Posted on 06/01/2016 9:34:50 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Over the weekend, astronauts aboard the orbiting International Space Station added a module like none other. Think an RV that expands out the back with extra space for sleeping quarters. In the case of the ISS, it was an inflatable Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM). It’s made of a material stronger than kevlar and could be a game-changer. Science correspondent Miles O’Brien reports.
HARI SREENIVASAN: The first inflatable room in space was attached to the International Space Station by NASA on Saturday. It’s the beginning of a two-year test period for this expandable habitat.
Correspondent Miles O’Brien reports on this new frontier in space travel as part of our weekly series about the Leading Edge of science.
MILES O’BRIEN: NASA just added some space to the space station, and it is 16 cubic meters like no other. Inflated carefully with short spurts of air, it is an expandable module, the first designed for human habitation ever to reach low-Earth orbit.
It’s a big step on the long road to building spacecraft and habitats for human missions to Mars. Expandables allow engineers to color outside the lines, beyond the diameter of the nose cone of the rocket called the fairing. That’s the constraint when launching a module made of rigid aluminum. It’s sort of like carrying a tent to space.
Jason Crusan is NASA’s director for advanced exploration systems.
JASON CRUSAN, NASA: Expandables allow you to pack up whatever your habitat is and fit in more potential volume in the same fairing volume. So that’s the key advantage, is the volume advantage.
MILES O’BRIEN: It’s called BEAM, an acronym for Bigelow Expandable Activity Module. It’s a technology demonstrator, an experiment to see how well it performs in space.
The man behind BEAM, Robert Bigelow, watched it all unfold in the viewing room overlooking the space station flight control room in Houston. His company, Bigelow Aerospace, is based in North Las Vegas.
All right, so what are we looking at here?
Bigelow made his fortune in real estate, contracting and extended stay hotels. He is now pursuing a lifelong passion for space. He believes expandables are a game-changer.
ROBERT BIGELOW, Bigelow Aerospace: It’s that dramatic. It’s that huge in terms of concept change. We didn’t invent the change. This is a NASA idea.
MILES O’BRIEN: It is an idea as old as the space age itself. In a seminal series on space exploration in “Collier’s” magazine in 1954, legendary rocket scientist Wernher von Braun envisioned humans flying to, and living on, Mars in inflatables.
The first communications satellites, Echo 1 and Echo 2, launched in 1960 and ’64 respectively, were inflatable metallic balloons, passive reflectors of microwave transmissions. At about the same time, NASA pondered several early space station designs with expandable modules. And in the 1990s, when the International Space Station was becoming a reality, the agency designed an expandable called TransHab that would have replaced the U.S. crew quarters.
Expanded, it would have twice the diameter, and three times the volume, of the rigid aluminum structure currently in use. But amid cost overruns, Congress canceled TransHab. And Bigelow Aerospace obtained the patents from NASA.
ROBERT BIGELOW: When I saw that architecture and that whole idea, I was enchanted by that concept, and I thought, that’s something that really looks cool and seems to have a lot of value.
MILES O’BRIEN: In 2006 and 2007, Bigelow successfully deployed two expandable structures slightly smaller than BEAM in low-Earth orbit. Both are still in space, and still filled with air.
ROBERT BIGELOW: There are a lot of fans of this kind of architecture. So, I think they’re applicable anywhere in low-Earth orbit and on the surface of another body, whether it’s the moon or perhaps even Mars, and certainly for any kind of deep space mission.
You want to have a lot of room for people. People need to have a lot of space. They don’t want to be cramped up for long periods of time.
MILES O’BRIEN: Bigelow took me on a tour of his huge, pristine facility filled with full-sized mockups of his expansive vision for space.
Welcome to Olympus?
ROBERT BIGELOW: Yes. Yes.
MILES O’BRIEN: A lot of volume here.
ROBERT BIGELOW: Yes, this could be anything that you could imagine.
MILES O’BRIEN: Olympus would have twice the volume of the entire International Space Station, and yet could be delivered to orbit in one launch, albeit on a super heavy rocket still on the drawing boards at NASA or SpaceX.
