FYI,

"Inflatable Moon Base Prototype Heads to South Pole"
Space.com
http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20071115/sc_space/inflatablemoonbaseprot
otypeheadstosouthpole;_ylt=AoMifJxBzSS4o9dGSBbjFtgE1vAI

: An inflatable habitat designed for explorers on the moon or Mars is
: headed for an Antarctic test run, NASA said Wednesday.

: The habitat – built by ILC Dover and resembling an inflatable
: backyard bounce for children – will make its South Pole debut early
: next year. NASA demonstrated the inflatable prototype on Wednesday
: at ILC Dover's Frederica, Del., facility.

: "We deflated [and inflated] it in about ten minutes," said Larry
: Toups, habitat lead for NASA's Constellation Program Lunar Surface
: Systems Office, in an interview.

: Toups and several other habitat designers from NASA's Johnson Space
: Center and ILC Dover will attempt to deploy the structure in the
: Antarctic this coming January. Their goal: to use just four people
: and deploy everything in four hours. Working in bulky cold weather
: gear will also make the deployment more analogous to the challenges
: facing astronauts clad in cumbersome spacesuits on the moon.

: The habitat prototype will eventually serve as a multilayered test
: platform for new technologies such as health monitoring systems,
: self-healing materials, and protective radiation materials. When
: not inflated, the habitat can save on space and weight during
: transportation. It's just one of several models, including another
: prototype that stands on eight legs and has two pressurized
: cylinders connected by an airlock door, under scrutiny by NASA
: engineers.

: Other researchers at McMurdo Station in Antarctica will use the
: inflated habitat as a staging area from January 2008 to February
: 2009, allowing the designers to monitor its performance using human
: reports as well as data from embedded sensors. NASA and the
: National Science Foundation hope to learn how the habitat material
: behaves in a cold environment and how well the structure retains
: heat and atmosphere.

: Toups said the field demonstration will show that the structure can
: be "packaged in a small volume" but still "expand to a usable,
: habitable volume," even in an extreme environment. If NASA likes
: what it sees, a second or third generation inflatable habitat could
: deploy to the moon as early as 2020, with four-person crews making
: weeklong trips to get a lunar base operational.

: The U.S. space agency is not alone in considering inflatable living
: modules. A private company, the Las Vegas, Nev.-based Bigelow
: Aerospace, has already launched two inflatable modules into Earth
: orbit in anticipation of assembling a new space station by 2012.

Mark Reiff