Spacecraft carrying commercial space station lift's off (AP/CNN)

[eppur_se_muova]

Wednesday, July 12, 2006; Posted: 12:27 p.m. EDT (16:27 GMT)

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- A Russian rocket blasted off Wednesday carrying an experimental inflatable spacecraft for an American entrepreneur who dreams of some day building a commercial space station, officials said.

The Genesis I spacecraft lifted off from the southern Ural Mountains at 6:53 p.m. Moscow time aboard a converted Cold War ballistic missile, according to the Russian Strategic Missile Forces.

It reached its designated orbit about 320 miles above Earth minutes after liftoff.

The launch was a first for Bigelow Aerospace, founded by Las Vegas real estate mogul Robert Bigelow, who owns the Budget Suites of America hotel chain.

Bigelow envisions building a private orbiting space complex by 2015 that would be made up of several expandable Genesis-like modules linked together and could be used as a hotel, or perhaps a science lab or college. He has committed $500 million toward the project.
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more: http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/space/07/12/private.space.station.ap/index.html

[bananas]

1. Bigelow was portrayed by Jack Nicholson in "Mars Attacks!"

[htuttle]

2. Aren't micro-meteor showers and space junk going to be a problem...

...for an inflatable space station?

It's one thing to lose some of your air containment, but another to lose structural integrity at the same time.

[benburch]

3. Actually. No.

You are safer in an inflatable as they can be self-sealing.

[Ready4Change]

4. And in a way, any manned spacecraft is inflatable.

Any manned spacecraft has more internal than external pressure. It's just a question of how rigid the skin is.

I can see that a craft made of flexible material might have an advantage in that it would give on impact, rather than resist and shatter. So you might just get a puncture, rather than a long crack.

[LastDemocratInSC]

5. Yes, but are the passengers and systems self-healing?

So, a meteoroid strikes an inflatable spacecraft at a relative velocity of 18 miles per second. The walls of the inflatable might self-seal, but will its passengers and systems survive? It's a rare event, to be sure, but the Challenger space shuttle was hit by a paint fleck on a cockpit window and the BANG was loud enough to wake up the crew.

Inflatable modules have merit - several inflatable modules were considered for the ISS. This is an idea that will certainly flourish but protection from debris will be a concern for a long time.

[Ready4Change]

6. With our current abilities, we can't lift enough armor into space.

Considering the potential velocities that might be encountered we can't lift enough armor to protect our vehicles from punctures. We either need to learn to deal with the odd random hit now and then, or establish operations to get material from the Moon or asteroids. The latter two are the most accessible sources of large amounts of matter to use to shield our spacecraft. The moon is nearer, but still has a gravity well to deal with. Asteroids don't have enough gravity to be of great concern, but they are a great deal further away.

Lifting that amount of mass our of Earths gravity well is a daunting prospect.

I wonder if an inflatable defense in depth would be effective? Wrap a spacecrafts skin in one or more layers of inflatable cells. Let them take the brunt of the impact, and be replacable as modules to boot.

[LastDemocratInSC]

7. Details on the ISS shield

The Long Duration Exposure Facility, launched in the 1980s and recovered many years later, showed that most debris hits were from tiny particles. Each module of the station has an layer of Kevlar and ceramic fabrics about 4 inches thick beneath the metal skin. It's believed that this layer, plus the metal skin, will stop the kind of particles that hit LDEF. A rock sized meteoroid would be another thing, however.

[Dead_Parrot]

8. Depends how they build it

Think taking a pin to bubble-wrap. It's actually hard work to get all the way through the stuff, which is why it's such a good protection. Use the same rules to come up with a a space-station wall and you've got something that's (a) hard to get through, and (b) mendable with an iron and a bicycle pump.

Not that I'd want to live in it, but as a test idea it's sound.