What is space architecture and what disciplines does it combine?
Space architecture is the theory and practice of designing and building inhabited environments in outer space. It combines architecture and aerospace engineering with fields including industrial design, physiology, psychology, and sociology to address the total built environment of spacecraft and space habitats.
When did space architecture formally begin as a recognized discipline?
The mission statement for space architecture was developed in 2002 at the 1st Space Architecture Symposium, organized in Houston at the World Space Congress by the Aerospace Architecture Subcommittee of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. The subcommittee became the independent Space Architecture Technical Committee of the AIAA in 2008.
Who was Raymond Loewy and what was his contribution to space architecture?
Raymond Loewy was an industrial designer who led a group of architects and industrial designers that persuaded NASA in 1968, over engineering objections, to include an observation window in the Skylab orbital laboratory. This decision is recognized as the introduction of the human psychological dimension to spacecraft design and the effective birth of space architecture as a practice.
What was Wernher von Braun's Mars mission proposal and how large was it?
Von Braun proposed a crewed Mars expedition involving 70 astronauts aboard a fleet of ten spacecraft, assembled in low Earth orbit across nearly 100 separate launches. Seven vessels would carry crew and three would carry cargo; passenger ships had habitation spheres 20 meters in diameter, and the mission followed a minimum-energy Hohmann transfer trajectory with one-way transit times on the order of eight months.
What is the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module and when did it reach the ISS?
The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, or BEAM, is an inflatable space habitat developed by Bigelow Aerospace using technology derived from NASA's Transhab concept. It arrived at the International Space Station on the 10th of April 2016, delivered inside the unpressurized cargo trunk of a SpaceX Dragon during the SpaceX CRS-8 mission.
What is the Mars Ice House and why did it win NASA's 2015 Mars Habitat Competition?
Mars Ice House is a Mars surface habitat design concept that won NASA's 2015 Mars Habitat Competition. The structure would be three-dimensionally printed in layers from water ice on the interior of an Earth-manufactured inflatable pressure-retention membrane, absorbing harmful radiation while admitting approximately 50 percent of visible light, and assembled autonomously by robots before human habitation of two to four people.