Carbon may be the cutting edge these days, but interesting things are happening in titanium too. The Van Nicholas Astraeus is the world’s first production bike made from hydro-formed 3AL/2.5V titanium and is a very easy on the eye piece of kit indeed. Stiff too, reckons Van Nicholas’s top man, Jan Willem Sintnicolaas – who has a study from Delft University of Technology to back up his claims. Hydroforming has been used for years in the production of aluminium bikes, and allows tubes to be formed into a variety of shapes that you wouldn’t be able to make using other methods – so you can build in strength where you need it and drop weight where you don’t. Oh, and it looks nice too… 
With its hand-polished finish the Astraeus is certainly a very striking machine. Up until now to make a non-round tube profile in titanium you had to weld flat sheets of Ti together (the Van Nicholas Argon is a good example) which isn’t the most cost effective production method and still restricts the amount of shapes you can have. But, says Sintnicolaas, the Astraeus isn’t just about fluid good looks designed to appeal to those who might be tempted by carbon fibre, or even cost-effective production methods. The Astraeus is first and foremost a racer’s machine with an emphasis on super-direct power transfer. To that end a wide, flat chainstay bridge has been used which the makers claim ups stiffness by a whopping 25 per cent. That’s not the only stiffening touch either, wider dropouts make for a firmly planted stance at the back end so the Astraeus should be a sprinter’s dream. We’re going to try and get one, so we can find out. Other news from Van Nicholas was that they will be offering a fixed version of their popular Yukon bike, expect to see it as a special order option on their site in the next 4-6 weeks and lead times for those ordering will initially be, yes, you guessed it 4-6 weeks.
Van Nicholas Astraeus – first hydroformed Ti bike + fixed Yukon
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@Rendel Harris A peculiar world view is demanding things should be free forever.
@RayG What a peculiar worldview you have where nothing can be exploitative unless it involves an essential of life. Exploitative means unfairly or cynically to extort excessive profit from others by charging more than a product or service is worth, nothing in the definition mandates that it can only apply to certain types of product or services. Example: if I go to a concert and find that a glass of wine at the interval costs four times what it costs in the pub next door, then the concert hall is exploiting the fact that it has a captive audience and therefore being exploitative; the fact that I could, if I wished, go without doesn't make it any less so.
Unfortunately Society is not going to be able to change anything, these idiots that are amongst us are too numerous. Stupidity will win no matter what, in all aspects of Society. These idiots park where they like, chuck their rubbish out of the car, go on package holidays then complain about the accommodation and food, gamble the family money, vote for Brexit, then, when they realise their Stupidity they go down the pub, get drunk and then maim or kill someone and leave them on the side of the road and go home without a care in the world.
My club has an all-night 200k brevet for Christmas that runs through Montclair. Bloody scary. Fun fact. Montclair is right next to Clairmont.
@Rendel Harris Exploitative? Didn't realise they were being price-gouged for one of life's essentials like food. No, it's a discretionary purchase.
@mdavidford Well, after he'd flattened the plants they were fairly inconspicuous...
Seems to me to have been pretty conspicuous, what with it being all over the local news and everything. Was someone making a rather fat-fingered attempt at 'inauspicious'?
I just despair. This sort of article makes you think that cycling on the roads, is a bit like cycling in snipers' alley. From the state of the car, it must have been quite an impact. Maybe the arsehole driver had just been marking the run up to Halloween by watching the 1983 movie Christine, while necking a large bottle of Bourbon, before going for a drive.
Bloody cyclists. The council pander to the lycra clad louts, giving them top class facilities and it all ends by hindering some poor lorry driver and prevents him from contributing to the economy.
That'll be totally funded from the public purse (who else do you think is paying?) and including a probable £10M+ fee to ASO (unconfirmed but in line with what they have charged other host cities in recent years). But hey, why not let them make another half a million or whatever at fans' (who have already paid into the event through their taxes) expense when they're already pocketing an enormous profit?