For quite a while at the hub, I and a few others have had what could be called, because it is, a D.I.Y. bike obsession. Call it what you will this brilliant group entered NASA’s Great Moonbuggy Race, and won. The Rhode Island School of Design or RISD are these aforementioned winners. Please enjoy their exploits.
The web site dedicated to this project among others is www.bryancloyd.com , the statement on the site states "NASA’s Great Moonbuggy Race, which is held annually at the Marshall Space Flight Center, in Huntsville, Alabama, challenges students to design, build and race lightweight, human-powered vehicles that can whiz across a simulation of a rugged lunar landscape. Teams are judged by how quickly and easily their vehicles negotiate the twisting curves, treacherous gravel pits and other obstacles of a half-mile course riddled with some of the same challenges faced by Apollo-era astronauts in their lunar rovers. Last year RISD was the first design school to ever enter the competition. RISD "took home third place in their first race appearance, despite having no engineers on their team (all team members are Industrial Design students)," as NASA put it in their press release." to read more and somehead cam footage from the race catch the jump.
"This year, RISD returned for their second year, eager to prove their three-wheeled product in not only the race but in another category of the event, the design competition. This component, which teams opted to participate in addition to the race, requires students document and explain their design decisions in an engineering report as well as present orally in front of a panel of judges at the competition. Our goal was to challenge the pre-conception about the role of design in the creation of highly technical “engineering” projects and prove that design thinking extends beyond just aesthetics. On April 03, 2011, RISD did just that, NASA and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), awarded RISD the best design award out of 40+ competing universities for overcoming engineering challenges associated with lunar travel."
"For 2010, I was design lead for suspension and steering systems. In 2011, I headed those same systems as well as played role of design co-lead."
"RISD came to the competition eager to prove industrial design can solve problems associated with engineering but by a different means - applying the design process. In today’s corporate world, industrial design is often viewed as a frill and engineering considered all-important. RISD’s success on and off the course is a good example of the broad applications for design, how design can create effective solutions outside it’s “normal” context, and re-define what a moonbuggy can be."
Great Moonbuggy Race RISD 2010 - Day I from Bryan Cloyd on Vimeo.
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