Made in orbit: Homes and living space

Once an energy source has been secured, humans need somewhere to live. Currently astronauts live in space stations such as the ISS, but in an eventuality where space exploration is widely accessible to the public, larger solutions to housing would be necessary. But space is a cold and unforgiving place to be. All the current ‘architecture’ in space stations is purely functional to keep its inhabitants alive. But the space craft of the future will need to have a few bells and whistles on them, lest the inhabitants go mad looking at the same grey and silver walls. So how amenable will the spacecraft of the future be to getting a facelift? I’ve been speaking to Annika Rollock, from the Aurelia Institute, who’s worked with NASA HOME on deep space habitats…

Annika - What we work on, we like to call more like IKEA furniture, if it were able to self-assemble. Our structures are launched in a flat pack: tiles that stack, kind of like in a Pez dispenser or IKEA furniture. In space, they’re autonomous, so they self-assemble using the onboard computers and magnets. No human assembly required. And what are they made of? Right now, the tiles are basically plastic, electronics, and magnets, but in the future they’ll be made of space-grade aluminium alloys.

Chris - And what will actually be in the structure that you’re envisaging? Once you put all this together and it self-assembles, if I walk around it, can you take me on a virtual tour? Can we walk around together?

Annika - Yes, so the space would be divided up depending on who you’re hosting. We’d like to imagine a combination of career astronauts—people trained to be up there to help prepare and do science—as well as potentially tourists and pure scientists who might not be as accustomed to the harsh living conditions as astronauts. There would be crew quarters, one for each crew member. And as you manoeuvre, there would be handholds because in zero gravity you obviously can’t walk down the corridor—you have to move using your hands and feet. Through our experience on the International Space Station, we’ve really underscored the importance of common areas, having places for the crew to convene and share a meal, to gather around—even if it’s only a symbolic table.

Chris - Hopefully a magnetic table so you can stop your food floating off. Otherwise, people will say the food’s out of this world, but not for the reason you had in mind.

Annika - Velcro is big. That’s why we use Velcro.

Chris - Is that the solution? It’s Velcro?

Annika - Yes, a lot of the time.

Chris - And what would the shape of it be? Are we thinking 2001: A Space Odyssey, something like a giant spinning wheel in space to give some semblance of gravity because you’re basically throwing people out to the walls? Or are we going to accept the fact that people are floating around and that’s how it’s going to be?

Annika - We’re looking at what’s called a truncated icosahedron, also known as a buckyball. It’s effectively a football, or soccer ball. The idea is to maximise the amount of internal space while minimising the amount of structure you have to bring with you. It’s a close approximation to a sphere.

Chris - And does that mean you’ve got a structure that supports the outside, and then you partition the inside so you could reconfigure it relatively easily as long as it’s airtight on the outside? Once you’ve got that enclosed ball, you can do a lot with it?

Annika - Yes, precisely. We call that the secondary structure inside. It’s not as strong as the external structure, but it still divides the space and allows astronauts to mount things and manoeuvre within.

Chris - What sort of altitudes are you going to be at? The ISS is about 400 kilometres up. It’s so low it needs periodic reboosting because it slows down and would fall to Earth otherwise. What altitude have you got in mind for this?

Annika - A similar altitude. That’s where most commercial space stations have envisioned themselves—low Earth orbit. That’s mainly for ease of access.

Chris - And what’s the lifetime? How long do you think this will have to run to recoup the costs?

Annika - We like to say 10 to 15 years, but we’ve clearly seen from the ISS that it has outlived its initial estimate. We’d love our structure to be reconfigurable and reusable. That’s a huge advantage of using these tiles that self-assemble rather than prefabricated specific modules. But we say 10 years. And the cost? We don’t know yet. That’s something we’ll work out with more testing. With launch costs going down, it’s certainly cheaper than the ISS, but you never really know. In space, you can’t make that kind of estimate in good faith this far out.

Chris - So the answer is going to be a lot.

Annika - It’s going to be a lot, yes. It’s expensive.

Chris - And when? Because that’s the other question. Is this pie in the sky—like nuclear fusion, always 10 years away—or have you got a definite “it will fly by this date” in mind?

Annika - For the full station, we don’t have a date yet. But we do have a full assembly of a very small version of this buckyball flying to the station—inside the station—next spring. After that, we’ll test outside the ISS with the actual space-grade aluminium structure I mentioned. So within the next few years, that demonstration will be flying.