Posts filed under 'Space Elevator Games'
Over at io9, they have a summary posted about the recently completed Space Elevator Conference. I’ll be doing my own in the near future, but thought I would link to this for your enjoyment.
You should especially check out the brief interview with Mark Haase. Mark is a graduate student at the University of Cincinnati and a longtime fan of the space elevator. He gave one of the presentations on Friday, the “carbon nanotube day”. He has an interesting comparison between the development of carbon nanotubes and the development of aluminum.
I have one problem with the io9’s graphic of the space elevator though, it has a very ‘Chinese theme’. As I’ve written before, in the long run I don’t care who builds the space elevator as long as it gets built, but I’ll be very, very, very disappointed in my fellow Americans if we don’t do it first…
And finally, the article was written by Annalee Newitz - Annalee and I have corresponded before via email. This year she attended the conference and I had the pleasure of meeting her in person - You have a great site Annalee and thanks for coming to the Conference!
August 18th, 2011
The 2011 Space Elevator Games - Strong Tether Challenge was held yesterday, August 12th, at the 2011 Space Elevator Conference.
This competition is part of the NASA Centennial Challenges program, a program funded by Congress and run by NASA, with the purpose of fostering new technologies. Successful competitors are awarded prize money. For the Strong Tether Challenge, there is a prize pool of $2Million for any entry that meets all the benchmarks.
NASA doesn’t run the competitions themselves. Instead, they partner with organizations who run the actual Games. These organizations set the rules (with NASA’s review and approval), they arrange the venue, they find the teams, etc. For the Strong Tether Challenge and the Power Beaming Challenge, the Spaceward Foundation is the organizing partner. These two competitions are packaged together by the Spaceward Foundation and labeled “The Space Elevator Games” as Power-Beaming and Strong Tethers are crucial components of building a Space Elevator.
When the competitions are held, NASA sends a representative to judge the results and to make the final determination as to whether or not a prize will be awarded.
This year’s strong Tether competition was held, as mentioned earlier, at the annual Space Elevator Conference. This is the third year that the competition has been held here and it seems to be a perfect venue. The facilities are absolutely first rate and there is already a gathering of space elevator enthusiasts and, this year, carbon nanotube (CNT) scientists and researchers.
To actually test the tethers, you need a machine that stretches the tether to failure and records the value at which the tether broke. Spaceward built the machine that does this testing. A tether is mounted on the test rack. A hydraulic pump is then manually pumped, putting strain on the tether. When that tether breaks, the readout device shows the measurement of the level that the tether actually broke at. This measurement is then entered into a formula which also contains the length and weight values for that tether and final score is computed. If the score exceeds one of the prize benchmarks, then that tether is a prize-winner.
Two teams competed this year. One was an individual and first-time competitor in the Strong Tether Competition, Flint Hamblin. If that name sounds familiar to you, it’s probably because he was part of team which competed in the Power-Beaming competition some years back. Flint has decided to go after the tougher nut to crack, making a strong tether. The second team was Odysseus Technologies, Inc - a team which also competed last year.
Flint brought three tethers to the competition. Each tether was measured (weight and length), put on the test rack, and then stressed until they failed. His first tether needed a score of 898 pounds, but broke at 153 pounds. The second tether needed a score of 948 pounds but broke at 264 pounds. The third tether needed a score of 452 pounds but broke at 154 pounds. The reason for the different metrics was that the tethers themselves were of different weights and length. The prize competition formula normalizes these measurements so that all tethers have an equal shot of winning. Flint’s tethers were made with off-the-shelf components plus some “secret sauce”. As a newbie in the competition, Flint stated he didn’t expect to win this year, but wanted some baseline measurements he can use to help judge future year’s results.
The second competitor, Odysseus Technologies (headed by Dr. Bryan Laubscher), brought only one tether, but it was made out of carbon nanotubes. This tether however, broke at a very low level. It’s target score was 2,000 pounds, but it broke at just 11 pounds. This tether did not perform as well as the CNT tether that Odysseus brought last year, so obviously something adverse happened. Whatever it was, this means that we concluded another year of Strong Tether competition without awarding any prize money.
However, hope springs eternal. Attending the conference this year were Dr. Vesselin Shanov and graduate student Mark Haase of the University of Cincinnati and Dr. Boris Yacobson and Dr. Vasilii Artyukhov of Rice University. They were very enthusiastic about what they saw and expressed a strong interest in having their departments work on competition entry. With the resources they have behind them, this should provide a quantitative leap in the entries for next year.
