Space Apps Challenge 2017

The concept of Life Capsule was initiated to provide quick and easily transported shelters for people in need after looking over the conditions of current existing humanitarian camps and the long process needed for their construction.

"It's raining shelters, not bombs."

The idea sparked after knowing that up to 20 million people died in WWII indirectly, meaning they were subjected to death due to lack of nutrition, radiation, homelessness, etc. People subjected to wars, floods, earthquakes or any other humanitarian disaster could've survived if they were to find a safe environment which we aim to provide in our project.

The Structure of the Capsule:

1 - A Geodesic Dome created by a light weight plastic structure. The Dome is a hemisphere, inspired by Hoberman's sphere, which can be compressed to almost (1/4)th of its original size. This character, in addition to its light weight, allows a larger amount of capsules to be transported via airplanes. The fact that they could be dropped from airplanes means they could reach difficult zones and larger amount of humans.

2 - The Capsule is covered from the inside with Kevlar which is a light fireproof material with resistance to radiation. The Kevlar creates a safe environment for the inhabitants of the capsule while preventing unhealthy exposure from the exterior environment. The base of the Capsule is made of thick rubber to provide insulation.

3 - The Capsule's structure expands from its compressed size by the accident force created in landing. Inspired by the airbag system in cars, the Capsule expands by 4 times of its original size once it hits the ground to reach its final shape which allows humans to inhabit its structure.

4 - Each Capsule is a part of a gathering information system called the IXAM designed to observe and feed any anomalies to the NASA database, also provided with a GPS tracker to allocate each capsule, in order to keep track of the capsules and the inhabitants inside. Extra IXAM info is provided in the end of the brief.

5- When compressed the capsule provides a storage of food, water, first aid, sensor storage & battery storage for its inhabitants. The storage provides life for 6 persons over a week.

6 - The area of the capsule equals 19.6 m2, its volume is 32.7 m3 and maximum height when expanded equals 2.5 m. It can include 6 persons. Each capsule costs 3000$ including structure, storage, IXAM, etc. Extra business plan info is provided in the end of the brief.

Future Aspects:

1 - Capsules could be updated by structure and material to provide permanent shelter for people who lost their houses and not only a temporal one.

2- The reusability of the capsule is a main aspect of its design. The structure could be used more than once due to the strength of its materials.

3- The project can be adopted by the UN to provide shelter for people suffering from current political conflicts.

4 - The idea of the capsule can be adopted by NASA to create future Martian settlements taking into consideration the need to change materials, structure, etc. Maximum amount of Capsules could be transported via rockets in addition to 3D printers to create more than one habitat on Mars, by that solving the issue of space and expensive space-shipment costs.

Data Used:

- NASA resources listed in "And YOU can Help Fight Fires!" challenge. https://2017.spaceappschallenge.org/challenges/war...
- NASA Radiation data listed in "Mayday, Mayday, Mayday!" challenge.
https://2017.spaceappschallenge.org/challenges/war...

Further Info:

- Presentation Info: https://sway.com/i4plA0TeaDvJZLZw?ref=Link&loc=mys...
- IXAM Info: https://www.dropbox.com/s/4o6cih7izqiztuw/IXAM I...
- Business Plan Info: https://www.dropbox.com/s/z3u8ie3trfnsmfj/Business...