Lockheed Martin Bursts Inflatable Space Habitats In Tests
Lockheed Martin is developing inflatable habitats for use in space. Watch several views of a habitat prototype being inflated past its limit.
Credit: Lockheed Martin
Credit: Lockheed Martin
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TechTranscript
00:00 [ Music ]
00:05 >> The test that we're doing today is an ultimate burst
00:08 pressure test of our subscale soft goods habitat.
00:10 What we're trying to really understand is can we fill it
00:14 up with as much pressure as possible
00:15 and see what the ultimate breaking strength
00:17 of the entire system is going to be.
00:19 [ Explosion ]
00:23 >> Flammable habitats have an incredible usage anywhere you
00:26 want to put people.
00:27 So anywhere there's a livable volume that you want
00:29 to have people living or storing materials long term.
00:32 >> Our burst units as well as the rest
00:35 of our soft goods technology are all designed, manufactured,
00:39 built and tested here on site at Lockheed Martin.
00:41 >> This test is almost an exact replica of the first test we did.
00:45 It's the same build, different unit,
00:47 but we're taking it to the same operating conditions
00:49 and then bursting it and seeing how they compare.
00:52 >> When you're looking at metallic habitats
00:54 versus inflatable habitats, one of the key drivers is our ability
00:58 to actually pack down our inflatable habitat
01:01 to a much smaller shape and size.
01:03 The advantage of this is
01:04 that you can actually fit a much larger habitable volume inside
01:07 of a launch vehicle without having
01:09 to have a launch vehicle that's massive.
01:11 >> The Vectran material is a very similar material to Kevlar,
01:14 which a lot of people are familiar with.
01:15 It is better in terms of its creep resistance,
01:18 which is the strain over time that can cause failure.
01:21 >> So this test is just one step in an entire certification process
01:26 to allow our habitat to be used in space
01:28 and be lived in by astronauts.
01:29 So what comes next in this process includes a full-scale
01:32 burst test, so scaling this up and bursting it
01:35 at the full scale that it'll be flown at
01:36 so that we can get an estimate of the lifetime
01:38 of the habitat before we send it to space.
01:40 The best part of this was that we ended up right
01:45 within our predicted pressure range, which is super exciting
01:47 for us, helps us continue to show that repeatability
01:50 of our processes, the repeatability of our testing.
01:52 So really excited about this result.
01:55 [ Explosion ]
02:01 Just seeing that burst within that range was a good feeling.
02:04 [ Music ]