Electric Lunar Lift Truck

Hi, my name is Dennis Willoner and I am an industrial design student at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco.

The Big Goal: Help humanity live on the Moon by 2040.

This electric unmanned lift truck will be transporting pressurized cylindrical containers of food, fuel, and materials around the lunar base, all while safely navigating the unforgiving lunar terrain.

The cylindrical containers, as well as the trapezoidal storage units will be transported by this lift truck.

Pen

Sketchbook

Fusion 360

For this truck to function properly and continue to see use long term, a set of requirements must be met for this design.

I explored lots of ideas for each individual component of this lift truck, narrowing it down to what makes the most sense for the design requirements.

Compactability may be single handedly the most important requirement of this truck. The available transport volume on the Cygnus 1 (the space shuttle that will bring this truck to the moon) has the available volume of 6m x 5.2m x 3.8m.

Not only will this lift truck be transporting traditional pallet-like objects, but also be transporting cylindrical containers. To achieve both tasks, these forks are modular as they can rotate, spread and squeeze, and fold to handle any type of cargo.

The moon is notorious for its incredibly difficult environment, ranging from the zero atmosphere, to the 1/6 gravitational pull, to the hummocky surface. This suspension system allows the truck to stay level, even when traversing over slopes such as hills and craters.

The moon is covered in electrostatic lunar dust. This posed to be a huge issue with the Apollo 16 rover. NASA has developed tires made of nitinol wire, which is what is used for this truck as well.

I had lots of fun puzzling my way through this challenge. Thank you for going through my project.