AAWSAP DIRD, Aerospace Applications of Programmable Matter, December 2009

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shady side, avoiding direct sunlight. The station has absorbed and stored all the heat
and electricity it will need to get through the orbital "night" of Earth's shadow and is
becoming stingy about accepting more energy.
Soon, the station has converted almost its entire exterior into a mirror, keeping only a
small solar collector for maintenance voltage and a few shaded portholes for light and
aesthetics. The central computer idly browses its library and encyclopedia and the
Internet, finding news, entertainment, and educational material it knows the astronauts
will want to see, With the power of quantum computing, it is even able to analyze this
information.
Halfway through its hour-long orbital "day," despite every precaution, the station is in
danger of becoming too hot. Peltier junctions begin to appear in the hull, their
radiators-colored black and yellow and covered in HOT SURFACE warnings-swelling
on the station's shadowed side. At the same time, a solar storm-predicted days ago­
finally begins to kick up. The hull compensates by generating a strong magnetic field to
deflect the charged particles. This could be troublesome to the people and equipment
inside the station, but the fields are deflected outside by sheets of superconducting
material, cooled by still more Peltier junctions. The shields are up; the station is circling
the Earth in its own little magnetic bubble.
Soon enough, though, the station's orbit carries it back into the planet's shadow.
Sunset is brief and spectacular; the solar heat and solar wind vanish. Now the station is
living on stored charge and stored heat, Windows look down on Earth-a warm object
that radiates brightly in the infrared-but not in the cold vacuum of space, The hull
becomes thermally conductive for a few seconds to ease any temperature imbalances
that have developed and then switches to an insulative, low-emissivity mode to
conserve heat.
Now the astronauts are followed around by electroluminescent task lighting, The station
seems to relax and to take things a little slower until "dawn" breaks again and the cycle
repeats itself.
Hours later, the crew dines in the same galley where they breakfasted. As the sun sets,
the station's interior lights come up dimmer than before, This is the astronauts' cue to
begin getting ready for bed, so after a bit of conversation, they shuffle off to their
respective cabins. At 2130 Houston time, the lights and portholes slide into an even
dimmer setting, and the crew drifts off to sleep.
Directions for Future Research
Although the aerospace industry has traditionally been a source of spinoff technologies
that are later adopted by consumers, in recent years the reverse trend has been
equally prevalent, For example, although GPS technology was developed by and for the
military, and integrated circuits were developed for the Apollo lunar missions, today the
military o~en employs low-cost civilian GPS receivers, and Space Shuttle astronauts
use laptop computers made for home and office use. This makes economic sense, as
mass production for large consumer markets offers not only economies of scale but also
vast potential for user feedback, design iteration, and direct measurement of the
popularity (and, indirectly, the usefulness) of different designs, Thus, consumer
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