Designing for Space: Core77 visits NASA's Industrial Design Team
Glen Jackson Taylor of Core77 visted NASA to profile the designers of the next manned lunar rover.
Evan Twyford and Carl Conlee are two of three industrial designers working in NASA's Habitability Design Center (HDC), and in just over 2 years they have transitioned the department from one that dealt only with small isolated ergonomic projects to working on arguably the most exciting project at NASA today—a next generation pressurized lunar rover. The thing is, NASA doesn't actually have an industrial design department. They don't even have a design department. Not technically, anyway...Designing for Space: Core77 visits NASA's Industrial Design Team
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NASA still hasn't figured out that funding approval is easier to get if you paint flames on the side.
Paint it red. Everyone knows if you do that it goes FASTER!
NASCAR sponsors?
I love that concept that NASA doesn't even have a design department....
You know guys, someone has to come up with the idea. If you leave it all to the engineers it'll be efficient and precise, but lacking any creative flair.
Personally I'd rather sport around in the old school sand rail looking thing. I'm sure we could beef it up and get 30mph out it. Just imagine the length of a jump at 1/6th gravity!
Does anyone else think it looks a little like the Oscar Meier Weiner-mobile?
That huge amount of glazing in the front is reminiscent of early lunar module designs and IMHO would be abandoned for the same reasons: Aluminum is lighter than glass. Also, the non-cylindrical shape doesn't looke like a very efficient pressure vessel. So it certainly looks like a product of design and marketing types and not like something engineers would come up with.
It'll need to be radiation-hardened to get through Damnation Alley.
At last, we're implementing the plans from Space:1999!
You're never gonna pick up moon chicks in that.
The final design will probably have about 90% less window.
The early lunar lander plans had big panoramic windows too. But glass is *heavy*, and they had to get rid of it. The final design had the astronauts strapped in place standing up for landing and take-off, closer to much smaller windows.
what happened to transparent nanopaper?
http://thefutureofthings.com/news/1060/strong-light-transparent-plastic.html
It's designed to go where there are no roads, but it only has six inches of clearance??
@6:
It probably doesn't have to be a very strong pressure vessel. Research indicates that people operate fairly well in a low-pressure pure oxygen environment, around 3 or 4 psi. While this sounds dangerous in a Mercury capsule sort of way, it turns out it isn't, the lower pressure prevents that sort of conflagration.
Evidently it is necessary to keep the partial-pressure of oxygen in the atmosphere about the same as it is in a regular atmosphere, and the pressure has to be high enough that the expansion of the lungs can create enough of a pressure differential to move a sufficient volume of gas.
It will be interesting to see what they come up with. It would be amazing to see people working on the moon in shirt-sleeves.
#14. But of course the Lunar Module was only designed to hold a 3.5-4.8 PSI pure oxygen atmosphere.. Yes, materials science has come a way since the 1960s, but there are still lighter non-transparent materials than transparent ones. And yes, breathing pure oxygen at lower pressure is a well understood, ~100 year old technology. That's WHY high altitute aircraft have oxygen masks. But when you're sending stuff all the way to the surface of the moon, every gram counts. Extra weight spent on glazing is extra weight that could hav been used for supplies or safety equipment. Not to mention the problem with heating from all that extra sun beating down on the interior.
Core77 is a great blog, but I really liked the "Beer Frame/Inconspicuous Consumption" paper zine. I wish that was still published, or at least collected in a larger format.
Bwahahahaha, I can't believe nobody else recognises it- it's the RV from the old Lost In Space TV series
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y75/melensdad/Snow%20Trac%20ST4%20Pictures/1d478e85.jpg