A hard shell that unfolds like oragami will fit in a single Starship payload but expand to over 250k cubic meters of space (which seems impossible, that’s like 10 olympic pools) and offers practical solutions for many of the common engineering challenges with building long-term human habitations in orbit.
Huh, so it’s kind of like an inflatable module, but made of interlocking rigid panels? An interesting concept. I am undecided as to whether the increased volume would be worth the additional complexity.
It’s cool to see concepts like this, even if I don’t expect anything like it to happen anytime soon.
Another one that comes to mind is ThinkOrbital’s spherical station made from welding together rigid panels like a soccer ball.
As long as the complexity doesn’t hurt the durability, it should be fine
It’s apparently a much bigger internal volume than you’d get with today’s inflatable tech. With the caveat, of course, that inflatable tech has been tested already and this has not (though we’ve used origami techniques to expand payloads before, like on the JWST)