Categories: Design & Prototype
Develop a Virtual Reality, multi-room, lunar habitat that allows viewers to see the dirt covered outside and the inside of the habitat with its assortment of equipment and supplies. This will help engineers and astronauts visualize the kind of work that needs to be done for this future living space.
This habitat will reflect a stage that will take a few years for NASA and its partners to attain and will draw from HUNCH students from previous years. You are encouraged to pull some of the look and feel from existing artwork from the internet but some portions will be beyond what is currently available and will require some of your own research and creativity.
This project can be developed using any type of software that will allow the user to record a video of the user walking around the exterior of the habitat to see the construction, entering through the airlock and around the inside of each module to see details of the equipment and supplies inside the habitat. For example, this could be done on Autodesk Inventor using the steering wheel. Other CAD software should also have some options for looking around inside and around a part or assembly. Initially, the development of the environment is more important than using a headset and goggles.
When people return to the moon, there will be dirt and rocks….nothing except what the astronauts bring with them. (kind of like camping but no air to breath) Their first trips will be to determine if it is possible to collect ice from the craters and how they might do it. After a few trips they will have left some supplies so they can start building a small base so they don’t have to sleep in the Lunar Landers. This will initially include one or two rovers for driving around, tools, …. Over a few trips they will have some inflatable habitats will be covered with dirt to protect the astronauts from radiation and micrometeors and as well as to act as insulation to regulate the heat. At first equipment and vehicles may be placed a little randomly for convenience but eventually it will be important to plan out the surrounding area where they want to set up their base of operations.
Your job is to help this multi-national coalition of countries and companies visualize what this new Lunar location will look like and help with planning something that will prepare us for doing it right. You will find that there is not a lot of space for all of the listed necessities. Some of the areas will need to be dual purpose. For example, the galley table will also be a work table and maybe even an operation table in the event of an emergency. Look carefully for how you can save space and volume. Just like on a submarine or a space station, every bit of space will be utilized for some purpose—food storage, tools, spare parts, trash storage, …. Like on the ISS, all 7 or 10 crewmembers need to exercise but there isn’t room for a full gym and one piece of hardware will need to be able to do multiple exercises. It will be similar on the moon.
There will probably not be any windows (except maybe on the airlock) since we will be trying to protect from radiation. This also means that all of the lighting will be artificial and probably LEDs.
Watch this video in Inflatable modules
Interested on working with this project? Invite your school, coordinate with NASA admins, and Get started!