this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2026
53 points (98.2% liked)

Space

2401 readers
28 users here now

A community to discuss space & astronomy through a STEM lens

Rules

  1. Be respectful and inclusive. This means no harassment, hate speech, or trolling.
  2. Engage in constructive discussions by discussing in good faith.
  3. Foster a continuous learning environment.

Also keep in mind, mander.xyz's rules on politics

Please keep politics to a minimum. When science is the focus, intersection with politics may be tolerated as long as the discussion is constructive and science remains the focus. As a general rule, political content posted directly to the instance’s local communities is discouraged and may be removed. You can of course engage in political discussions in non-local communities.


Related Communities

🔭 Science

🚀 Engineering

🌌 Art and Photography


Other Cool Links


founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
 

A hard shell that unfolds like oragami will fit in a single Starship payload but expand to over 250k cubic meters of space (which seems impossible, that's like 10 olympic pools) and offers practical solutions for many of the common engineering challenges with building long-term human habitations in orbit.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Huh, so it's kind of like an inflatable module, but made of interlocking rigid panels? An interesting concept. I am undecided as to whether the increased volume would be worth the additional complexity.

[–] burble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

It's cool to see concepts like this, even if I don't expect anything like it to happen anytime soon.

Another one that comes to mind is ThinkOrbital's spherical station made from welding together rigid panels like a soccer ball.

[–] artifex@piefed.social 4 points 1 week ago

It’s apparently a much bigger internal volume than you’d get with today’s inflatable tech. With the caveat, of course, that inflatable tech has been tested already and this has not (though we’ve used origami techniques to expand payloads before, like on the JWST)

[–] pennomi@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

As long as the complexity doesn’t hurt the durability, it should be fine