Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/01/22/huge-inflatable-space-station-module-bursts-in-test-video.html
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I believe the technical term is “tested to destruction”.
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I understand finding out at what pressure it could burst, but would operating pressure ever be > 1 atm if inhabited by a human?
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My favorite line from Futurama is when the Planet Express ship gets pulled under water by a giant fish. It goes deeper and deeper. The ship creaks under the pressure. Someone asks the Professor, who designed the ship, how many atmospheres of pressure it can take. He says, “well, it is a spaceship, so anywhere between zero and one”.
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Not if everything is working the way it should be, but you want to design space stations to keep people alive even when things are working outside their normal operating parameters. It’s good to know just how much the air pressure regulators can screw up before everybody dies.
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Yeah, designing only to expected operating parameters is how you end up with the Titan implosion. While I’d rather see NASA behind most of this work, this company does at least seem to understand the assignment.
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Operating pressure is expected to be 15.2 psi. The maximum allowed by NASA was four times that (the 60.8 psi mentioned) and they tested their module out to 77 psi. Really a tremendous success for them. My questions about this tech probably have more to do with durability over time and micro-meteorite survivability, but I suspect they’re thinking about all that.
Just wish they’d turn down the cheesy music for their corporate video, it was far too much “look at us, we’re glorious” feeling.
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For sure. A huge portion of recent spacecraft failures have ultimately been traced to bad valves that either didn’t open, opened at the wrong time, or wouldn’t close properly.
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That’s really been the situation for all NASA’s spaceships since the beginning though. The Grumman Aircraft company built the Apollo lander and North American Rockwell built the Space Shuttle Orbiter. Even the suits astronauts wore on the moon were made by bra manufacturer Playtex.
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four layers of mmod-protection in the module and this reply from sierra in the comments;
Great question, we have performed MMOD Hypervelocity Impact (HVI) Testing with NASA, utilizing high power machines that can shoot a projectile at the rate or velocity of an impact in space. We hope to share more in the future as we continue testing
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They didn’t show any slow mo, but to me the burst looked very symmetrical. It seemed to come apart everywhere at once, which I guess speaks to the quality of the construction.
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this here isnt slow-mo?
e/
it bursts at the “equator” and thats how it should.
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It absolutely is, I am an idiot 
It’s time to re-read Exo by Steven Gould.
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Man, it must be so fun to build something as complex and theoretical as this and then just blow the damn thing up! So satisfying.
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How much radiation does a balloon block?
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Fission mailed!
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there is this weird concept of a one-person-bubble for space in stephensons seveneves; build like an onion with layers of thick plastic-foil, each one containing a little more pressure till one atmosphere in the center-bubble is reached. in theory, this pressure layering from nearly zero to one would prevent bursting it in the vacuum.
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for its purpose its not that of an issue; the magnetic field of earth offers a lot of protection for stuff and people in earth orbit. and its a “balloon” with at least 9 layers of different material. its a neat and practical concept if done right.
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