Date: Aug 29, 2005 Author: Robert Weisman Source: Boston Globe (
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Materials researchers at Tiax LLC are hunting for the right fabrics, but they are confronting problems that have probably never been considered by the fashion industry. Withstanding temperatures of plus or minus 200 degrees Fahrenheit, for example. Or surviving strikes from micrometeorites flying at a speed of Mach 20.
Tiax is a three-year-old independent research house that acquired many of the old Arthur D. Little technology and innovation labs behind the Alewife train terminal. Now it is drawing on Arthur D. Little's materials science heritage to help design a variety of products and structures, from space suits to landing pads to inflatable habitats, for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
''We're finding the very best combinations and refinements of materials -- strong, lightweight, and compact," said Peter W. Kopf, project manager for the Tiax materials team. Its members are working with researchers from prime contractor ILC Dover in Delaware under a $15 million NASA award. The first phase of that contract, valued at $2.6 million, got underway this spring and was formally launched last month.
For the 15-member Tiax team, the challenge is to develop intelligent and flexible materials that can monitor their own condition, diagnose punctures, and self-repair. They are also working on advanced materials that can fend off corrosive microbes, generate and store power, prevent loss of oxygen, and protect against radiation.
These next-generation materials will be used not only in suits and landing pads, but also in air lock chambers like those that connect the space shuttle with the space station, and balloon-parachute hybrids known as ballutes that slow the reentry of spacecraft into the earth's atmosphere. Their killer app will be inflatable habitats -- structures the size of a three-car garage -- that can orbit in space or sit on the rough surfaces of the moon or Mars and house as many as 10 astronauts.
''With this, we can make a difference in the success of space missions to come," said Kopf, a 20-year Arthur D. Little veteran. ''We'll be able to accomplish things that you can't do with a hard structure."
The new materials will be part of the cargo deployed on the space agency's planned Crew Exploration Vehicle, or CEV. That vehicle, designed as the successor to the space shuttle, is set to begin flight tests in 2008, and for lunar and Mars missions in the following decade.
Like other fruits of the space program, the advanced materials may also have commercial applications in products such as automotive air bags, car and bicycle tires, tents, life rafts, and airplane chutes.
Tiax's researchers have commenced debugging tests of current space materials, bound in multilayered laminates and connected to a laptop computer in one of their prototype labs. Senior technologist Emily B. Cooper, the project leader for electronics and sensors, has been poking and stabbing a two-foot-square laminate with an Exacto knife to detect punctures and ruptures. The laminate is a yellow urethane-coated nylon satin weave, known as a ''bladder," designed to retain oxygen.
''We want to have the sensing components correlate to the state of the materials," said Cooper, an MIT-trained electrical engineer.
Integrating sensors into materials poses a dilemma. ''The sensors have to be able to crumple, not just flex, and still work," Cooper explained. ''We're thinking about an origami approach, where we can have some panels with areas that are carefully designed to fold."
The program on which Cooper and her team are working is known as InFlex-- Intelligent Flexible Materials for Inflatable Space Structures, in NASA speak -- and it holds other materials challenges. One is testing the properties of liquid crystal polymers for puncture resistance. Another is fashioning nanomaterials to keep oxygen from diffusing into space. And to fend off germs, researchers are looking at materials, like silver zeoloite, that don't leech into the environment.
''We've dealt with some of these materials before, one by one," said Kopf, who earlier in his Arthur D. Little career helped develop special coatings for fighter jets and a lunar bore stem for measuring temperatures below the surface of the moon. ''But never before have all of these functionalities had to work together in a complex array."
While the Tiax researchers labor on materials, their ILC Dover colleagues will be fabricating and testing components of the new space systems that will support NASA's future missions. The centerpiece of the effort are the inflatable habitats that could be rolled out for short-and long-duration stays on the moon within 15 years. The partners also are experimenting with techniques that could turn their inflatable structures into more rigid ones once they're in place.
''All of the things we're developing with Tiax are to get to self-sufficiency so this habitat is ready to go," said Dave Cadogan, principal investigator for ILC Dover. ''The real grand plan is to put this on Mars. The moon is a test platform. It's only three days to get to the moon. It's three months to get to Mars -- and that's the quick route."
