Monthly Archives: January 2013

Posted: 6:19 AM Updated: 6:19 AM

Hannah Dreier / The Associated Press

LAS VEGAS NASA is partnering with a commercial space company in a bid to replace the cumbersome "metal cans" that now serve as astronauts' homes in space with inflatable bounce-house-like habitats that can be deployed on the cheap.

click image to enlarge

This artist's rendering provided by Bigelow Aerospace shows an inflatable space station. NASA is partnering with this commercial space company to test an inflatable room that can be compressed into a 7-foot tube for delivery to the International Space Station. NASA is expected to install the module by 2015.

AP

A $17.8 million test project will send to the International Space Station an inflatable room that can be compressed into a 7-foot tube for delivery, officials said Wednesday in a news conference at North Las Vegas-based Bigelow Aerospace.

If the module proves durable during two years at the space station, it could open the door to habitats on the moon and missions to Mars, NASA engineer Glen Miller said.

The agency chose Bigelow for the contract because it was the only company working on inflatable technology, said NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver.

Founder and President Robert Bigelow, who made his fortune in the hotel industry before getting into the space business in 1999, framed the gambit as an out-of-this-world real estate venture. He hopes to sell his spare tire habitats to scientific companies and wealthy adventurers looking for space hotels.

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Space station to get $18 million inflatable room

An innovative inflatable module developed by a Las Vegas hotel entrepreneur will be attached to the International Space Station in 2015 for a two-year test run to evaluate the technology's performance in the harsh environment of space, NASA and company officials announced Wednesday.

Bigelow Aerospace will receive $17.8 million from NASA to supply a Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, or BEAM, for the space station. The module will be launched, uninflated, aboard a commercial SpaceX Dragon cargo ship in 2015.

Once the Dragon is attached to the forward Harmony module, the station's robot arm will be used to pull the BEAM pallet from the cargo craft's unpressurized payload bay and attach it to the aft hatch of the port-side Tranquility module, 90 degrees up from the familiar multi-window Earth-facing cupola compartment. The space station crew then will activate the BEAM's pressurization system to inflate it.

Over the course of its two-year test run, instruments will measure its structural integrity and leak rate, along with temperature and radiation levels. The hatch leading into the module will remain mostly closed except for periodic visits by space station crew members for inspections and data collection. Following the test run, the module will be detached and jettisoned from the station.

"The International Space Station is a uniquely suited test bed to demonstrate innovative exploration technologies like the BEAM," William Gerstenmaier, NASA director of space operations said in a statement.

"As we venture deeper into space on the path to Mars, habitats that allow for long-duration stays in space will be a critical capability. Using the station's resources, we'll learn how humans can work effectively with this technology as we continue to advance our understanding in all aspects for long-duration spaceflight aboard the orbiting laboratory."

The BEAM test is being sponsored by NASA's Advanced Exploration Systems Program, which is focused on developing "prototype systems for future human exploration missions," according to the NASA statement. "The BEAM demonstration supports an AES objective to develop a deep space habitat for human missions beyond Earth orbit."

Bigelow Aerospace is owned by Robert Bigelow, an entrepreneur who made a fortune in real estate and the Budget Suites chain of hotels. Bigelow wants to build a commercial space station using larger BAE 330 inflatable modules, providing a relatively low-cost foothold in orbit for wealthy space tourists, university researchers and representatives from other nations who do not have ready access to space.

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Inflatable module to be attached to space station

This week, NASA announced that crews aboard the International Space Station will soon test an inflatable space module in orbit. The balloon-like module prototype will be manufactured by Las Vegas-based Bigelow Aerospace and its scheduled for a 2015 launch aboard a SpaceX cargo run to the station.

The technology certainly has exciting implications imagine being able to launch a full habitat to the moon on a single rocket! but its not a novel idea. The Bigelow Aerospace design has its roots in the inflatable NASA concept TransHab developed (and ultimately canceled) for living on the space station, but designs for inflatable space habitats go even further back than that. NASAs Langley research center originally considered an inflatable space station as a jumping off point for lunar missions in 1959.

In the late 1950s, most proponents of space exploration was an Earth orbiting station as a necessary step on the way to deep space missions. Engineers at the Langley research center were no exception, formally entering the space station game in the spring of 1959. On April 1, NASA created a Research Steering Committee for Manned Space Flight led by Harry Goett. The Goett Committee as it became known included representatives from all NASA centers who met to discuss the agencys future on May 25. Representatives from Langley wasted no time, jumping into a presentation on the merits of a space station.

Called the Advanced Man in Space AMIS program, Langleys vision proposed a station with a type of shuttle vehicle that could take astronauts to distant points in the solar system. The station itself would help NASA study the psychological and physiological effects of extended spaceflight on astronauts and at the same time train crews for future demanding missions. It would also be a test bed for the new technology the space agency would no doubt have to develop to explore the Cosmos.

After a series of concept studies, Langley engineers settled on a self-deploying inflatable design for its space station. Noninflatable configurations had been systematically passed over: a cylindrical module attached to a boosters upper stage was dynamically unstable; a modular concept would need too many launches; and hub-and-spoke designs, basically big orbiting Ferris wheels, were expected to have disorientating and nauseating effects on a crew.

Langleys winning design was an inflatable torus astronauts would basically live inside a giant orbiting doughnut designed with the Goodyear Aircraft Corporation. Properly called the Erectable Torus Manned Space Laboratory, Langleys ideal torus was a flat design 24 feet in diameter that could be packed snugly inside a rocket for protected on its ride through the atmosphere to orbit. Once inflated, the inner habitable volume could provide astronauts with varying strengths of artificial gravity anywhere between O and 1 G, and ports on the outside of the torus could accept incoming and launch outgoing shuttles.

But there was one major problem with the inflatable aspect it was extremely vulnerable. Meteorites and micrometeorites posed the greatest and most immediate danger, but it wasnt the only worry. Some engineers worried that astronauts moving vigorously inside the torus could somehow rip through the structure and shoot themselves out into space. Goodyear built a research model out of a lightweight three-ply nylon cord held together by butyl elastome, a sticky, rubber-like material. This strengthened the torus, but it wasnt enough. It would still be vulnerable during a meteoroid shower.

Stability issues cropped up, too, again from the crews expected vigorous movements. Some engineers thought it was possible for astronauts to move around with enough force that the torus would start wobbling. A wobble, even a slight one, could make the station an unstable (and nauseating) place to be.

To address these strength and stability problems head on, Langley built a 10-foot-diameter elastically scaled model of the torus. The model was finished and ready for testing in the summer of 1961. But by then the torus was out of fashion, passed over in favor of a more rigid hexagonal design, also lightweight and foldable, and also from Langley.

But the bigger problem facing the space stations was NASAs new commitment to the moon. Benefits of spending the time in orbit to prepare men for the two-week trip from to the moon couldnt outweigh the need to get there first. Space stations, both inflatable models and their more rigid offshoots, were shelved.

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NASA's Original Inflatable Space Station