Space Sierra The company has completed key testing of its inflatable space habitat, as the company moves toward launching and operating a private space station with Blue Origin before the end of the decade.
A “final burst pressure” test of the inflatable module was conducted at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. As the name suggests, the purpose of the test is to inflate the unit until it explodes. In this case, engineers inflated the unit to 77 psi before it exploded, proving that it exceeded NASA’s recommended safety level of 60.8 psi by 27%.
While Sierra has conducted a series of blast tests on subunits of the habitat, called the Large Integrated Flexible Environment (LIFE), this is the first on a full-scale unit. At full scale, the module is more than 20 feet long and about a third the size of the International Space Station.
As Leanne Thompson, a systems engineer at Sierra, pointed out in a recent video about the test, it would take 10-15 NASA launches to send the same volume of habitable space with the International Space Station. Each LIFE module is designed to fit into a standard five-meter-long payload structure, although the company said it is working on larger 1,400-cubic-meter iterations (larger than the International Space Station) that could fit into a seven-meter-long structure.
The testing focused on the LIFE habitat’s pressure shell or confinement layer, which is made of expandable “soft goods” that act like a rigid structure once inflated. Soft goods as a material category have a space heritage: there were inflatable airlocks attached to the International Space Station, and demonstration units developed by Bigelow Aerospace were launched into space in the 2000s.
The soft goods that make up LIFE’s home include Vectran belts, made from high-performance polymers, and other materials. In a press release, Sierra said Vectran is “stronger than steel when blown into orbit.” The company is working with ILC Dover to design and test the tapes ahead of this extensive testing.
Although the burst test is certainly suggestive, it would be a mistake to compare the LIFE unit to a balloon. In the video above, Sierra briefly shows off nine layers that will eventually make up each unit including the restrictive layer, such as thermal insulation and the outer covering.
Sierra’s plan is to deploy LIFE modules in low Earth orbit as part of Orbital Reef, a private space station the company is developing with Blue Origin. Notably, Sierra specifically refers to the project in the press release, which could be at least partially a response to reports received CNBC last year That the Orbital Reef project was on the verge of collapse.
Sierra said this year will be a “strong” test at both the sub- and full-scale levels of other layers of habitat.