Super-portable bikes are nothing new. If anything, we’re flooded with concepts and with actual purchasable bikes. But the Kit Bike from Lucid Design is different enough to catch the eye.

The bike is a lightweight, hollow-tube cycle that snaps together quickly and easily. Simple twist joints hold the tubes together and, with a little practice, you can assemble or disassemble it in minutes.

But here’s where the really interesting part of the design comes in. With most folding bikes, the frame can easily fold up but then you’ve still got to carry the wheels around with you. The Kit Bike comes with a handsome leather backpack that holds all of the bike’s parts, including the wheels.

There are three compartments in the bag: the center is for the frame parts, and the two outer pockets hold the wheels. The whole thing straps onto your back so you can easily carry it around on the street, on the trail, or on public transport. The design is in the concept stage and might need some further refinement (a more stable frame would be nice), but it’s got serious promise.

The post All Packed Up: Collapsing Bike Fits Entirely in a Backpack first appeared on Gajitz.

Ever since we began sending satellites, shuttles and science stations into space, we’ve been leaving bits and pieces of our Earthly technology out there in orbit. As more and more space missions have launched, and as satellites have been decommissioned but not brought back to the planet, a continually growing amount of junk has accumulated and it’s starting to make Earth’s orbit a dangerous place to be.

A transportation design student named Vaughan Ling has come up with an idea to clean up all of that space junk that is cluttering up the space around our little planet. The project is purely an exercise in concept art, but there is no denying that there is a tangible need for a machine like this.

Ling’s concept would put this huge space debris collector in low orbit around Earth. It would not only clean up the dangerous space junk, but also act as a recycling station for those valuable materials used in space launches. Ling thinks that space junk recycling could eventually become a lucrative business for those who are able to afford buying and manning a space debris collector.

The recycled materials could even be used to build new structures right there in low earth orbit, dramatically reducing the cost of building and putting to work the space structures we need now and in the future. In this concept, the space trash truck would run on nuclear power and efficient VASIMR rockets.

The post Armageddon Aversion: Incredible Orbiting Trash Truck first appeared on Gajitz.