So, until 2012…
(Picture thumbnails: Topmost is Sam Ortega, one of the NASA representatives attending the competition. Next is Ben Shelef, principal of the Spaceward Foundation. As part of his introductory speech, he is showing a piece of a cable we obtained from the Puget Sound Rope Company. Next is Flint Hamblin, showing one of his tethers. Fourth is the carbon nanotube tether from Odysseus Techologies. And last is a picture of the two competitors. Dr. Bryan Laubscher from Odysseus Technologies is on the left while Flint Hamblin is on the right. As always, clicking on any of the thumbnails will give you a full-size picture).
August 13th, 2011
On Friday, August 12th, the next installment of the Strong Tether Competition of the Space Elevator Games, one of the NASA Centennial Challenges, will take place. It will be held on the first day of the Space Elevator Conference and is part of the ISEC theme this year of “Longer, stronger tethers - 30MYuri or bust!”
It looks like we have a couple of competitors this year and we are all hopeful that they can raise the bar on tether strength and help point the way to a material strong enough to build a Space Elevator.
Like last year, the competition will be live video-streamed for your viewing pleasure. The URL for the livestream is here, and the competition is scheduled to begin at 4:00pm, US Pacific time. If you are unable to follow the competition live, I will be Tweeting the activities as they occur.
And today, on a related note, several of us visited Puget Sound Rope, one of the Cortland Cable companies. They are located in Anacortes, about an hour and a half north of Redmond. We had an absolutely fascinating tour of their factory and I took lots of pictures and videos - I will post these in the next few days. But I wanted to share a YouTube video with you that they gave me the link to. This video is a compressed version of a test-to-failure of a big, big rope. The machine that does this testing is truly industrial strength - and it’s our hope that a machine like this will be needed some day to test a space elevator tether.
Enjoy - and stay tuned to Friday’s competition!
August 11th, 2011
The first European Space Elevator Games (EuSEC) website now has a page devoted to the teams who will be participating.
It’s good to see our friends from ETC (Earth-Track-Controllers) involved in this competition. They were great competitors and great sports at the 2007 Games held near Salt Lake city.
A total of 8 teams are listed. The ‘usual suspects’ are included (Japan, US, Germany), but there are also teams from the UK, Iran and Macedonia! Truly, the whole idea of “Space Elevator Games” is now becoming a much more international endeavor…
June 5th, 2011
The Japan Space Elevator Association (JSEA) has announced the JSETEC2011 competition, to be held August 4th through the 8th.
Details can be found on the announcement webpage. If, you’re like me and cannot read Japanese, open the page in Google Chrome and translate it to your language of choice.
This is the third JSETEC (Japan Space Elevator Technical & Engineering Competition) event and I’m sure it will be the best, most ambitious one yet. Among other changes, they are increasing the height of the climb from 300m to 600m!
In February, I had blogged about this competition, and included some videos that Mr. Shuichi Ohno, president of JSEA had sent me.
Congratulations JSEA - we look forward to an exciting event!
(Hat tip to reader Darren Coste for alerting me to this - thanks Darren!)
May 17th, 2011
This video is several years old, but I don’t think I’ve linked to it before on the blog. It is a 5+ minute long presentation, narrated by the astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson. It gives a very quick overview of carbon nanotubes and how they are grown in a furnace (and then pulled off to longer lengths) and then talks about the 2007 Space Elevator Games - Climber / Power-Beaming competition held near Salt Lake City, Utah.
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It’s a bit depressing to realize that the state of the art in growing long, strong nanotubes hasn’t advanced that much in the last few years, but we have every reason to hope that is now starting to change. The upcoming Space Elevator competition - Strong Tether challenge looks like it is going to have its strongest field of contenders yet.
Stay tuned!
28Feb2011 Update - As noted in the Comments by Brian Turner, the ‘original’ version of this video can be accessed at the PBS website here. There are also links to other Space Elevator related broadcasts and videos and webpages that have more information about the Space Elevator. Thanks Brian!
February 26th, 2011
A few days ago, I received an email from Franciska Volgyi, Technical & Organizational lead for EuSEC; Europe’s first Space Elevator Challenge. I had previously posted about this competition here.
