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Max Space reinvents expandable habitats with a 17th-century twist, launching in 2026


Max Space's expandable habitats promise to be larger, stronger, and more versatile than anything like them ever launched, not to mention cheaper and lighter by far than a solid, machined structure.

In this method, straps of kevlar and other high-strength materials are lined up in alternating directions and manually stitched together, and upon expansion form a surface like a woven basket, with the internal pressure distributed evenly across all the thousands of intersections. He was quick to add that the people working on basket-weave designs today (primarily at Sierra Nevada and Lockheed Martin) are extremely competent and have clearly advanced the tech far beyond what it was in the early 2000s, when Bigelow’s pioneering expandable habitats were built and launched. Skip, a wearable tech startup that began as a secretive project inside Alphabet, exited stealth this week to announce a partnership with outdoor clothing specialist Arc’teryx.

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