# Digital Cellular Solid Pressure Vessels: A Novel Approach for Human Habitation in Space

## TL;DR

This paper proposes using digital cellular solids for space habitats, offering lightweight, repairable, and reconfigurable structures that outperform traditional designs in mass efficiency and adaptability for long-duration human space exploration.

## Contribution

It introduces a novel application of digital cellular solids for space habitats, demonstrating their advantages over conventional structural systems in mass reduction and reconfigurability.

## Key findings

- Digital cellular solids enable significant mass savings in habitat design.
- They provide repairability and reconfigurability advantages.
- Performance exceeds traditional habitat structural systems.

## Abstract

It is widely assumed that human exploration beyond Earth's orbit will require vehicles capable of providing long-duration habitats that simulate an Earthlike environment: consistent artificial gravity, breathable atmosphere, and sufficient living space- while requiring the minimum possible launch mass. This paper examines how the qualities of digital cellular solids - high-performance, repairability, reconfigurability, tunable mechanical response - allow the accomplishment of long-duration habitat objectives at a fraction of the mass required for traditional structural technologies. To illustrate the impact digital cellular solids could make as a replacement to conventional habitat subsystems, we compare recent proposed deep space habitat structural systems with a digital cellular solids pressure vessel design that consists of a carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) digital cellular solid cylindrical framework that is lined with an ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) skin. We use the analytical treatment of a linear specific modulus scaling cellular solid to find the minimum mass pressure vessel for a structure and find that, for equivalent habitable volume and appropriate safety factors, the use of digital cellular solids provides clear methods for producing structures that are not only repairable and reconfigurable, but also higher performance than their conventionally-manufactured counterparts.