Talk:Miura fold

Interesting
Designing a pop-up future, referencing original article Designing a pop-up future Shenme (talk) 19:40, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks, added. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:52, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

Miura fold in space
Have Miura folds actually been used on any solar panels in space? I recently changed this article from "simulate" to "have been ... spread out in space", but now I'm not so sure.

I've only seen one reference so far that claims this has actually been done in space (rather than proposed or simulated). A comment on MetaFilter claims that people have talked about using it in spacecraft for a long time, and experimented extensively with Miura-folded prototypes, but always end up folding up solar panels in some other way when it comes time to actually launch real spacecraft. After reading that comment, I went back and read that reference more carefully. The description in that reference seems to match the 1996 Space Flyer Unit mission, but the description in that reference seems to conflate two different arrays deployed by that satellite: a solar panel (that as far I can tell was zig-zag folded, not Miura folded), and a Miura-folded "2D Array" (that as far as I can tell was not a photovoltaic solar panel). Am I mis-understanding that reference and it actually refers to some other space mission, and if so, which one?

Do any other references support Miura folds actually used on real solar panels in space? Do any other references support using Miura folds in space, perhaps for things other than solar panels? --DavidCary (talk) 15:47, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

Not invented, optimized
The model dates back to Bauhaus days and originally used 45°-135° parallelograms. Miura changed the angles, to optimize the one-handed map folding ability. This takes nothing away from his work -- which is brilliant -- but invention is not the right term. 96.236.112.95 (talk) 17:00, 28 February 2023 (UTC)