Preliminary design of deployable habitat for lunar outpost made by innovative material

The major limitations in space exploration are the mass and volume of payload, transportable by a launch vehicle. With a view to a future colonization of the Moon, reached by the transportation of habitats on its surface, this assumes a crucial role in the achieving of this goal. The aim of this thesis is to provide a solution to this problem by using an innovative material for the habitat structure, which has very low weight and the possibility to be rolled in very small radius. Compared to conventional rigid structures, this material would enable the realization of deployable habitat, with considerable savings in volume and weight in the transport phase. The necessary requirements to protect astronauts from space hazards were developed after a first analysis of the Moon environmental features. On this basis, the preliminary configurations were then investigated, in order to understand their feasibility and possibility to be stored in a rolled configuration. The preliminary design was mainly investigated from a structural point of view, providing maximum displacement of the structure in the worst load condition, radius of bending in transport configuration and the total weight. In the conclusion it is provided an optimal solution in terms of structural and initial requirements.