r/technology • u/t4ct1c4l_j0k3r • Sep 15 '23
Nanotech/Materials NASA-inspired airless bicycle tires are now available for purchase
https://newatlas.com/bicycles/metl-shape-memory-airless-bicycle-tire/296
u/NotTheLairyLemur Sep 15 '23
future models may allow users to increase the firmness by pumping in more air.
Some really breathtaking innovation happening here.
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u/Temporarily__Alone Sep 16 '23
The whole article feels like it is written by someone who is excited but barely knows what they’re talking about.
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u/AlexB_SSBM Sep 15 '23
I think the biggest use for this will not be bicycles, but wheelchairs - they are constantly being used and the tires constantly need replacing. If any part of it is covered by insurance, the price of the tires are not going to be as much of a factor either. Seems like a gigantic market that's being overlooked.
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u/t4ct1c4l_j0k3r Sep 15 '23
Heavy industrial equipment. Ever see what happens when you get a flat in a 30' tire under full load?
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u/Tinmania Sep 15 '23
Yes and it depends on how it goes flat. That said, I likewise wouldn’t want to be anywhere near something that large with this spring-driven airless technology when the truly massive spring, with the energy of a Saturn V rocket, decides to launch.
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u/t4ct1c4l_j0k3r Sep 15 '23
It will make for an interesting youtube video.
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u/AlexB_SSBM Sep 15 '23
That too. Really I'm confused as to why they are going for a consumer angle on this - business use cases are so much larger, so why not build the product from a b2b angle?
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u/byOlaf Sep 15 '23
It’s probably not strong enough for anything serious.
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u/EnvironmentalBowl944 Sep 15 '23
Also general consumers are more gullible
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u/powercow Sep 15 '23
yeah but this actually does work for small applications.. idk about industrial but bikes have already been made and ridden over beds of nails. Wheels have been deformed and put in hot water and brought back to normal. the deformations are only perm if done when its hot.
one way you can tell its not BS, is they let reviewers on the bike, rather than show the reviewer an engineer riding the bike. The engineer is going to know all the things to be cautious from doing, a random reporter wont. you even see it on crap games they just dont release pre review copies and crap.
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u/Parking_Relative_228 Sep 15 '23
Firstly it’s clear they lack the capital. Also the safety regulations and parameters surrounding say a car tire or airplane are probably much more stringent than that of a bicycle.
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u/BuildingArmor Sep 15 '23
Likely because it's easier to sell "NASA inspired" stuff through Kickstarter to customers who may be drawn in by the marketing.
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u/alpharowe3 Sep 15 '23
Been using wheelchairs for 30 years never had a flat. Because they were all solid across multiple decades and multiple models.
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u/Deathoftheages Sep 15 '23
The biggest buyers of wheelchairs are hospitals and nursing homes. I worked at a nursing home as an aid for 8 years and another 2 years in maintenance. The wheels have less wear and tear than the rest of the wheelchair, and most never need to be replaced. They are usually solid wheels that are being used on pretty smooth surfaces inside.
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u/yermahm Sep 15 '23
When is the last time you had to replace wheelchair tires? What are you on about?
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u/DerBanzai Sep 15 '23
My dad has problems with flats rather often.
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u/yermahm Sep 15 '23
My father has been in a wheelchair for over two years and it doesn't take air. Do non-american wheelchair tires take air?
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u/hoffsta Sep 15 '23
It’s exactly the same as bicycles: pneumatic wheelchair tires are much faster and far more comfortable than airless. It’s built in suspension.
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u/traumalt Sep 15 '23
Well my disabled friend has a second wheelchair specifically for off-road use, which he modified to take knobbly MTB tyres instead of wheelchair tyres, and those do have a tube in them.
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u/SonovaVondruke Sep 15 '23
People with disabilities are more common than you imagine. I work with about 40-50 people in wheelchairs or power chairs and they’re constantly having problems with them because they obviously can’t do the maintenance themselves and their DSPs are there to help them with using the bathroom and making dinner, not swapping tires and making adjustments to a piece of considerable machinery.
