NASA's long harbored the curious notion that space travel can be made cheaper and more efficient through the use of inflatable space habitats. I call the idea curious because an "inflatable space habitat" basically sounds like something out of The Jetsons, but our brave and brilliant rocket scientists actually want to put human beings inside of them. Thanks to a new $17.8 million contract with Bigelow Airspace who manufactures an expandable module meant to be attached to the International Space Station, it's going to happen pretty soon.
NASA is pretty excited about the new spacecraft — which is really sort of an old spacecraft, but I'll get back to that in a second. "This partnership agreement for the use of expandable habitats represents a step forward in cutting-edge technology that can allow humans to thrive in space safely and affordably, and heralds important progress in U.S. commercial space innovation," said NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver in a statement announcing the new partnership with Bigelow.
The Las Vegas-based aerospace company has been working on this technology since 1999 and has already successfully sent two inflatable habitats into space. The new contract comes after Bigelow was named in a much bigger $1.1 billion round of funding from NASA to three companies for the construction of small spacecraft to take astronauts up to the ISS. Now Bigelow will providing them with a place to stay once they get there.
An inflatable-module concept. Via Bigelow Aerospace
But enough of all this talk about contracts and stuff. Let's get at the big question: How on Earth do inflatable structures keep astronauts alive? Wouldn't they just pop the first time a small meteorite ripped through their soft outer shell? Well, the rules are different up in space. While inflatable structures have to battle gravity and weather here on the Earth, in space they're free to float around rather peacefully. They're also just as strong, if not stronger, than your average space structure since the outer shells are made of ultra durable materials like Vectran, which is twice as strong as Kevlar. The tough outer shell also provides the astronauts inside with exceptional shielding from radiation.
The big perk of inflatable space habitats is size, though. Traditionally, pieces of the space station or, potentially, a space ship bound for Mars would have to fit inside the rocket that carries it into orbit. Rocket scientists call this the "aluminum can" design because pretty much everything needs to fit in a metal cylinder of limited diameter. With inflatable space habitats, however, they can get creative with the size and shape. This is actually how NASA got our very first passive satellites into space. The Echo 1 and Echo 2 would've been too big to fit in the Thor-Delta rocket, so NASA's geniuses came up with an inflatable design.
Over the next few decades NASA struggled with budgetary concerns and didn't make much progress advancing inflatable habitat technology, though they did manage to come up with some pretty awesome ideas for it, like the inflatable lunar habitat model from 1989 (see above). Then, also due to budgetary concerns, NASA had to abandon a project called TransHab in 2000 that aimed to design an inflatable spacecraft that could make it all the way to Mars. And so as public funding has dried up, the private sector has taken over to develop the technology and will give astronauts a bit more room to move around.
Like all things space-related, we still have a long ways to go. There are designs in play that involve everything from centrifugal spacecraft that come with artificial gravity to giant domes that could support life on other planets. NASA and friends inevitably have to find the money to pay for them, but since inflatable space habitats are exponentially cheaper than the old aluminum can designs, some of these crazy-sounding, amazing things might actually get built.
Image via Wikimedia