Habitation Module

The U.S. Habitation Module ( German residential module ) should serve as a residential and whereabouts of the astronauts on board the International Space Station. With the size of a bus, it would have offered four sleeping chambers, a shower, a kitchenette and relaxation facilities. During the design, the inflatable TransHab module was pulled at a lot times the size of the original design into consideration, due to high costs, the project was discontinued.

The production of the Habitation Module has been set. This was justified by the fact that in order to offer more than three people space, the ISS must have a correspondingly larger rescue shuttle, but such would no longer be the most cost -related recruitment of CRV project available. Currently still up to six people are permanently housed on the ISS. These constantly two three-seat Soyuz spaceships are docked instead as a rescue capsule to the ISS. Therefore, the Habitation Module would still have been very good useful decisive for the setting 've been here for cost reasons and a lack of transport capacity of the setting of the shuttle program in 2011. The already finished casing of the module were abolished in February 2006 in the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama to test there new developments in systems for air and water treatment.

The accommodation of the crew of the ISS is currently (April 2011) in the Russian Zvezda module (two cabins) and the Harmony module ( four cabins). In the past, there were a temporary shelter in the U.S. Destiny laboratory space, as well as a crew cabin in the Japanese Kibo laboratory.