The lunocet was recently featured in Scientific American…
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=dolphin-inspired-man-made-fin
The photo is of Chris Morey who along with some expert freedivers, evaluted the lunocet recently in the Bahamas.
The Lunocet is officially fusing the cycling world and the water world in one piece of high-techiliscious equipment.
Back in September we started rethinking the Lunocet foot pocket. What we did not know, is that we were about to open Pandora’s box. Lunosapiens feet are extremely diverse in sizes and shapes, which makes it impossible to have a universal foot pocket, also the key to unleashing the full power of the Lunocet is a very rigid foot pocket. This means comfort was conflicting with performance. We wanted both comfort and performance. Thanks to Zero Gravity Bike Captain Foster, and Lunosapien/Underwater surfer Noah Markou, we brought cycling even closer to the Luno Nation.
Look at the photos hereafter and you shall understand when I say we do not only have an extremely efficient power transfer from the foot pocket to the Lunocet but also we have not conceded on comfort! We are officially ready to go hydrotouring. As for the breach…? stay tuned!
015~
November 1st 2008 brought Swiss Oceanographer/Engineer Jacques Piccard to an eternal depth. At 86 years old Jacques, was one of the two people to achieve in 1960, a successful descent to 35,797 ft aboard his bathyscaphe funded by the US navy, submarine. Lt. Don Walsh and himself landed after a 5 hours descent on the deepest point of the world’s oceans, the Challenger Deep,in the Mariana Trench located in the North Pacific Ocean. Jacques left behind an inestimable legacy to future generations of oceanographers and engineers.
It takes a clear head and an ability to step back to evaluate and learn more about what you are facing to eventualy solve a problem. A lot of us have a tendency to react too rapidly to a situation often making a bad decision. Now this is where Lunosapien philosophy 101 helps. To get the clear head, grab your Lunocet jump in a nearby body of water (bathtub might not be the ticket) and contemplate for a second how lucky you are to be able to have your entire body functioning properly to swim like a dolphin. Then proceed to pursue the breach. After an hour of waterworks go back to the office and face the day and the economy that goes with it, you will solve problems one after the other.
If only Obama and McCain had a Lunocet…
yours truly,
015~
” Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing left to add, but
when there is nothing left to remove.” —Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Following the same philosophy applied by Ted himself on his product design, Studio mds and the Ciamillo “sinktank” have come up with a new design for the website. After reading your emails and comments we made a list of things that needed to be addressed and brainstormed to find a way to achieve simple beautiful design while focus on being understood even by non native speakers (as we are dealing with worldwide sales).
Do not hesitate to give us feedback!
015~
Although stated in this title, I am not to enumerate the 10 reasons as I believe your imagination is fertile enough to come up with answers. But as I now have your attention, I shall share a few thoughts with you on how we, lunosapiens feel about the great white shark. Note that I put shark after great white, as “Great White” is a hollywood term that somewhat helped in bringing this animal to the endangered specie list appendix II. Peter Benchley if you only knew what kind of impact you were to create when you wrote Jaws…
Both Ted and I have had the chance to see these absolutely beautiful animals in the wild while diving. Ted was in Australia, I was in Mexico. Although we have a different appreciation of the experience, we come to the same conclusion, these apex predators are absolutely perfect, just watching them evolve underwater is a radical course on hydrodynamics. I always thought perfection did not exist until I saw that girthy 17 feet long great white shark female swimming effortlessly around my low tech cage. A monkey underwater? is probably what she was thinking as I was fighting my mind not to sing the two most effective music notes ever played in a movie score. For a second I felt like she was observing me, she was at the zoo I was in the cage. She came closer and closer to the cage where I finally had the courage to touch her underbelly as she made a close “flyby”. She disappeared by a few quick graceful tail movement in the blue water, exactly the way she had appeared, in full stealth mode.
Sharks are wild animals and can be extremely dangerous if you happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time but they are far from being this monstrous aggressive animal portrayed in over-shown-blood-bath-feeding-frenzy footage on sensational tv shows. 100 millions sharks killed a year by humans versus maybe 10 lethal shark attacks on humans annually. Who do you think of the two should fear the other?
For shark preservation and ocean conservation check out :
ORCA (Ocean Research & Conservation)
Sharks Protection & Preservation
“What happened you guys!?” is a quote from Southpark character Eric Cartman when he opened up the Lunocet website this morning. Change is inevitable isn’t it? Especially after listening to an interview with GM vice chairman Bob Lutz who do not subscribe to the global warming theory but also happens to be the project manager of the chevy Volt fully electric car. Humm…let me think about that for a sec. As Stephen Colbert mentioned you can still plug in your chevy electric car for a charge into your Hummer cigarette lighter if you do not believe in global warming.
On the other hand our beloved Lunocet has zero emission and at times zero gravity. So what’s with the design change? Instead of two sections for the trailing edge ,we now have one single piece of silicone rubber, we also increased the durometer to have a more rigid piece which translates into more power.
The newly designed “center jet” (the piece that links the footplates and the silicone trailing edge) lower the footplates resistance and makes for better hydrodynamics. Foot pockets now come closer to the end of the toe plate allowing a better power transfer. Faster,better,stronger.
There are more tricks to it than this but I feel some mystery shall remain until we release the new video.
Stay tuned for more!
015~
Nerds is what we’d rather be called,and as such we’d like to correct a few wrong messages in the press and on this Oustide magazine article. On the first Lunocet serie we had a fiber glass Lunocet coming at a price of $1250. We decided the longevity and lighthtness was not up to our standards so we now only manufacture the best. The carbon fiber unit with aluminium footplates and titanium hardware coming at
$1800. One price,one Lunocet easy,chic but not geek.
Your mind is focused on the number fifteen, you look at your watch pivoting then shifting your weight to initiate the descent, your feet on the aluminum plate: the accelerator on a racecar. You start counting fifteen kicking cycles, fifteen vertical meters from the surface for exactly a 15th fraction of a second in levitation. When your face emerges, fresh air is enough to engage the automatic lower back bending necessary to trigger the breach. You are now in the moment, your body in mid air, frozen in time. 150 frames per second would not be enough to capture the smile on your face. You hear the characteristic noise of a camera shutter as your body meets the water again, all your muscles relax, your mind is now clear.
Deeper Blue News Underwater Times