January 05, 2010

On sci fi and cartoon strips

Avatar is a movie that takes place on the planet Pandora. Humans are mining for the mineral Unobtanium on Pandora, which is said to be the solution to the energy crisis the humans are facing. The main character then has to battle with following his orders or his conscience. The movie is well worth watching but what has that got to do with a bike blog such as this? It does not even have a single bicycle in it! Well, as clever as the moniker Unobtanium may sound, it has already been in use by Rick Smith, the creator of Yehuda Moon, for quite some time now. Weather or not he came up with it before the Avatar guys is another matter all together, but he most certainly published it first. You see, Unobtainium is the Rival Cycles (The Kickstand's main competitor) name for the ultra light but unstable alloy used for the Kickstand's prototype racing bike. This bike was built from a material that the Shakers (The Kickstand's frame builders) named Arborium and is so light that the bike will float away if you don't tie it down, or sit on it. This may cause some problems, and is the reason why the Rival Cycles guys got their dirty mitts on the prototype, copied the meterial through reverse engineering, and renamed it "Unobtainium." This will mean disaster for Rival cycles if karma has her say. But we have yet to find out... Albeit Mr. Smith makes no mention of the energy component of the Arborium, he does let us in on the fact that what makes this Alloy so special is that the Shakers use a meteorite to crate the alloy blend. So who's really to say that we're not talking about exactly the same material here? Who knows? But in any case Yehuda is a must read for every bike nerd.
Arborium prototype ridden by Joe
Unobtainium announced

1 comment:

Dave Shishkoff said...

haha - you know, that really bugged me too!

I've heard 'unobtanium' mentioned numerous times over the years, mostly in sci fi circles, but it seemed unimaginative of them to use that... $400 million spent making the movie, and they couldn't think of something better to call it?!!