Airless Tires for Moon Vehicles

Goodyear has developed for NASA a new airless tire made of springs that can be used on future moon missions:

The tire, constructed out of 800 load bearing springs, is designed to carry much heavier vehicles (up to 10 times) over much greater distances (up to 100 times) than the wire mesh tire that Goodyear helped develop for the Apollo Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV). The Spring Tire has now been recognized with a so-called “Oscar of Innovation” at the 44th Annual R&D 100 Awards in Orlando, Florida.[...]

Another advantage of the Spring Tire is its ultra-redundancy. Asnani points out that the tire doesn’t have a “single point failure mode” like pneumatic tires. Where one hard impact can cause a puncture and deflate a pneumatic tire, such an impact would damage only one of the Spring Tire’s 800 load bearing springs. Additionally, the Spring Tire’s combination of overall stiffness and flexibility allows off-road vehicles to travel fast over rough terrain with relatively little motion being transferred to the vehicle, says Asnani.

Link via OhGizmo! | Photo: Gizmag

Previously: Airless Tires for Military Vehicles