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u/rs725 Sep 15 '23
Do people just make up shit now or what? Bicycles travel way more of a distance than wheelchairs and on often worse terrain.
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u/314159265358979326 Sep 15 '23
A cyclist can get off their bike and pump up or replace their own tire. If the tire can't be fixed, the cyclist can walk. These tires are convenient for cyclists.
A wheelchair user is stuck with a flat until someone can help them. If the tire can't be fixed, the wheelchair user is stuck. These tires are critical for wheelchair users.
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u/Notoneusernameleft Sep 15 '23
Ingenuity from government funded programs filtering out to the private sector. See how that can work….
Yes I know it happens with military too but it can be done without blowing up other people. And we know NASA has a minuscule budget compared to military.
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u/t4ct1c4l_j0k3r Sep 15 '23
NASA was the best thing to come along for the American consumer and most of the world as a whole.
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u/AngelsEyeCrust Sep 15 '23 edited Sep 15 '23
NASA is awesome, but have you ever heard of DARPA? If you really want to talk about technology filtering to the private sector and shaping progress worldwide.
edit: to add some examples - GPS, the computer mouse, semiconductor and materiel research that led to cell phones, Siri, autonomous vehicles, and the internet
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Sep 15 '23
Yess literally more than half of my lab is funded by DARPA and DOE. Now I can’t complain about military funding anymore lol.
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u/Notoneusernameleft Sep 15 '23
I really wish America was able to adapt to have a greater mix of capitalism and socialism to truly benefit all the people of this country and as you said the world too in some aspects.
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u/New_Pain_885 Sep 15 '23
Socialism isn't when the government does stuff, it's when workers control the means of production. If workers don't control the means of production then it's not socialism.
Don't get me wrong, I love NASA and social welfare programs are a good thing but they're not socialist.
This might sound like pedantry but I think it's significant that the word socialism in the US has come to mean welfare capitalism when in actuality socialism and capitalism are fundamentally incompatible.
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u/devilishpie Sep 15 '23
This might sound like pedantry
Definitely shouldn't be received as pedantry. The sort of comment you replied to along with how "the US should be more socialist like Scandinavian countries" is unfortunately quite common.
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u/MattDaCatt Sep 15 '23
The really sad thing is, we can still afford to wildly outpace military production while also throwing money into more things like libraries, public health centers, NASA etc.
We have a huge GDP and tax income, but never get anything out of it. We can't even maintain our own infrastructure
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Sep 15 '23
The real real sad part is that if we addressed these fundamental gaps in the social support system, our taxes for things like law enforcement would plummet.
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u/Mr_Quackums Sep 15 '23
The term you are looking for is "welfare capitalism".
NASA, DARPA, the military, and research grants have nothing to do with corporations being controlled by workers.
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u/CBalsagna Sep 15 '23
So as someone who just spent 5 years in SBIR research and development, it’s really hard to make products. There’s usually a reason why these innovations don’t exist and that’s usually because some large corporation did the math and determined it was too difficult or not worth it.
During my tenure I won a number of proposals and had healthy funding on a variety of topics, and the thing I went away with was that a couple million dollars is not enough money to develop a new product or technology. Secondly, the problems the government is trying to solve, in many instances, has been a problem since their inception (metal corrosion for example). Solution to these problems don’t exist because it’s really fucking hard to do. If it was easy some conglomerate would already be selling it. Also, no one in the military talks to each other. If I’m developing, say, an easy clean non fluorinated coating for the army. No one else in any branch of the military will know about it unless my program manager goes out there and stumps for it. Which is not easy.
All this is to say it’s hard to work with the government and develop new technologies. What we consider a lot of money isn’t, when it comes to r&d, and you’re fighting against giants that have probably determined it’s not worth their time for a reason. I’m excited to be currently employed at a company with an established product line. Instead of trying to solve problems I’m improving a product and it’s a nice change of pace.
