Thursday, February 25, 2010

P'art of the day: NASA Spring Tyre

Todays p'art is a tyre developed for lunar hoonage






















They're a big step up from the crappy mesh tyres that Neill Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin had to make do with. Each wheel is made up of 800 individual load bearing springs. Unlike regular pneumatic tyres the spring tyre is unaffected by temperature changes and vacuum conditions.

The Tyre is also unburstable. Unfortunately the tyres reliability is entirely dependent on the engineer's hats. They don't just wear them to look good.

Each spring has to be individually stretched. Heres the guy who does it. Apparently his name's Jim but that is of little significance.

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