Lossless Airlocks
Based out of Los Angeles, Lossless Airlocks was founded by American Entrepreneur Aleksey Cochrane, who started out as a private submarine designer, before catching the space bug during the major TV coverage of the construction of Liberty Space station and transitioning his expertise to space airlock construction.
Lossless Airlocks (LA) has developed and sells airlocks and hatches that operate with almost no loss of atmosphere to space on opening. LA offers systems in several designs and sizes. These comprise their cylindrical airlocks, which come in various sizes for different purposes, and their hatches, which provide interfaces between already pressurised volumes. The end closures form a flat covering that slides to open the chamber.
The cylinders may be attached at either end of the cylinder (behind the door mechanism) or at the centre of its length. The hole for the airlock in a pressurised hull will induces a region where the local stress in the material is three times higher than the unaltered hull.
The airlocks available are for a single occupant, up to three occupants, up to ten occupants, and one capable of passing a single CASSSC. The external dimensions of these cylinders are Ø1.5 m by 2.2 m, Ø3 m by 3.2 m, Ø4.5 m by 5 m, and Ø7.5 m by 11.5 m respectively. The diameter of the internal chamber is 95% of the external diameter. The prices for each of the airlocks are $6,000, $20,000, $60,000, and $160,000 in order of increasing size.
LA produces hatches for joining pressurised volumes in the same diameters as its airlocks as well as a specialist component to allow docking with front of a pressurised CASSSC. These hatches cost one quarter of the equivalent airlock price and $40,000 for the specialist CASSSC model. Prices do not include shipping from Alexandriat.
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Lossless Airlocks are jointly owned by Condor and they share production facilities, enabling cost savings during integration and design. Condor may quote a 20% saving on LA products to the Foundation Society (in fact, the saving is more substantial than this).
This webpage refers to a fictional company which is part of the UK Space Design Competition. No information presented here or implied herefrom should be regarded as factual. Any similarities with real events, places, or persons are purely coincidental.