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hi everyone i'm heather paul out here

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with nasa's desert research and

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technology studies test team and with me

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is vivek now you have a really cool job

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can you explain what we have here and

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what you do

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yeah

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what we have here

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is a moon tire and what we do is try to

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develop

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tires that act like air filled tires but

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don't use any air and don't use any

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rubber cool so what we have on typical

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cars right now are these pneumatic tires

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the airfield ones kind of like what

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you're seeing here on the chariot right

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rover right and so why would we want to

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go away from that for lunar exploration

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so

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i guess the first point is for a manned

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mission you can't have an air filled

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structure

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because if it goes flat it aborts the

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mission okay good point flat tire's bad

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okay and uh the second point is that

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rubber doesn't work on the moon

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the temperature swings are extreme

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and in hot temperatures rubber soft and

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cold temperatures very brittle okay so

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can you talk me through a little bit i

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mean it's like metal and plastic and all

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kinds of cool stuff what do we have here

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so we work with some of the major tire

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manufacturers this is this happens to be

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a lunar tire we uh developed in

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partnership with michelin okay very cool

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they call it the tweel uh tire and wheel

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nice it deforms like a tire but requires

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no air rubber like we said

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and uh it looks very complicated but

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it's actually really simple okay

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if you put weight on this tire

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the outer band grows

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and these spokes go into tension

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so the amount that they stretch

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is the amount that this wheel will

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deform at the bottom okay so it deforms

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like a tire interesting now i have to

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ask you a serious question here because

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you know when we're talking about

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exploration we're designing rovers and

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spacesuits why should we be paying

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particular attention to designing a tire

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well i guess you can't have a vehicle

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without a tire good point and on the

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moon if you can't use the ones we have

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we have to do some technology

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development awesome well so how did you

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get to work at nasa

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i started out

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as an intern and liked it

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i thought it was a

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you know kind of like being in school

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but the projects were a little more

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complicated okay

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serious homework serious homework

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awesome so how long have you worked at

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nasa then since 2004. wow so a couple

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years here very good and you work at

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glenn research center i do in cleveland

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ohio excellent so you you've come from

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intern working as an undergrad at nasa

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all the way up to working with the lunar

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development for tires for exploration

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that's right that's really awesome i

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think that's cool well thank you so much

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it was really nice to talk to you today