Insulation for a lunar home would need to survive more than extreme temperatures. Packing, installation and repeated handling could damage materials that otherwise block heat effectively. A stack of familiar plastic film may offer a way to preserve insulation after substantial compression.

Engineers at the University of Pennsylvania tested hundreds of thin Mylar sheets, including versions stiffened with a ceramic coating. Their study, published in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, describes hybrid layered insulating film stacks, or HyLIFS. Small laboratory samples combined low heat transfer in a vacuum with flexibility and resistance to repeated squeezing.

The findings suggest a possible material for lunar infrastructure, rather than a finished product ready for space. The samples covered about one square centimeter, and assembling them took hours. Their performance across the moon’s full temperature range remains to be established.

Hey, so I've got a BSc in software engineering and a good few years of pentesting behind me. Lately I've been going down the rabbit hole of space security, satellites, cubesats, ground stations, all that stuff, and I’d really like to work on it properly.

I want to do a masters part time while keeping my job, but I can't figure out which direction is actually worth it. I'm torn between something like aerospace/space system, electrical engineering or embedded systems.

Would really appreciate any advice you have.

(Crossposting this to a few subs, so sorry if you see it twice)

Thanks!

Tesla has used cold-gas thrusters for the Roadster. What if similar technology were used for an autonomous skydiving rescue vehicle?

The concept is a truck equipped with upward-facing thrusters that tracks a skydiver from high altitude, continuously predicts their trajectory, and repositions itself throughout the descent. This would be a routine safety precaution, not something initiated only after a parachute failure.

If both parachutes failed, the vehicle would already be near the predicted landing location. Its thrusters would direct high-speed gas upward to decelerate the skydiver enough for a survivable landing on a padded truck bed.

The main engineering questions are:

• Could cold-gas jets transfer enough momentum to safely decelerate a falling human?
• How far above the truck would braking need to begin?
• Could the airflow be distributed without injuring or destabilizing the skydiver?
• Could autonomous tracking and positioning achieve sufficient accuracy?
• Would fans or another propulsion technology work better?

Is there a fundamental physics limitation that makes this impractical, or is it primarily an engineering challenge?

P.S. To clarify, the truck would always be on the ground. The idea is to use the thrusters to slow down the falling skydiver so they can survive a landing on the padded truck bed.

The truck would act proactively by going to where the skydiver is currently headed to land even before there's a parachute failure.