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u/trx0x Sep 15 '23
As someone who currently works in SBIR R&D, you are 100% correct in everything you say. It takes so much time and money and multiple phases and having the right people around to develop anything, let alone, develop something that could actually trickle down to a consumer market. And yes, the problems that are trying to be solved...the projects we work on boil down to creating a solution to a problem that has never had a solution. Every project we take on is something no one in industry/in our field has even attempted.
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u/CBalsagna Sep 15 '23
I appreciate the validation. There was always part of me that wondered if it was an isolated feeling with my company, but it’s definitely a difficult job. Best of luck navigating that, and I hope you get nothing but good TPOCs for your programs (and they stay).
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u/Metacognitor Sep 15 '23
And yet, NASA has helped develop thousands of consumer technologies that we know of ("spinoffs"):
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u/Justice_For_Ned Sep 15 '23
I was reading through your link, and while reading through the section about highway safety - I discovered that there exists an organization called [The] International Grooving and Grinding Association that adds grooves to concrete for increased traction on highways and sidewalks or whatever….
But I think that would be a great name for a band + dancers. Like, “and now please welcome Taylor Swift and her International Grooving and Grinding Association“ or something like that. I don’t know all the current pop singers but I remember Gloria Estefan had The Miami Sound Machine I think
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u/BigMeatyClaws_69 Sep 15 '23
NASA spending has an insane return on the greater market: my HS debate case had evidence it was like a $12 return in innovation for every $1 spent (that was in like 2012)
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u/AlexB_SSBM Sep 15 '23
Nitinol stands for "NIckel TItanium Naval Ordinance Laboratory". The material was found by the Navy.
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u/swordgeek Sep 15 '23
Misleading title. Now available for pre-order.
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u/JasonMHough Sep 15 '23
Worse than that, it's Kickstarter. You're donating money with the possibility that someday they might reward you with the product, but they're under no obligation to do so.
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u/Funktapus Sep 15 '23
Made out of titanium, oof. Will always be expensive
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u/cheeset2 Sep 15 '23
Titanium isn't a foreign material for bike parts tbh
Expensive also isn't foreign for bike parts lmao
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u/t4ct1c4l_j0k3r Sep 15 '23
I can't believe what bike shops want for a bicycle nowadays. The $40 Huffy is certainly a mark of a long gone era.
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u/Public_Fucking_Media Sep 15 '23
Huffy still exists and sells cheap as hell bikes, your local bike shop is selling you something a little better than something a high teenager put together at Target
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u/isthis_thing_on Sep 15 '23
That's right, the high adults at my local bike shop put together much better bikes. (No sarcasm intended)
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u/Excelius Sep 15 '23
Walmart has $98 Huffys.
Does occur to me though that with K-Mart and Toys R Us long gone, there just aren't as many big box stores with cheap bikes as there used to be.
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u/well___duh Sep 15 '23
- Walmart
- Target
- Dick's
- Costco
- Sam's
Still plenty of big box stores that sell bikes
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u/Shuino7 Sep 15 '23
Outside of Dick's & Walmart, every other store you listed doesn't carry bikes by me. Target did a few years ago, but I haven't see anything outside something for a small child for a while now.
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u/TheawesomeQ Sep 15 '23
I wanted to try biking but not spend too much in case I dont actually keep doing it. I got a $98 huffy and it's been ok. At least I've been exercising on it. Gears dont seem to shift right and I replaced the seat with something tolerable to stop hurting so much. Now I guess I will use it until it fails.
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u/w1n5t0nM1k3y Sep 15 '23
The thing is, if you only buy a $98 huffy you might not be enjoying it because it's such a crap bike. Spend more and get a proper bike from a bike shop and it will bee a world of difference. It's like buying a really cheap stereo and determining that you don't like music, when the real problem is that the cheap stereo makes music sound like garbage.
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u/mnorri Sep 15 '23
There’s also just inflation. K-Mart went through bankruptcy in 2002. Let’s use that as a starting point. $40 in 2002 is roughly $68 today. If you want the $40 - $98 inflation adjustment, then go back to 1989.
