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Hotel Tycoon Pushes Inflatable Space Stations
heptapod writes "Reclusive millionaire and motel tycoon Robert Bigelow has announced launching inflatable space stations through his personal aerospace firm. He's working off of NASA's TransHab designs and hopes to get launch one as early as November 2005! I'm sure after someone wins the X Prize they'll need someplace to stay the night. I wonder if each inflatable station module won't come with complimentary bibles."
The NASA Transhab design uses "multiple layers, which consist of Mylar, Kevlar, Nextel and foam rubber, provide better protection from micrometeorites than a metal shell."
Source
There is quite a bit of info out there about the Transhabs, NASA are taking this quite seriously.
The article suggested nitrogen. We already haul compressed air up into orbit. You'd simply have a gas cylinder to provide the pressure.
I don't read AC A human right
I would imagine that, in the low pressure of space (it's not quite a vacuum), even a tiny amount of gas would inflate it quite effectively.
Of course, they still have to fill the thing with air to breathe, so I'm sure they can manage to carry up a little bit more to actually inflate it.
My understanding is that the modules have a metal docking collar at one end as shown in these two pictures:
Pic 1
Pic 2
Don't underestimate towels. A towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santranginus V, inhaling the beady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the Ravenouse Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you--daft as a brush, but very very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.
There'd be no decomposition in a vacuum, simply drying out and (comparitively) rapid mummification or something very similar to it.
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
Because he is using TransHab as his model, he is also using the system designed for protecting it. The cool thing about TransHab is that it's outer shell is made of a ballistic material matrix (including Kevlar, etc.) which is resistent to penetration by micrometorites and is even capable of "bouncing" back from large impacts - like what happened to MIR. Typical Space Station construction (a.k.a. Alumiminum Can Construction) is not able to withstand impacts of that magnitude with out buckling or worse, pressure loss.
Bill
It's my Sig and you can't have it. Mine! All Mine!
You can estimate your chances of survival using NASA's model (PC only).
I've been on another board with a member of the Gideon Society. Their purpose is to provide transients (hotels, military, prisons, and such) with a copy of the Bible. It costs about $5 US for a hardcover Bible and $1.50 US for a New Testament. Each Bible lasts 6 years on the average and is read 400 to 500 times.
The Gideons are funded by contributions from local churches. There is no mandate for a motel to carry a Gideon Bible; the Marriots, for example, put their own Bibles and a copy of the Book of Mormon in every room. Some hotels don't put them in. Many others do. Since hotels are private property, it is their right.
I've gone to hotels and I've seen the Gideon books defaced, torn, and with stickers added by militant atheists. What a fruitless thing to do! In many ways, what a cruel thing to do when someone is in distress, or wishes a quiet moment reflecting on God.
So, if a space traveler wants to read a Gideon Bible in orbit, I'll be glad to pay the freighting fees to get him one. Of course, a downloaded version would be easier to send.
DISCLAIMER: I am an evangelical Christian. I don't see any problem dealing with matters of faith and science. I'm writing articles and books about it for both the evangelical and non-evangelical community.
Nyekulturniy... Proudly confusing readers and editors since 1981!
Why is it that when anyone mentions the name of Jesus in a favorable light, everyone assumes he's screaming it or cramming him down their throats. Perspective, people. The man was civil. Besides, Jesus was not civil to the hypocrits of his day. He was very forceful, thank you very much. He's the same guy that said, "You brood of vipers! How can you speak good when you are evil For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil. It tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, for by your words you will be justified and by your words you will be condemned." Sounds like there are some sensitive people here who'd like us all to think they're above all this "God" stuff.
You are either part of the solution or part of the precipitate!
But the Scientology bible you'd have to pay to read.
I believe that you're referring to RST's (Radiation Shield Technology) product Demron. It is not a film, it is a fabric, not quite the film that you referred to, but the closest I could find.
Sunuvabitch, but where I couldn't find it the last time I looked, this time it came up as Google hit #1.
Hard vacuum is only one negative atmosphere of relative pressure, 14.7 psi. A small leak would be loud but manageable. Explosive decompression could only happen through a large hole.
-Lucas
Sorry, but there are a lot of very religious people who believe their faith is a private and personal matter between themselves and God -- more than you think, because, after all, they keep their faith to themselves. Quakers are a good example (and read Matthew 5 and 6 in this context), but you can find such in all denominations and faiths.
As others have already pointed out, the stuff you are referring to is Demron, manufactured by RST. When I first heard of it a year or so ago I found their claim regarding its extraordinary X-ray absorbing capability very hard to believe in the light of well-established physical model of the absorption of EM radiation by matter. The report published by Lawrence Livermore Lab. was funded by RST and the author did not respond to my request for a scientific explanation.
Until the results have been independently verified and published in a peer-reviewed journal, or else verified by myself, I will continue to have grave doubts concerning their claim. (IIAP and part of my job is monitoring the radiation safety of X-ray emitting apparatus.)
Possibilities:
1. Maybe god does and you just aren't listening.
2. Maybe god doesn't actively interfere with human affairs. It might be a free will thing or a "I just want to sit back and watch" thing (reference deists).
3. Maybe the *christian* god doesn't exist. There are *many* religions and many types of deities. It's one thing to say a god of christian conception doesn't exist, but another to say that no god exists. Search around and maybe you'll find a religion that suits your beliefs. Not every religion is like Judaism, Christianity, or Islam. Some are quite radically different.
For instance William Blake seemed to believe that the imagination and creative impulses *were* god and through them you could see the "infinite" (or some such...I don't quite get it).
Anyway, there are tons of books written all throughout history about religion, many of them repeating that same argument. If you wanted you could research all of those and then decide for yourself what you want to believe.
When you can bring an inflatable church along too.