It is often told of successful people that for them the sky is the limit. But for Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, world’s largest tyre producer, the moon is the limit as they have jointly developed an airless tyre to transport large, long-range vehicles across the surface of the moon.
The new "Spring Tire" with 800 load bearing springs is designed to carry much heavier vehicles over much greater distances than the wire mesh tire previously used on the Apollo Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV). The new tyre will allow for broader exploration and the eventual development and maintenance of a lunar outpost.
According to Vivake Asnani, NASA's principal investigator at the Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, this was a significant change in requirements that required innovation. "With the combined requirements of increased load and life, we needed to make a fundamental change to the original moon tyre," he said. "What the Goodyear-NASA team developed is an innovative, yet simple network of interwoven springs that does the job. The tire design seems almost obvious in retrospect, as most good inventions do."
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