Blowing Things Up

Once in a while watching 60 Minutes leads to thoughts of art.  Back when I was still in the midwest, they did a piece destroying Thomas Kinkade and his fans, causing one of my old friends to call me up and ask me what I knew about the guy.  Tonight there was a story about a guy who has made a lot of money in his business, but is plowing that money into space research, specifically the idea of structures that can be inflated in space.  Small and lightweight for transporting, but able to become large contained spaces.  Apparently it had been a NASA concept, but never got fully realized and the funding got cut, and this guy decided to run with it.  Experiments still going on, but looking promising.

So naturally my thoughts were drawn to the inflatable project I do with my 3D classes, as in these student examples.  Made from drop cloths and plastic sealing tape, these are not space worthy, but still require planning and execution, a good way of summing up skills learned in the class and most students succeed with the project.  For years the only practical use for the skill that I could think to share with them was creating balloons for the Macy's Thanksgiving parade, but now I can tell them of a second career opportunity.   As with the parade, better quality materials would be needed, but if you can figure out how to make things like this, you can figure out other 3D objects.