The Cabin

Pressure Vessels are arguably the most critical thing in manned space exploration. A brony gotta breath amirite? Sadly it’s not as simple as making a big jar and closing the lid.

Your jar is going to need to connect to all of your tools and systems-which means you need a lot of seals. It is a good idea to try to minimize the number of your cables tubes and ports, but also remember that you need backups in case one breaks, that becomes more and more important as time goes on. Take it from me on personal experience, when big equipment runs consistently from 6 to 12 to 24hours or even non stop-no matter how much maintenance you do-something eventually breaks or catches on fire. Redundancy is king, just don’t overdo it.

The ISS needs 14.7PSI for daily operation, and Moon and Mars missions may require going outside 2 or 3 times a week (NASA). This makes things tricky, seeing as you cant just open your front door in space and expect air to come rushing in. We’ll go over airlocks another week, right now we’ll stick to the jar.

For now there is an international standard for airlock doors, if you plan on playing with friends from another country-it’s pretty much a copy paste. If you just want to fly around, do your thing and make your own door, just remember two things: rubber seals can break down, and metal on metal can fuse together in space if you are not careful.

Apollo ships built their cabin around a honeycomb aluminium shell surrounded by their equipment, insulation, and finally another honeycomb shell made of stainless steel then their hull (SSE, pg 246). These panels are made open ended and sealed by an adhesive film and skin. Think of it like duct tape instead the sticky part is two sided and the other side you can pick before you use it (SSE, pg 263). This honeycomb structure is great because even though it is lighter than a solid block of metal-it still has a very good ability to resist bending.

And no ship is complete with out a port hole, who wants to go to space and miss the view? Its also a critical back up in case the navigation equipment goes down and you have to pilot manually. Shuttle and station windows have a reputation for being very thick. On more than one occasion pieces of space debris no larger than a fleck of paint have managed to pierce several centimetres through ballistic glass. Transparent aluminium armour technology is lighter, but either out of reach for space or just ridiculously expensive.

I haven’t picked a topic for next week just yet, the way I’m gonna try to swing this is commission a piece and build post around it. I have a few in the mix so the pressure is off the artists and they can have fun with it. I’m toying with a few ideas on where I want this to go in the long run, but it’s too early for anything definitive. Smooth sailing, and see you soon!

(Awesome commission by festivaldays)
Sources:

NASA/SP-2004-6113(2005)
Spacecraft Systems Engineering, Fourth Edition