Orion Project

With the possibility of human colonies on the moon approaching the near future, we present NASA with our solution to their NASA ALLGO competition. Our solution, developed by an international team, utilizes a fully inflatable system that focuses on ensuring functioning remotely and effectively while retaining control of the cargo through periods of travel.

In our design process, we realized controlling the cargo would be difficult to achieve due to the predicted stark difference in weight between the cargo and gantry, the cargo being the heavier one. This control is resolved by holding the cargo inside the inflatable gantry through two points of contact preventing lateral movements.

Although inflatable gantries are preferable in terms of mass and size, there is an element of instability and unpredictability when implementing inflatables. Opting for a design that both minimizes unpredictability and uses simple geometries to reduce manufacturing time and cost, our gantry composes of a toroid and 3 arms each with individual internal beams to increase rigidity. To keep the wheels together during operation, structural cables are strung between them and a central module. The hoist system covering the entire surface of toroid prevents the cargo from applying too much pressure in a certain area.

The total weight of the gantry is approximately 2.2 tons and the maximum load that it supports including a safety factor of 4 is 54 tons. A load / weight ratio of 24.5: 1.


Team:
Abner Uriel Gómez García
Nahuel Brian Costa
Kenneth Shen