Dresden-based motorcycle firm Hookie has lately revealed an idea for a Moon bike, which options 3D printed polymer wheels.
The bike is called Tardigrade, after the small creature famed for its capacity to outlive the laborious vacuum and radiation setting of house.
In accordance with the Hookie web site, the bike was named as such as a result of “Tardigrades are true survivors who’ve additionally endured the trials of outer house.”, and we guess the bike can do the identical.
And that is what it seems to be like:
The bike is totally electrical, clearly, since you’d have problem working an inner combustion engine on the Moon, with the dearth of oxygen (and fuel stations) and whatnot.
When it comes to different stats, the idea bike measures 2.6 metres in size, has a spread of 110km, a high velocity of 15km/h and a weight of 134kg.
This makes it lighter than the earlier Moon Buggy (which had a mass of 210kg), which was delivered to the Moon’s floor on the Apollo 15.
After all, the Moon Buggy (formally named because the Lunar Roving Unit) was designed for 2 individuals, whereas the Tardigrade bike seems to be designed for a single occupant.
One would guess that the bike is less expensive additionally, as the unique Moon Buggy is the most costly automobile ever constructed, coming in at an eye-watering $38 million in improvement prices . It was initially slated at 19 million however house initiatives aren’t low-cost and value overruns finally bumped the value up fairly a bit.
The airless tyres are printed with polyurethane and every wheel includes 12 printed segments that are assembled collectively to type the tyre, as you may see within the picture beneath.
One wonders if polyurethane is your best option for this utility, as polyurethane tends to degrade in UV and even seen gentle. Polyurethane additionally is available in thermoset and thermoplastic variations. Given how scorching the lunar floor will get typically (as much as 130 levels celsius) , one hopes they opted for the thermoset plastic quite than the thermoplastic with its low melting level.
Whereas the corporate has not revealed express particulars of the kind of printing that they used for improvement of the Tardigrade tyres, they point out that they’ve partnered with German firm Additive Parts, who specialize in binder jetting printers, so it’s doable that they’ve employed this method on their house bike.
Further AM components on the bike idea embody the handlebar mount and the wheel caps.
The majority of the bike’s construction is manufactured from laser reduce aluminium and metal tubing.
You may see the Tardigrade idea in motion within the rendered video beneath.
And in case you are within the states, then you definately would possibly nonetheless catch the bike in actual life which is on show on the world well-known Petersen Automotive Museum which followers of Jay Leno’s Storage could recognise.
Will probably be on show on the Petersen till March 2022.
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