The Mobitat

I finished the rest of "Plug-in Hardware Concepts for Mobile Modular Surface Habitats". It's not all acronyms and definitions -- there are pictures of what the proposed Mobitat should be. In fact, the title of the piece is mis-leading: the piece is about the Mobitat concept. The Mobitat in and of itself is far more interesting.

Essentially, it's a rover with a hexagonal pressurized vessel in the center. The idea is that it can be deployed from a vessel in, say, lunar orbit, land on the surface, move about the surface, and set up shop. A greater number of Mobitats can be launched, descend, and then connect the pressurized vessels, to create a chain. Unfortunately, as the authors point out, the design of the Mobitat doesn't allow for egress loops. That is, creating a loop of pressurized vessels, versus a linear chain. Loops are desirable in the event of a failure in one of the vessels, so that the greater base isn't divided into two (or three...) inaccessible parts, save for EVA.

Oh, and I found out what MESR (the article explains, well after page three) means: Modular, Extensible, Scaleable, Reconfigurable. In other words, Four Words For Flexible. MESR, in the article, was linked to ECLSS, which stands for Environmental Control and Life Support Systems. All together, MESR-ECLSS stands for a flexible way of keeping people alive. While the article provided the definition of MESR, the Hamilton-Sunstrand Space Vehicles [link broken 12/23/2005] website provided the meaning of ECLSS.