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Inflatable Space Station Prototype a Success

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the inflatables-in-spaaaaace dept.

Adam Weiss writes "The Genesis 1 inflatable space station prototype was launched last week from the Ukraine. Now, after a few days of forced silence, Bigelow Aerospace has announced that the mission is so far a complete success. Their website has a detailed description of the launch, as well as the first picture from the craft. For an account right from mission control, the Museum of Science in Boston has posted an interview with Eric Haakonstad, the Program Manager of the mission."

3 of 73 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Space Debris by MarkusQ · · Score: 2, Informative

    anyone have any ideas what being hit by a small piece of space junk,..will do to one of these things?

    I can't find a link at the moment, but ground tests showed pretty much what you'd expect--it does much better than a metal can, to roughly the same extent as a modern bullet proof vest out performs a suit of (aluminum) armor in a gun fight.

    Yes, there are things that will destroy it. But Kg for Kg, Kevlar is a lot better than aluminum foil at protecting you from small, high speed impacts.

    --MarkusQ

  2. Re:Space Debris by camperdave · · Score: 2, Informative
    anyone have any ideas what being hit by a small piece of space junk, a piece smaller than my fist but moving at a few hundred miles an hour will do to one of these things?

    It would probably just bounce off. This is not some child's latex balloon we're talking about. The walls consist of five layers of carbon fiber composite. The TransHab module that this thing is based off of had 16 inch thick walls.

    More than 50 ballistics tests at the University of Dayton Research Institute and the University of Denver Research Institute were devoted to firing particles of 0.25-5Z8 in. toward the Bigelow shield at velocities from about 1.9-4.3 mi./sec.

    "The tests showed we have a shield that performs comparably to NASA's, but at a fraction of the cost," says Brian Aiken, the overall Bigelow program manager. Aiken has extensive experience in satellite design, mostly on military spacecraft at TRW (now Northrop Grumman). Bigelow's Gamble
    --
    When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
  3. Re:Managing space debris by MrFlibbs · · Score: 3, Informative

    Ah, but getting to a Lagrange Point requires much more energy and therefore, cost. The shuttle can only achieve low earth orbit, and in fact NASA currently has no operational system to take humans any further than the Internation Space Station.

    For a commercial venture, getting people into low earth orbit is the only viable near-term solution. Putting a space hotel at the L5 point is still a long way off.