Hasta La Ideas

You may have seen Heimplanet inflatable tents bounce around the Internet before, and they’re doing it again. These tubed geometric things are tents you don’t have to pitch, held up (and possibly down) by air pressure alone. The German conceptual-outdoor company first debuted the Cave, a dome-like 3-person sleeper, then the smaller Wedge for the lone wolf. Now they’re scaling up with the Mavericks—a tent so large and in charge they don’t even give a suggested body maximum.

The tents rely on a series of tubes (don’t we all?), which via an interlocking and overlapping geometric pattern provide stiffness and stability for the skin of the tent. The tubes themselves are a double-layered pneumatic situation, that can be patched like a bike tube. They’re pumped up using a hand pump, and can be connected for quick inflation and then disconnected for safe independence. The pumping process does seem nice and quick, though the larger tents make the larger and heavier Heimplanet pump seem nigh on necessary for the speedy set-up they claim. I’m not really convinced that speed and ease are the selling points here, since a well-designed tent with poles goes up in less than a couple minutes.

The larger two tents don’t even seem to use guy lines or stakes. As they put it, “The diamond. Its stability is based on its specific molecular and crystal structure.” I have no idea how the molecular stability of a diamond in any way applies to the stability of their tents. But here their original “Cave” tent is put to a wind test, apparently without any kind of stakes:

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