Discovery News has an interesting report on a lesser known aspect of the Endeavour’s recent mission to the International Space Station: an experiment with inflatable structures that could make space construction easier.
As part of an Air Force-funded experiment called RIGEX, shuttle astronauts “inflated three flexible tubes housed inside a chamber in the shuttle cargo bay with pressurized nitrogen gas, then heated them. The tubes then cooled, forming rigid structures…[which] were blasted with vibrations to test their structural integrity.”
Officials are hoping the experiment will lead to easier ways of building large structures in space. Bigelow Aerospace is developing a space station using a similar technology called TransHab that was originally developed by NASA in the 1990’s.