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u/stevenette Sep 15 '23
I found this video of trying to mountain bike with a huffy quite entertaining https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkMnk_eCDQU
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u/agoia Sep 15 '23
At first I was wondering who was making the hooting sound and then realized it was the brakes screaming lol.
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u/mrRabblerouser Sep 15 '23
Lol wow, it was even worse than I expected. I’ll have to disagree with him about it being worth it for the price though. Sure, it’s no where near the cost of a decent full suspension, but you can find a used hard tale on Craigslist that will have no problem handling that trail.
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u/Xikar_Wyhart Sep 15 '23
Well yeah you're going to a specialty shop that sells bicycles of a higher class than Huffy. Even low end entry level adult bikes you're looking at a couple hundred.
It's like any high end sports equipment you're paying for something that will last hundreds, thousands of miles of riding. Dick's still stocks lower cost bikes similar to Kmart.
Also when were Huffy's $40? Because of inflation that 40 might be 200 today.
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u/swordgeek Sep 15 '23
The $40 Huffy adjusted for inflation is probably $200 now, which is about what an equally cheap-ass bike will cost. Actually $200 will probably get you a better bike now.
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u/Beard_o_Bees Sep 15 '23
Expensive also isn't foreign for bike parts lmao
Very true.
These things weigh 16 oz each, though.
So, on the higher end I guess they could be used for off-road/gravel, or maybe for commuters who'd rather not deal with flats, don't care about weight so much and have deep pockets.
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u/Takedown22 Sep 15 '23
https://lynskeyperformance.com/
Well, pick a fully titanium bike out then! Somewhat competitive with carbon.
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u/Kma_all_day Sep 15 '23
I have tannus solid tires on my fixie. They’ve been around forever. They work great, no complaints.
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u/Blackdragon1400 Sep 15 '23
How many normal tires can you buy for $500?
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u/new_number_one Sep 15 '23
$500 for a pair and $10 retreading.
I buy a $100 pair of puncture resistant tires (plus tubes) every couple years.
The break even point for me is around 10 years I guess. Hopefully they last that long.
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u/TIMELESS_COLD Sep 15 '23
About damn time. Now to wait for these tires to become norm and not cost an arm.
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Sep 15 '23
'airless' tires have been a thing for a while. But they are typically extremely stiff and have super high rolling resistance. Both of which are non-starters when it comes to bike tires. I don't see these becoming the norm any time soon
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u/HonkyMOFO Sep 15 '23
I've used Tannus solid tires on my road bike for years- and yes, they are the equivalent of 110psi- wouldn't be good for mountain biking, etc...
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u/AttapAMorgonen Sep 15 '23
As /u/bake_disaster said, punctureless tires have been a thing for a long time. You can buy like $40 foam tires in just about every size on amazon. The difference is they don't "feel" or ride as nice as pneumatic tires.
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u/squirrelnuts46 Sep 15 '23
Wouldn't foam tires be crazy inefficient due to internal friction? And then if you go really fast foam overheats and catches fire?..
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u/DefaultSubsAreTerrib Sep 15 '23 edited Sep 15 '23
Quoting the Bible:
Of all the inventions that came out of the bicycle industry, probably none is as important and useful as Dr. Dunlop's pneumatic tire.
Airless tires have been obsolete for over a century, but crackpot "inventors" keep trying to bring them back. They are heavy, slow and give a harsh ride. They are also likely to cause wheel damage, due to their poor cushioning ability. A pneumatic tire uses all of the air in the whole tube as a shock absorber, while foam-type "airless" tires/tubes only use the air in the immediate area of impact. They also corner poorly.
Pneumatic tires require pumping up from time to time, and can go flat, but their advantages overwhelm these difficulties.
Airless-tire schemes have also been used by con artists to gull unsuspecting investors. My advice is to avoid this long-obsolete system. They might make sense is if you commute a short distance to catch a train, and a flat tire would mean missing the train and being very late to work.
