[ Music ]
Hypersonic Inflatable Decelerator is a new concept
of actually being able to decelerate into a planet
with an atmosphere behind an inflatable structure.
If we want to take large mass to other planets
to support future human exploration,
we have to go beyond the current technology that limits the size
of the heat shields that can be carried.
Inflatable systems allow us to build bigger heat shields
to allow us to decelerate larger masses
so that we can support the systems that are required
for human space exploration.
The way that the HIAD system is arranged is you'll have a
payload in the center and surrounding
that would be a system of toris, or these,
what look like inner tubes behind me,
and they'll be stacked in such a way
that different diameters will be stacked one on top
of each other, and they'll be strapped together,
and they'll be a shield around them,
a flexible blanket that's put around them
to create a more smooth surface.
The structural work that we're doing here
at NASA Armstrong is key in the sense
that we can design these systems,
but what an engineering model needs to be able
to do is it needs to be able
to predict what the limits of those systems are.
How far can we push it before it fails?
Where is it going to fail and how is it going to fail?
So the goal of our loads testing here
at the Armstrong Flight Research Center is
to understand the buckling performance of these structures
under two different types of loading-
compression and torsion.
What you do is you just get to a point
where we call it runaway displacements,
so the structure actually can't take any more load
and just begins to displace radically, and at that point
in time we say it's failed.
[Radio] Five...four...three...two...
one...start.
[unintelligible]
Fifty pounds...
...seventy-five...
...one hundred...
...ok, position hold.
Once this data is collected it will be sent back
to NASA Langley for them to feed into their computer models,
so that they can better understand the behavior
of HIADs, and design a better flight hardware
to assist space exploration.
[Radio] ...returning to earth...
That relationship has been a very good relationship
between NASA Langley and NASA Armstrong.
there are facilities here, there are personnel here
who are very experienced and very capable in doing this,
and we knew that we could take advantage of that
to benefit the project in a very cost effective way,
and there's also the benefit of working technology
with other centers, because you get ideas, you get synergy
between what is going on that you're doing at your center
with some of the ideas that are going on at another center.