Still, Bigelow has some big ideas for this very big space.
ROBERT BIGELOW: So is it an entertainment center? Is it a command-and-control center? Is it a hospital? Are you growing food? Is it a hydroponic center? Is it a dormitory? Are you making — is it a manufacturing facility, you’re making all kinds of things, or is it an assembly facility, where you are assembling satellites and launching them out the airlock?
MILES O’BRIEN: But before Olympus becomes a reality, Bigelow would like to attach a module like this one to the International Space Station. He’d also like to build his own space station, which could orbit the Earth, moon or Mars.
He envisions his expandables as orbiting time-shares that can be used for manufacturing and science and as a destination for emerging nations hoping to fly their own astronauts. Oh, and don’t forget tourism. He is, after all, a hotel guy.
ROBERT BIGELOW: So, if somebody wants to use it for a hotel purpose, that’s fine. We will lease that to them, and then they can sublet and sub-rent that out to whomever.
MILES O’BRIEN: BEAM and all the rest of Bigelow’s expandables are made of several layers of Vectran, a material stronger than Kevlar, which is used in bulletproof vests. Over the next six months, astronauts will only venture into BEAM periodically to glean data on the air quality, temperature, condensation, radiation and possible micro-meteoroid and orbital debris impacts.
JASON CRUSAN: But, to be honest, actually, just the whole process of developing and expansion are even more critical to using this in the first place.
MILES O’BRIEN: BEAM will remain on the International Space Station for two years. Bigelow is seeking permission from NASA to sell access to the craft to commercial, educational and scientific customers.
ROBERT BIGELOW: Some people may think, well, that’s not any big deal. Well, it is. It is the start of something.
McDonald’s started with one burger somewhere, right, someplace. OK? So, it all has to have a beginning. And this is what BEAM is for us, is it’s a beginning, even if it’s on a very small scale.
MILES O’BRIEN: Bigelow clearly believes the work in low-Earth orbit is just the beginning of creating a viable industry in space, which, in turn, could help NASA’s goal to land and sustain humans on Mars. The universe is ever expanding, and so will the spacecraft designed to explore it.
Miles O’Brien, the “PBS NewsHour,” North Las Vegas, Nevada.
It would seem that NASA has forgotten the space particle that punctured the outer layer of the four layer thick windshield.
With more spacecraft, there will be more space debris, which makes an inflatable puncture more likely , which makes it more dangerous.
The idea of living in an inflatable which exists within a vacuum environment, where there is space debris, just seems illogical.
Do they get to take their inflatable girlfriends in there with them?
It looks like some kind of paper mache’ craft project
I’m thinking, what if it got pierced by a micro-meteor? The escaping air would act as a thruster on the space station. Hope they have self-repairing walls like they have self-repairing tires on some automobiles when a flat occurs. Then again, the regular walls of the space station aren’t much safer against a micro-meteor hit.
That depends on what it is made of. Is it made of thus?
Exactly...There are not many sections of the ISS that would be protected against a micrometeor. Remember, the pressure differential in space is basically one atmosphere. This is literally nothing compared to say, the pressure differential at 300 feet deep in the ocean, much less 30000 feet.
The ISS is pressurized at about 15 psi...Not much of a thruster. :) The pressure loss would identified by the environmental monitoring systems immediately, and a patch applied.
Excellent point. Guess there isn't much to worry about regards a micro-meteor hit (that is, unless it hits one in the eye). I recall that one of the space shuttles got hit on the windshield, but it didn't penetrate all the way (a glancing blow). If it did penetrate, it could have caused explosive decompression on re-entry (similar to what happened to the Columbia).
These were originally proposed by Walt Disney and Werner Von Braun on the old “Wonderful World of Disney” TV show.
It is self-healing rubber just like fighter aircraft fuel tanks.
The ISS is pressurized to at much lower pressure of an oxygen enriched gas. I think this is below even 7.5 PSI.
Whoops, correction, it is around 15 PSI because of the long habitation period. The Gemini/Apollo capsules contained lower pressure atmospheres.
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