8/26/10
| News
A graduate student in MIT’s Department
of Aeronautics and Astronautics has helped design a
reusable, 700-pound air-bag system that could inflate during launch and
landing, deflate for storage purposes, and partially inflate to provide
seating
while the vehicle is in space. Not only would the system be lighter than
the
one NASA originally proposed for Orion, but it would also be entirely mechanical,
meaning
not controlled by computers.