Due to their special characteristics, inflatables and membrane structures are ideally suited for space applications. They are lightweight and consequently easily placed into earth orbit, are flexible with resulting ease in erection and dismantling and use the material's strength to its maximum in a natural way. The shape of enclosures formed by pneumatic structures will depend primarily on the service function of the structure and the economics of the material and its transportation into outer space. Although some terrestrial response characteristics of these structures will be useful in their design for space applications, new studies, both analytical and experiemental, will likely be required.
This paper briefly summarizes some available results concerning the response of membrane/inflatable structures to various loading conditions, suggests methods of transferring terrestrial experience with these structures to space applications and discusses general design concepts/problems likely to be encountered in possible applications of pneumatic and membrane structures in outer space.
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