Single Occupant Habitats - ILC Dover

Single occupant habitats are smaller and sometimes more complex versions of larger deployable space habitats. ILC has been designing and manufacturing space suits for NASA since Project Apollo. These one-person inflatable spacecraft have all the requirements as larger habitats (protect the occupant from and withstand the harsh space environment, be structurally sound with high margins of safety, and be robust in design to withstand off-nominal usage). Space suits have the added challenge to be articulated to provide mobility to the Astronaut.

ILC has leveraged our decades of flight heritage in designing and qualifying space suit systems and manufacturing hundreds of space suits to create robust and safe and reliable inflatable space habitats. We have even applied space suit mobility joint technology in the design of articulated transfer tunnels and docking ports.

Another type of single occupant inflatable structure developed by ILC is the Collapsible Hyperbaric Chamber. This chamber was developed in the mid-1980's as a easily transportable lightweight method to treat Bends victims. By pressurizing the chamber to 26.5 psi the nitrogen bubbles that may have formed in a decompression victim can be dissolved back into the blood stream. It was designed using a webbing-restraint and bladder construction and included an integrated hatch and window. It was human-rated to NFPA-99 Class B Chamber & ANSI/ASME PVHO-1 Safety Std for Pressure Vessels for Human Occupancy.

More information can be found by clicking on the images below:

Collapsible Hyperbaric Chamber

Extravehicular Mobility Unit

Apollo A7LB and I-Suit