Blow-up rafts are just the thing for lounging at the pool, blow-up beds for a houseful of guests. But a blow-up spacecraft?
It may sound more “Jetsons” than “Right Stuff,” but NASA is about to put the idea to the test. The space agency is poised to launch an inflatable compartment to the International Space Station, an orbiting laboratory home to a crew of six. After astronauts fill the new structure with air, it will swell from a bundle eight feet wide into a compartment nearly as big as a one-car garage.
The station crew will only run tests on the module rather than spend time inside it, at least in the beginning. But its flight is still a significant milestone, observers say.
“It’ll be the first time human beings will actually step inside this expandable habitat in space,” says retired astronaut George Zamka, who has worked for Bigelow Aerospace, the company that built the module. “It’ll feel pretty beefy. … There won’t be this sense of it being like a balloon.”
Nor will it be easy to puncture, according to engineers. The fully inflated room will have thick walls built of multiple layers of fabric and Kevlar-like material. Space junk won’t penetrate, NASA’s Rajib Dasgupta said.
The station’s robotic arm will attach the compartment to a docking station. Then an astronaut will press a button to inflate the module, which should pop out from 7 feet to 13 feet long in roughly 45 minutes. An internal metal framework will help the module maintain its shape, which means the pod is more accurately called “expandable” than “inflatable,” Bigelow officials argue.
Inflatable or expandable, the compartment is slated to ride a SpaceX rocket into orbit April 8. Officially called the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, or BEAM, it will be deployed to full size two months from now.
Bigelow launched two prototype inflatable pods into orbit a decade ago, but neither has hosted humans. Proceeding cautiously, NASA plans to have astronauts spend only three hours inside BEAM every few months.
The crew may have other ideas. The space station “tends to get kind of cramped,” Zamka says. “So any volume that’s there that’s not being used, the astronauts are probably going to be asking about it.”
The crew may like the idea of a spacious hideaway, but NASA likes the idea of a space pod lighter and less bulky to launch than conventional, solid modules. Bigelow already has a bigger and more capable inflatable at the ready: the B330, which is spacious enough to house a crew of six. Company founder Robert Bigelow, who made a fortune in the hotel business, says he hopes to fly a B330 to the space station. NASA is funding further study of the B330 as a possible habitat for Mars and lunar orbit.
Government agencies and companies will be watching BEAM’s performance closely, says Richard Rocket, CEO of NewSpace Global, which analyzes the commercial space industry. Drug companies might be interested in inflatable modules as a place to do research, while nations without access to the space station may see inflatables as a cheaper toehold in orbit.
“I see that having legs because of the launch costs,” Rocket said.
Robert Bigelow points out that NASA itself was the source of the basic design of BEAM. The idea, he says, “has actually come full circle.”
