Bike tires made from NASA’s bizarre shape-shifting metal are now available to buy

No. It’s a Kickstarter that might ship next year. The headline should have been “Bike tires made from NASA’s bizarre shape-shifting metal might be available to buy next year if the crowdfunding campaign isn’t a scam”

The second I see the words "kickstarter or indiegogo" I already know whatever I saw may as well be unobtanium

If it makes its way to a storefront then I'll consider it, otherwise I'll just move on and keep my money

Available to buy, not to have. Hah

might ship next year won't ever ship

FTFY.

This is just Kickstarter scam #362646683 that takes people's money and then... well, profit that's it. They won't ship products because they don't have products, they don't have anything

I haven’t looked at the numbers, but I’m willing to give these a chance. If they can make tires that are almost as good as air ones but require less maintenance, they’ll be worth it for some people. If those metal rings aren’t too stiff, it should work.

These are street tires. Unless you weigh like 10kg the pressurized air isn't doing much of anything for dampening.

If we could all be so lucky.

Give it a decade and economies of scale, and maybe it will get it down to twice as expensive.

Having absolutely no background knowledge of this material, I could easily be wrong with this. But based on the fact that the title says they are made of metal, I would expect them to last quite a lot longer than a typical rubber tire.

It's a human feather.

Tyres last about a year, so this sounds fine

That's like 5 years of use, seems pretty worth it to me.

My handheld radio antennas are nitinol, I can bend them to fin in a bag or tie them in a loose knot and they don't deform.

That they’re aware of?! This just reads like they didn’t bother to do any research.

...king?

Well, as to the last point the metal is providing internal rigidity, so that's why there's no inner tubing.

But agreed. I cannot see this trumping my replacement costs during my lifetime. It's cool, and it might be more environment-friendly, but cost/benefit calculation says no.

I don't believe they have air in them but I'll believe the claims when I see it.

Other note. Tannus tires are fine if you want that sort of thing.

There is still rubber even with these.

You do realise that stuff grows on trees, right?

People these days pay more for bike tires than car tires these days already. There are $10k bikes now. Seems there's no amount of money some people won't pay for bike parts these days.

Dude! Those are the first step to getting the skate wheels from Snow Crash!

That would be a pretty funny movie if the terminators were all bike tires.

The Kickstarter page puts it at 450g, which seems to be fairly good compared to the first tire I googled's ~600g.