Living quarters for NASA’s Gateway lunar orbiter will be so small that astronauts won’t be able to stand upright inside, an architect involved in the station’s design has said.
NASA and its international partners plan to begin construction on the building Gateway station orbiting the moon in the next few years. When completed near the end of the decade, the space lab will be one-sixth its size International Space Station (ISS), consists of two living modules that will force crew members to give up personal space.
“The International Residential module will have approximately 8 cubic meters of living space [280 cubic feet] and you’ll have to share it with three other people,” said René Waclavicek, a space architect and design researcher at Austria-based LIQUIFER Space Systems. Czech Space Week conference in Brno (opens in new tab), Czech Republic, where November. 30, 2022. “In other words, it would be a 2 by 2 by 2 meter room. [6.6 by 6.6 by 6.6 feet]. And you’re stuck there. There are other rooms, but they are neither big nor many.”
Related: Watch the construction of NASA’s next-generation Lunar Gateway space station in a concept video
Waclavicek participated in the design phase International Habitat module built by Europe (opens in new tab)or the I-Hab, one of Gateway’s two residential elements, mainly bedrooms combined with lab space (the other Housing and Logistics Plant (opens in new tab)HALO was developed by Northrop Grumman in the USA).
While working on the design, the architects had to yield to the practical requirements that arose from the nature of the project, said Waklavicek. Their initial hopes for larger modules, similar to those available on the International Space Station, offering larger living space had to be abandoned due to the inability to send large components into space. month.
“We started with a cylinder with external dimensions similar to what we know from the ISS in the first stage,” Vaclavicek said. “It’s about 4.5m [15 feet] diameter and 6 m [20 feet] long But due to mass constraints we had to reduce it to 3 m [10 feet] in external dimensions. And that left us with an interior cross-section of only 1.2m by 1.2m [4 feet by 4 feet]. Most of the interior volume is consumed by machines, so it’s really just a corridor where you have to turn 90 degrees if you want to lie down.”
The International Space Station, with its 7.2 x 7.2-foot-wide (2.2 x 2.2 m) interior, is where astronauts can do just that. space gymnastics rulesAt Gateway, it offers a luxurious experience compared to what awaits lunar explorers.
“[The I-Hab] it’s really just a cylinder with a hatch at each end, two hatches at the sides, and a corridor running through the longitudinal axis.” At this point you allow your other companion to pass you by.”
Somehow, the architects were able to incorporate about 53 cubic feet (1.5 cubic m) of personal space for each crew member living in the i-Hab, protected by lockable doors. But the experience of staying at Gateway will be challenging for more reasons than the cramped accommodations alone. As Waclavicek says, much of the module will deal with noisy and vibrating life support technology, the constant hum of which is likely to get on the nerves of most laypeople.
“You basically live in the engine room,” Waklavicek said. “Life support systems make noise, they have a lot of fans, and you only have 1.5 cubic meters of personal space where you can close the door and tame the noise.”
Architects explored ways to reduce pressure on the crew and make the Gateway experience more enjoyable, but they continued to hit technical limitations, including the launch vehicles available to send the module to its destination.
“We are always asked ‘where is the window?’ Vaklavicek, who asked the question, said: “The window is the most popular place where astronauts spend every free minute on the International Space Station. But there are technical problems with this. The moon is a thousand times away [than the ISS] and every window is a break in the continuity of the structure. “Also, glass is very heavy, so the first thing to be removed is the window.”
However, Gateway will have smaller windows on ESPRIT, the refueling module to be built in Europe.
Although the American HALO module will be launched in 2024, I-Hab’s journey to the Moon is not expected before 2027. Right now, Waclavicek said, the team is working on a Critical Design Review, an important step before starting hardware production. and began creating a life-size mock-up to test human interaction with the habitat.
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