processing equipment, and provides the attachment structure for the forward end of the solid rocket boosters.

So i would say without oxygen or oxidizer the powder will not burn. However; the primer and the powder may have an oxidizer made into the mixture so in that case it would fire.

Flammable metals, Magnesium and Lithium are a couple of examples.

There is quite a bit of Magnesium in cars. And when the cars catch on fire, and the heat is enough to ignite the Magnesium, water is bad to use. The Magnesium burns so hot, that when attempting to extinguish the fire with water, the fire is so hot, it separates the oxygen from the hydrogen, and uses the oxygen to burn even hotter. So the water actually becomes an oxydizer and makes the fire larger, and hotter. I have been inches from it, wearing full bunker gear and SCBA. A few wake up bumps on the highway ended up with my boot print in them, because they were almost liquid, the fire was so hot.

The real way to put that fire out is with a Class K extinguisher, specifically made for metal fires. It is a dry substance.

Note to self...Add Fire a gun in space to list of things to do before I die.

Just remember all your dope charts will need to be adjusted.

You can get oxidizers all kinds of places. I used to make fireworks and black powder is a staple ingredient. To make BP you need 75% potassium nitrate. I got mine at the feed store, Hi-Yield Stump Remover is about 99% Pot. Nit. and cheap. It doesn't work worth a shoot though for decomposing stumps though.