Engineering Commons^™

Final Development, Testing, And Flight Preparation Of The Rigidizable Get-Away-Special Experiment (Rigex), Zachary R. Miller

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research is to support the final development of the Rigidizable Inflatable Get-Away-Special Experiment (RIGEX). The RIGEX program is an experimental initial step in developing large-scale rigidizable inflatable structures, which can be utilized in space applications. The primary intent of RIGEX is to verify and validate ground testing of inflation and rigidization methods for inflatable space structures against a zero-gravity space environment. This is performed by designing a Canister for All Payload Ejections (CAPE) experiment to collect data on space rigidized structures for validation of ground testing methods. The results presented in this thesis provide documentation needed …