Super-compact septagon origami folding from NASA - hexayurt inspiration

[100ideas]

Here's a sophisticated technique developed by Robert Salazar at NASA/JPL for folding a septagon (7-sided) into an ultra-compact cylinder. Inspiration for all you hexayurt engineers out there!

I think the video below shows folding a ~16 sq ft (5 sq m) septagon into roughly a 2.3 ft x 1.7 ft cylinder. Unsure of material thickness... perhaps 1/4 inch. So not clear how well it would work with 1-inch-thick R-MAX foam insulation.

19_Starshade_Caro1_1600x900-1180x664.jpg

• Video demonstration (starts a 1:52)
• More details at www.salazarigami.com/starshade (page archive)
• ORIPA: origami pattern simulator & source code
• septagon starshade SVG pattern

Robert Salazar:

The summer of 2015, I began working on the Starshade project to design an origami crease pattern that would allow a 20m diameter conical optical shield to deploy from a small well defined volume in space while creating a perfect light seal with the mechanical truss that deploys it. The optical shield has a 28-sided perimeter and is made of a compressible laminar composite of kapton, foam, and kapton that is collectively 1.6cm thick. When stowed, the optical shield should wrap around a 1.6m diameter hub while not exceeding 2.8m in diameter or 1.95m in height."

[BBadger]

Very cool, but I just don't think it'll have enough structural integrity to be used in a BM-type environment. Those shades are made for weightless environments to protect against photons. Even if used on Mars, the winds just aren't that powerful with Mars's thin atmosphere.

The hexyurt maintains its integrity because it's rigid. You can fold up the sides into triangles for transportation, but you won't be able to crumple it into a cylinder like the video shows. You could probably do that with a tarp, but you'd still need all the metal components to provide the frame, which really isn't very hexyurt-ish.