Tires like the ones we use on Earth — manufactured from rubber and crammed with air — will not likely do the job on the moon for a handful of motives.
Initial, monumental temperature swings from up to 260 degrees Fahrenheit in the daytime down to -280 degrees at night time can make an air-loaded tire impossible. Air expands and contracts as temperature modifications, so trying to keep an air-stuffed tire from going flat at night time or exploding throughout the day would be incredibly complicated.
Next, the moon is bathed in extreme radiation that degrades rubber due to the fact there is no environment.
Nevermind the point that switching a flat tire on the moon wouldn’t be simple in stiff spacesuit gloves.
The worries are even better this time than they were being 50 a long time in the past, nevertheless. The original Lunar Rovers were being, primarily, disposable. They have been developed to get the job done for a short time then, as planned, they have been deserted. The new Rovers — which are electric powered, like the originals, because inside combustion engines also would not operate on the airless moon — can be recharged in excess of and about so they can retain doing the job for yrs.
Strategies phone for them to also operate autonomously so they could be up there driving around and performing factors even when people today are not all around. This also signifies the rovers will be uncovered to more excessive temperature variations for for a longer time periods. A moon working day and a moon evening can be two months extensive, each. And, every dawn and sunset, temperatures change from extraordinary very hot to extreme chilly practically right away.
The spouse firms are conversing about making it possible for private firms, organizations, and global businesses, not just NASA, to use them for jobs on the moon. Supplied the for a longer time operational daily life anticipated from these new tires — and the reality that it’s going to be a quite very long hold out for “roadside guidance” on the moon — Goodyear is checking out new systems.
“It is extra like an open weave or mesh with distinctive styles of three-dimensional attributes,” reported Michael Rachita, senior software manager for non-pneumatic tires at Goodyear.
The tires will require to use distinctive metal alloys to stand up to the extreme temperature changes whilst nonetheless retaining versatility and toughness. Recreating the severe cold of a lunar night time is especially challenging on Earth due to the fact, at those temperatures, air would become a liquid. Checks will have to be carried out in a vacuum, stated Kirk Shireman, Lockheed’s vice president for lunar exploration.
The moon’s surface area is lined in high-quality tremendous-abrasive sand. Since you can find no air or wind on the moon, the sand particles you should not get moved close to and worn smooth, so each individual particle has sharp points. There are providers that make synthetic moon dust dependent on samples brought again by the 1960s and ’70s Apollo missions, stated Rachita, so Goodyear’s scientists are using that to exam distinct tread patterns.
It can be glued to paper or board to make “moon sandpaper” to exam abrasion resistance, he claimed.
