HYT Hastroid Green Nebula, the watch from space
Give a child a piece of paper and a pencil and ask him to draw a watch and he will sketch a round case with two thin lines as hands. Davide Cerrato is probably the so-called exception that confirms the rule, because holding a HYT Hastroid in your hand, it is hard to believe that he ever drew a round watch as a child. He certainly did as an adult, when for years he set the style of first Tudor and then Montblanc, but when HYT offered him a blank sheet of paper and a pencil the child who grew up on bread, Star Wars and superheroes created something almost alien.
For watch enthusiasts, the HYT brand may not sound entirely new, but the course taken by the company and its new management is completely new from the past, and so is its product. The first model unveiled in early 2022 is called the Hastroid Green Nebula, already hinting that the inspiration does not come exclusively from the planet we live on; and the first glance can only confirm this suspicion. The watch is presented with a case whose shape is hard to pin down: an angular, layered and machined titanium and carbon look that recalls space shuttles, which allows for a smooth integration of the rubber or alcantara strap and which, despite its 48mm diameter, guarantees a wearability that is unexpected and new for HYT watches.
The Hastroid cannot be called slim, at almost 18mm thick, but it is certainly wearable, especially considering what it encloses. The mechanism itself consists of two modules: the first is a ‘classic’ 4Hz mechanical module that guarantees 72 hours of power reserve, the second the fluidic module that represents the true soul of the HYT brand and of this watch: it is impossible not to notice, on the skeleton dial to say the least, a micro-tube filled with alien green liquid. HYT’s patented way and ‘signature’ of indicating the hours. In fact, the watch has a central minute hand, imposing and more visible than in the past, on either side of which are the seconds and power-reserve indications; the rest of the stage is left and occupied by two cylindrical ‘artefacts’ at six o’clock, connected to a micro-tube running around the entire circumference of the mechanism.
HYT Hastrod Green Nebula: a masterpiece of chemistry and precision
This is not the place to debate chemistry and fluid dynamics (nor does the writer understand the subject) but imagine two micro-tanks filled one with a very dense green liquid, the other with a transparent liquid. Connect them by a tube the thickness of a human hair, place the whole thing in a vacuum and connect it to the mechanical module in such a way that the minute wheel precisely compresses the barrel containing the green liquid, causing it to advance into the tube (pushing the transparent one) in such a way as to indicate precisely the passing of the hours. Done? Well, now all you have to do is set up a return system, which allows – at the stroke of 6 o’clock – the two barrels to reverse the flow so that the green liquid returns to its original seat, resetting the hours. Ah, it must all happen abruptly this time and not gradually as before. Obviously the mechanical module must memorise and compensate for those few seconds needed for the green liquid to retract, so as to keep the clock always accurate, ça va sans dire…
Finished? Almost, because one of the worst enemies of a fluid – and therefore of our superhero timepiece – are temperature changes: cold cools it down, heat liquefies it further. These can cause problems for watches that contain only a few micro-drops of lubricating oil on the pinions and rubies, imagine what can happen to the Hastroid, which in comparison is a sort of tanker truck: HYT has solved the problem with what we can concisely and blasphemously call a micro condenser placed inside the micro-tanks, capable of expanding or compressing at the slightest variation in temperature, thus guaranteeing constant pressure inside the micro-tube and the watch always working precisely. The easiest but at the same time most complex part of all this is that it is adjusted simply by turning the crown located at 2 o’clock.
Only 27 examples of the Hastroid Green Nebula will be produced, with other limited variants set to be released in the future.
This is just the beginning.
