Wheel car | |||||||||||||||||
Why not make a car IN a wheel? There would be two independant treads that would spin at the same speed to go forward, and one would go faster than the other to turn. The size of the turn would be controled by the stireing wheel's spin. please reply
jkrunsalot, Jan 19 2006
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It's been tried many times. It seems to work, but the wheel must be immense. A particular problem occurs in braking or starting, because the passengers will spin within the wheel (this is informally called Gerbling, like on a gerbil wheel)
A large gyroscopic wheel could stabilize the driving compartment at the start but it must be disabled in driving to permit control.Although the concept may be strange here on Earth, on the Moon where all components would be contained in an enclosing bubble it might be workable to make repairs possible while in transit.
There is a guy who has done this. It is more like a motor cycle than a car but it does work. The problim is if you have to break hard you may end up doing a loop. Your line of sight is also blocked by the wheel. So though I do think it is posible I don't see the benefets.