The next biggest dream for humankind is to set foot on Mars and colonize the Red Planet. Already NASA has sent rovers to our next prospect home for probing the surface, environment, and other unknown factors. Even visionaries like Elon Musk have their eyes set on colonizing the planet by 2050. Of course, innumerable things need to be sorted to achieve that longing, and one aspect of the dream is to procure suitable vehicles for the hostile environment. Sure four-wheeled carriers are being developed for the jagged surfaces, but a highly maneuverable two-wheeler is something that also needs to be in contention.
Designer Simon Grytten has thought something out of the box and penned it down in the form of sketches for his version of a bike that’s apt for Mars missions. He calls it the NASA Bike and Grytten has designed the mock-up in a way that makes it just more than a medium of transportation. It can charge its own battery as well as the battery of the base station by harnessing the wind energy courtesy of the prominent storms of the planet. NASA Bike turns into a wind turbine when not in use which is a mindful utility in a space where everything needs to be resourceful.
The bike plugs-in to the charging station which is a big generator to keep things running on the hostile planet. For riding the two-wheeler has a very bare-bones basic design for obvious reasons since one is not going to drive it for the thrill of riding, rather get from one place to another, safe and sound. For now, the concept is in the infancy stage and needs to factor in all the dynamics which actually make it feasible. One of them is the practicality of riding the bike in sand storms which would be highly unsafe and the amount of energy the two wheels would be able to generate for such a big generator!
Designer: Simon Grytten
