I hadn’t heard about this before: Litespeed Bicycles, American maker of titanium bicycles, built part of the titanium tube framework for the Curiosity Mars Rover.
A crew of six from Chattanooga-based LiteSpeed Bicycles, whose parent company is American Bicycle Group, built the framework of NASA’s rover Curiosity.
“The privilege of being able to use the team’s skills and talents on something that goes into space—that’s really, really special for us,” Brad DeVaney, who is in charge of product development for LiteSpeed, said Monday.
More at Nooga.com: Chattanooga bicycle company helped create Mars rover Curiosity.
See also WRCB TV — “Local bicycle company helps with Mars rover design“:
WRCBtv.com | Chattanooga News, Weather
NASA engineers working on the Mars rover, Curiosity, faced some design challenges with the suspension system. A few of those engineers happened to be cyclists.
“A couple of those folks said, ‘You know, who really fabricates titanium in a specific way for their specific vehicle’,” DeVaney says. “And our name came up.”
H/T to Tom in Brazil for this.
appreciate the link, Richard 🙂
I got my hopes up for Curious George riding a bicycle: http://flic.kr/p/923tNk