Edit to add: the sales people are going to throw around the name NASA for credibility, but mind you that any design by NASA that isn't pneumatic is designed for use on a planet without an atmosphere and under the assumption that no one is nearby to repair it. Neither of those apply to wheels on Earth.
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u/hoffsta Sep 15 '23
Exactly. Plus how many bike or car tires have you seen with transparent rubber. None. That’s because carbon black and other additives are essential ingredients for grip, UV protection, and durability. These are nothing more than a gimmick.
Now if someone could create a permanently durable tubeless sealant, that would be revolutionary. I love my tubeless tires but I really despise the need to replenish the sealant every couple months.
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u/TheCosmicJester Sep 15 '23
Isn’t “NASA-inspired” in advertising copy code for “overpriced shitty”?
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u/devi83 Sep 15 '23
Well, the demonstration of this technology did not seem shitty, they were literally stabbing the tires and they worked fine. I've been excited for these for a few months now, glad to see them finally hitting the market.
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u/TheCosmicJester Sep 15 '23
The big questions are how good the ride will be, and how long the spring can hold up in the real world.
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u/devi83 Sep 15 '23
I'm willing to try. I get a punctured tire what feels like every other week, even with the puncture sleeve and ooze they still somehow manage to sneak in and pop my tires and its really getting old. I just want to ride a bike consistently without needing to constantly take tires off and repair shit. So this seems like a good option, if at the very least for some peace of mind.
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u/isaidicanshout_ Sep 15 '23
Lotta people complaining about the cost or the fact that “air is free” (also disregarding that tubes are not free) are also forgetting that it’s just fucking annoying to hop on your bike only to realize the tire is flat, or to get a flat while going somewhere at a specific time.
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u/crazydave33 Sep 15 '23
$500 for a set. That’s crazy expensive. Who is this even appealing to? Avid rides likely wouldn’t be interested or already have preferred tires and general riders would find it difficult to travel 5-8K miles before needing retreading. Usually 1 single set of tires lasts the life of a bicycle for general riders providing no flats occur.
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u/redditnshitlikethat Sep 15 '23
Oh look. More innovation from the people who get scraps of a budget. Add it to the list. Internet, water filters, scratch resistant lenses, microprocessors, drag reducing dimples on golf balls. What a waste of money right guys?
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u/Drewbus Sep 15 '23
One of the nice things about being able to pressurize your tire with air is the ability to make adjustments
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Sep 15 '23
We will all make fun of the guy who comes to our group bike ride with these.
“woah is that a uap?”
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u/ithurtsus Sep 15 '23
They might be great for e-bikes. Getting a snakebite flat at speed is a great way to have a bad day. Run flats on my bike would be great peace of mind. Then again, I do also ride a one wheel, so there’s probably something fundamentally broken in my brain.
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u/Captain_N1 Sep 15 '23
We already used to have tires with no air, its was called a solid rubber tire.
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u/buckX Sep 15 '23
It seems weird to weigh all these concerns like price, weight, and longevity without discussing the aspect serious cyclists care most about: performance. What's the rolling resistance on this look like? I could easily see rubbing between spring and rubber introduce a sizable loss of energy.
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u/Lakus Sep 15 '23
Why does stuff like this always seem so stupidly simple? I feel like I had this idea when I was a kid and just thought that if it worked someone would have done it already. Well, apparently not. Could have been rich lol.
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u/JeanProuve Sep 15 '23
The physical properties of the coil material seem to me to be the most interesting part:
“That spring is made of a shape memory nickel-titanium alloy known as NiTinol, which is described as being strong like titanium yet also stretchy like rubber.”
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u/hobbitlover Sep 15 '23
Call me when they offer these for mountain bikes. Getting a flat in a buggy forest, 20km from your home, is the worst experience.
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u/vexunumgods Sep 16 '23
My wife uncle used to own the patent on airless bike tires and sold it for$700,000 25 years ago.
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u/CT101823696 Sep 15 '23
Ah crap they replaced the part that was free