NASA Awards Companies $65 Million To Develop Habitats For Deep Space (techcrunch.com)

An anonymous reader writes from a report via TechCrunch: NASA has committed $65 million to six companies over the course of two years for the purpose of developing and testing deep-space habitats that could be used for future missions to Mars. TechCrunch reports: "It's part of the organization's NEXTStep, an ongoing partnership program under NASA's Advanced Exploration Systems that funds private research into technology for space exploration. Last year's NEXTStep contracts were for a variety of things, but this year they're all on the same track: "deep space habitats where humans will live and work independently for months or years at a time, without cargo supply deliveries from Earth." The lucky companies are all taking slightly different approaches to the problem of deep space habitation." The six companies include Bigelow Aerospace, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Orbital ATK, Sierra Nevada Corporation's Space Systems and NanoRacks.

Comments

Glass blowed 0g habitats

[Anonymous Coward]

Use big mirrors and sunlight to heat space rock until it goes lava. Then blow gas inside the molten blob until it is big enough for your needs. Let it cool down, add holes for doors and windows.

Re:Glass blowed 0g habitats

[BlueStrat]

Use big mirrors and sunlight to heat space rock until it goes lava. Then blow gas inside the molten blob until it is big enough for your needs. Let it cool down, add holes for doors and windows.

Nice but what when sun is not shining?

I guess you missed the "0G" part of the post's topic line?

I believe he refers to orbiting habitats fashioned from asteroid material using solar mirrors (also in orbit) so periods when sunlight is unavailable are typically short when placed in an orbit suited for purpose. Neither the manufacturing infrastructure nor the habitats ever leave space in such a case.

More needs to be known about the surface soil structures, densities, and behaviors in order to design a practical human habitat whether intended for the Moon or Mars, as it will almost certainly need to be buried and/or covered with topsoil/sand/rock as radiation shielding in either case. There's no practical/economical way to haul sufficient amounts of heavy shielding material from Earth or incorporate such heavy shielding into the habitat designs.

Strat

Re:Glass blowed 0g habitats

[OzPeter]

Use big mirrors and sunlight to heat space rock until it goes lava. Then blow gas inside the molten blob until it is big enough for your needs. Let it cool down, add holes for doors and windows.

Which was central to the plot of the Troy Rising series by John Ringo.

Re:Glass blowed 0g habitats

[legRoom]

Use big mirrors and sunlight to heat space rock until it goes lava. Then blow gas inside the molten blob until it is big enough for your needs. Let it cool down, add holes for doors and windows.

Glass is brittle and tends to fracture. Don't expect junky mystery glass to hold up well long-term against micro-meteorite impacts - especially if it's made thin enough not to crack right away from thermal contraction during the cooling process. Cracks = leaks.

Even if it turned out to be practical to make something truly airtight via your technique, the result would still be super heavy compared to the high-tech alternatives favoured by the space industry: even homogeneous, high-quality synthetic glass has a poor strength-to-mass ratio as compared to structural metals (aluminium, steel, titanium) or synthetic fibres (kevlar, carbon fibre, etc.).

NASA wants maximum reliability (for both political and moral reasons) and minimum weight, because the cost of sending even lightweight manned spacecraft to Mars and back is already more than they can actually afford. What problem does melting space rocks solve for them?

Re:Glass blowed 0g habitats

[HiThere]

The cure for cracking while cooling is to cool very slowly, and possibly annealing. The point about micro-meteorites is much better, and there'd clearly need to be a lot of work. OTOH, any glass made this way wouldn't be transparent...and you're right about it not being thin...it would need to be reasonably thick. My WAG would say it would need to be a foot or two thick, but I've done no calculations, so it wouldn't surprise me to be off by a factor of 5.

OTOH, it would be best to have two layers and run, say, paraffin (US meaning) in between them to use as a radiation shield. Water would also work, but paraffin has other advantages than just lots of hydrogen, it can also be easily doped to reveal any leaks, and it's a decent sealant.

Re:Glass blowed 0g habitats

[cjameshuff]

Basalt fiber (more or less "mystery glass" in fiber form) turns out to have surprisingly good mechanical properties, and a composite hull would be much tougher than a blown bubble, plus you would have more flexibility in the shapes achievable. Additional layers of basalt fiber fabric and "sandbags" filled with waste rock wrapped around the outside could provide radiation and micrometeorite shielding and thermal mass. Nothing you'd want to haul around the solar system, but for setting up habitable volume near an asteroid, you'd just need to import some spinning/weaving machinery and resin and a pile of silicate-rich rock.

Re:how do I

[tomhath]

Just read the RFPs they have out. Write a proposal for any you are qualified to undertake.

Re:how do I

[burhop]

Secure funding from NASA, how do I learn about the opportunity to secure funding, I am sure they advertise it somewhere, and have all sorts of guidelines, but it seems as if they send out invitations only, because it's only the same companies who ever get funding. I think the process to secure government money needs to be more accessible, and not hidden in bureaucracy only a select few can navigate to.

Just because it doesn't show up on your Facebook page doesn't mean it it is hidden in bureaucracy. If you have an idea for NASA, here you go:

https://prod.nais.nasa.gov/pub...

If you are just looking for money, here you go:

http://www.grants.gov/

The same companies seem to get chosen over and over is because they usually have some expertise in that particular area and can show a good reason why NASA should spend the money with them. Yeah, it helps to know the system but they bend over backward to make it transparent.

Re: Habitats should be free from the act in this h

[dreamchaser]

There is also no seasonal reference, which is a component of traditional Haiku. For a 'Haiku lover' it was quite terrible.

The Haiku Lover
Like a fetid Summer wind
Repels us with rotten verse

Re:how do I

[Ol Olsoc]

Just because it doesn't show up on your Facebook page doesn't mean it it is hidden in bureaucracy. If you have an idea for NASA, here you go:

How dare you! You've completely run over some whiner's precious beliefs!

Cor - you people and your true facts and stuff.

Re:This is awesome!

[tomhath]

They get all the feel good publicity without the need to actually deliver anything. Plus the government project project managers on the projects will have jobs waiting for them when they retire.

Radiation is the Deal-Breaker

[WheezyJoe]

Outside the Earth's magnetic field, radiation becomes the biggest buzz-kill. It's nasty out there. There's concern that even going to the moon and back exposes you to enough high-energy radiation to cause cardio-vascular disease. Mars could be lethal, not just in getting there, but also after you arrive, because Mars has no magnetosphere strong enough to provide a shield (Earth says, "you're welcome"). Any deep-space research has to solve this problem or manned missions will be a death sentence.