News Blip:
RV Campers Inspired By NASA
Forbes Reports On The Modern Way To Camp Using Towable Campers and Trailers From TAXA Outdoors That Are Produced With Adventure And Off-Road Accessibility In Mind.
Editor's Note: This news item was retrieved through Forbes' website via Google.
Of the all displays at the recent New York Times Travel Show, a sensory assault of colorful destination booths, swarming crowds and chatter, one of them really caught my attention. In a far corner, away from the action, was the most beautiful travel trailer Forbes writer Everett Potter had ever seen. The shape was quirky but the cool looking birch plywood interior and the large windows and pop up screened roof made it feel airy and open. He climbed in for a look and found Garrett Finney, who turned out to be the founder and inventor of TAXA Outdoors. The Mantis travel camper that he was standing in looked like a far smarter version of a VW van he had cannibalized with his best friend when they were teenagers. In addition to the Mantis Camper, TAXA Outdoor makes (in descending size) the Cricket Camper, the TigerMoth Camper and the Woolly Bear Trailer.
According to Potter, "[The Mantis] was 18 feet long, designed to fit inside a standard length and height garage. It was capable of sleeping four adults, with a wet bath and kitchen, and an orange roof panel that popped up to yield headspace." There were simple storage compartments and removable milk-crate style boxes for more storage, not to mention cargo nets and bungee cords. It pretty much screamed let's hit the road with our bikes and kayaks. Later, Potter discovered Finney worked as a senior architect for the Habitability Design Center at NASA for a decade, which helped devise the International Space Station’s interiors. Finney says, "When working at NASA, I discovered too that an Airstream still ferried the astronauts out to the launch platform during the shuttle era." Ultimately his work at NASA inspired the design of the current camper trailers. At the time Finney was with NASA, he had in mind finding a way to re-design the campgrounds (and get to National Parks!) and be a part of creating the 'zoning' that would force the RV industry to address its excesses. He continues: "The 'house on wheels' paradigm of the RV industry was not for me, not for a lot of people I knew. It seemed a dramatically large missing part of a market - the Venn diagram overlap of the RV industry and the much larger, and more interesting to me, markets of the Outdoor Industry." TAXA Outdoors would fill the part of the market Finney thought was missing.
For the full article visit right here at Forbes.