Opportunity Sketch
Create a series of Geodesic domes in which the struts are long skinny baloons. By making the baloons tough enough they can be inflated to adequate pressure to hold the structure up. The dome panels could be preglued to the struts so that they will be stretched tight as the struts are inflated. This might create an ultralight dome scalable to any size. It might sidestep building code issues in that it would fall into the same category as the inflatable buildings used for winter soccer.
Outcomes
- A new way to play with one of our favorite technologies.
- These would be highly portable making it possible to bring them to events and set them up quickly. They might become portable temples.
- They could be used for CEELSS experiments.
Impact
- A technology to call our own.
- Place?
Cost
pneumocell domes cost up to $150 000 for a 30 meter diameter dome. pneumocell estimates that it would cost $2.5 to 4 million for one big enough to use for a Geodesic Winter Holiday.
10's of hours to achieve something and then 100's of hrs to perfect
On the other hand a small model made from bicycle tire innertubes should be relatively cheap:
- A geodesic of a sphere is simply a circular arc drawn on the surface of the sphere whose centre of rotation is coincident with the center of the sphere.
- Therefore a bicycle tire innertube which naturally forms a circle 700 mm in diameter will be a geodesic to a dome 700 mm in diameter. By clamping inner tubes just beside and oposite the valve and then inflating them they will become half circles. A piece of fabric shaped into a 700 mm diameter dome will then be supported by the inner tubes. We can try different numbers of tubes at different angles and see which configurations support the most weight before the dome colapses.
- 20 tubes at 4 dollars a tube is $80.00
- 40 clamps at c.50 a clamp is $20.00
- 3 m2 of fabric for the dome at $4.00/m2 is $12.00
- plus various bits to attach it all together say $38.00
Makes an even $150.00.
Then 100's of hours of fun building domes and crushing them under weights
Steps
- Initial steps are to create a budget and design.
Update
It has already been done: http://www.pneumocell.com/pneumocell.html
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