Inflatable habitats.

Now I don't know about you, but all these designs and talk of space lofts
and inflatable habitats, worries me a little. I'd not want to live in one.
It just seems to be so much more vulnerable than normal hardware.

Brian

--
Brian Gaff -
Note:- In order to reduce spam, any email without 'Brian Gaff'
in the display name may be lost.
Blind user, so no pictures please!

On 9/06/2011 4:56 PM, Brian Gaff wrote:
Now I don't know about you, but all these designs and talk of space lofts
and inflatable habitats, worries me a little. I'd not want to live in one.
It just seems to be so much more vulnerable than normal hardware.

Brian


Why?

On 9/06/2011 4:56 PM, Brian Gaff wrote:
Now I don't know about you, but all these designs and talk of space lofts
and inflatable habitats, worries me a little. I'd not want to live in
one.
It just seems to be so much more vulnerable than normal hardware.

Hypervelocity impact tests at NASA show that inflatable modules handle
MMOD impacts better than conventional aluminum modules.

In article ,
says...

Now I don't know about you, but all these designs and talk of space lofts
and inflatable habitats, worries me a little. I'd not want to live in one.
It just seems to be so much more vulnerable than normal hardware.

All of the testing on earth says they'd be safer and Bigelow's tests in
space have gone well so far.

The biggest improvement over traditional "aluminum can" style modules is
the integrated MMOD protection. For the "aluminum can" style module,
there is a limit to how much MMOD protection you can add to the outside
since it's constrained by payload bay/payload fairing size. Inflatables
aren't constrained in this way, so they can have more layers of MMOD
protection separated by more distance which greatly improves the MMOD
protection.

Jeff
--
" Solids are a branch of fireworks, not rocketry. :-) :-) ", Henry
Spencer 1/28/2011

I figured we'd be driving other people crazy with our silly remarks. I guess the shoe is on the other foot now, eh? Still, dreab likes both Dog Soldiers and the young ones, so that's something.

Originally Posted by Brian Gaff

Now I don't know about you, but all these designs and talk of space lofts
and inflatable habitats, worries me a little. I'd not want to live in one.
It just seems to be so much more vulnerable than normal hardware.

Brian

--
Brian Gaff -
Note:- In order to reduce spam, any email without 'Brian Gaff'
in the display name may be lost.
Blind user, so no pictures please!

NASA's exploration mission is to send humans to the Moon and Mars, in which the purpose is to learn how to live and work safely in those harsh environments. A critical aspect of living in an extreme environment is habitation, and within that habitation element there are key systems which monitor the habitation environment to provide a safe and comfortable living and working space for humans. Expandable habitats are one of the options currently being considered due to their potential mass and volume efficiencies. This paper discusses a joint project between the National Science Foundation (NSF), ILC Dover, and NASA in which an expandable habitat was deployed in the extreme environment of Antarctica to better understand the performance and operations over a one-year period. This project was conducted through the Innovative Partnership Program (IPP) where the NSF provided the location at McMurdo Station in Antarctica and support at the location, ILC Dover provided the inflatable habitat, and NASA provided the instrumentation and data system for monitoring the habitat. The outcome of this project provided lessons learned in the implementation of an inflatable habitat and the systems that support that habitat. These lessons learned will be used to improve current habitation capabilities and systems to meet the objectives of exploration missions to the moon and Mars.