Vibration Isolation Box Design a system for dampening

Vibration Isolation Box Design a system for dampening out the vibrations associated with launch and landing for a box that will fit inside a middeck locker. This box might have experimental equipment or materials. Imagine this box holding strawberries. How do you get the strawberries up there and back home without it being turned into a box of jam?

Requirements • The object to be launched may be as massive 15 kg with a volume as large as 300 mm x 260 mm x 190 mm. • This box should be easy to open and close and lock • Allows for decompression of the launch vehicle without expansion • Re-useable • Flight appropriate materials—not flammable, no off-gassing • Can be packed into the vehicle in any orientation

Middeck Locker • This is a Middeck Locker that was originally designed to fit into the middeck of the space shuttle. NASA HUNCH teams are working to build some of these for flight to the station on the newer vehicles. This is the locker design we would like to outfit with some kind of isolation system that would allow a small sensitive payload to fly up in. This payload box should be easy to install into the middeck locker • Thoughts for the isolation should include but not limited to: Bungees, springs, foam, rubber bands, magnets (much more difficult due to electro-magnetic fields generated by the magnets), air cushions (beware of expansion due to loss of atmosphere—hole in hull) • Could you add or remove some of your isolation system (springs, bungees, …) to account for the mass of the payload? • A large payload space is desired so size your isolation system appropriately so the isolators don’t bottom out on the walls of the • This could launch and land in nearly any orientation.

Back side of middeck locker with rear closeout panels removed. View of inside of locker from the front. Attachment points of locker to structure for launch and landing

Door of Locker Looking down on top of locker.