Craterhab Technology - our patented inflatable pressurized habitat system for planetary (Mars and the Moon) and high-altitude terrestrial environments - goes Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 4 with successful construction and demonstration of a 2m diameter Technology Demonstrator Prototype. TRL-4 stands for technology validation in laboratory environment.
Built to the specifications of our patent, with necessary iterations for its small size and laboratory environment, Pakistani engineers Syed Abeer Ali, Muhammad Dawar Ahmed and Farrukh Ahmed, under the supervision of Muhammad Mehdi Hussain, co-founder of Mareekh Dynamics, were able to pull off this incredible feat of engineering by constructing the prototype habitat system and maintain a pressure of 1.4 bar (+0.4 bar above ambient), successfully verifying the technology.
To put this into perspective, +0.4 bar above ambient equals to a whopping 12 tonnes of outward inflation force trying to blow apart this prototype, which it comfortably contained. On Mars, the optimal habitat pressure of +0.6 bar (corresponding to the altitude of La Paz, Bolivia) may offer a practical compromise between physiological tolerance and engineering efficiency. However, +0.4 bar is more than sufficient for the terrestrial applications for mitigating altitude hypoxia in high-altitude hypobaric environments on Earth.
The concentric metal rings you see here correspond to the concrete sandwich ring in the patented design that will sit at the rim of the trench connecting the dome tethers to the buried piers in real-life construction in the relevant environment (high-altitude terrestrial or outer-space planetary environments). Hidden beneath the concentric rings is the Torus Anchor which is the crown jewel of the technology, and differentiates this habitat system from the more spherical contemporary inflatable space habitat systems, by offering a secure anchoring into the ground. This ensures scalability of this habitat system which is designed to be no less than 50m in diameter for space applications (50m to 500m in diameter) and no less than 20m in diameter for terrestrial applications (20m to 50m diameter) for optimal design and engineering performance. The small 2m diameter to suit laboratory environment unfortunately had some design and construction challenges and constraints, but our engineers aced it perfectly well.
Our next steps are to refine the design and construction of the prototype, use prescribed UHMWPE cables and aramid webbing system and push the inflation pressures to beyond one bar with firm anchoring in the ground as per our original patented design and prescribed engineering protocols, and construction and deployment of a 10-20m pilot habitat at high altitude in the Atacama Desert (>4,000m above sea level).
We thank and congratulate the MAREEKH DYNAMICS and Craterhab Chile team, and all the early believers of our vision, and above all, the team of Pakistani engineers for achieving this important milestone in our journey for humanity's future among the stars.
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