In this email she sent me updated information about the competition. This can be accessed here:
Poster
Handbook
Handout
Presentation
If you have any questions about this competition, you can email Franciska at “spaceelevator [at] warr.de”.
Thank you Franciska - I think this is going to be great event and I sincerely hope my schedule will allow me attend!
November 10th, 2010
This past Friday, I had the pleasure of attending the official Kansas City Space Pirates ‘closure party’, a party hosted by KCSP Captain Brian Turner. As I had posted earlier, KCSP has officially given up in their quest to win the NASA Centennial Challenge Power-Beaming competition (part of the Space Elevator Games).
Brian rented out a community center in Kansas City and invited all team members and their immediate family (who, almost inevitably, got involved with the project too) to thank them for all of their efforts and to briefly review KCSP’s accomplishments in the three Space Elevator Games they competed in (2006, 2007 and 2009).
Brian brought the optics box and climbers, as well as balloons for the kids. There was lots and lots of food, and enough beer and wine to go around (and a local police officer to make the alcohol officially legal).
Brian’s speech was gracious and inclusive, and he singled out every person there, talking about what they had done and thanking them for their contributions. From Brian, I would have expected nothing less - he and the whole team was a class act and we are all sorry that they were not more successful in the Games.
If anyone wants to pick up KCSP’s legacy and compete with LaserMotive in the future, please contact Brian (brian [at] kcspacepirates.com). I’m sure their equipment (especially their optics and climber) can be obtained for a reasonable price. But don’t wait too long as we’ll probably see bits and pieces of it up on Craigs List in the not-too-distant future.
I’ve included thumbnails of a few photos I took at the party. The topmost is of a custom-made Pirate cake that Bryan’s wife made. Very cool and very tasty. Next is a picture of some of the children at the party drawing on one of the big balloons that Brian brought. These are the same types of balloons that KCSP brought to the 2007 Games to use as ‘target-practice’ in sighting their mirrors. The third picture is of Brian in mid-oration. The last picture is of Brian, flanked by Dan (on the left) and Nic; the principals of the Chicago Video Production company, Bitter Jester Creative, Inc., the ‘chroniclers’ of the people-side of the Games. They are located in the Chicago area, as I am, so we all drove down to the party together. Nic and Dan took the opportunity to interview Bryan (extensively) and other attendees as part of their of project. I can’t wait to see the final result - they literally have hundreds of hours of footage and it’s going to tell quite a story.
So, what does KCSP have in store for the future? I’m going to leave that for a blog update on their part. Suffice it to say that they have new challenges they are taking on, but they are staying close and true to their robotic roots.
Congratulations again to Brian Turner and the Kansas City Space Pirates. Future Games will sorely miss your participation…
(As always, you can click on any of the picture thumbnails to see a full-size version of the picture)
November 7th, 2010
On the USST website, they have a summary of their activities at the recent JSEA LASER competition as well as a couple of videos.
I had previously posted about the climb where they crash-landed, but didn’t post the one where they did much better. And I had posted a wrap-up of the competition here.
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Their summary of the competition is very interesting and worth checking out and it’s good to see that they are still ‘in the game’, despite being no longer eligible for the Space Elevator games prizes…
October 24th, 2010
Exciting news - EuroSpaceward has today announced EuSEC - the first European Space Elevator Challenge!
This competition is being organized by WARR, the Scientific work-group for rocketry and space flight of the Technical University of Munich in cooperation with the Technical University of Munich, the Klaus Höchstetter Foundation, Lrt, the Institute of Astronautics and EuroSpaceward.
The theme of the competition is:
make it ecology minded
make it efficient
make it European
And the focus of the competition is:
efficiency
technical implementation
reference to the ‘real Space Elevator’
The competition is scheduled to be held from June 10-12, 2011, with backup dates set as June 16-18, 2011, and the location will be in Germany at the campus of the Technical University of Munich - Campus Garching (Garching Forschungszentrum). Several prizes are offered, with the top prize being 2,000 Euros.
Enquiries about the competition should be sent to Franciska Volgyi, the technical and organizational lead, or Andreas Fleischner, responsible for the SE agenda at WARR. Both can be reached at (spaceelevator [at] warr.de).
Details about the competition can be found in this handbook. A competition flyer, a powerpoint presentation and poster have been created as well as a website for this Challenge.
Mark your calendars - this should be a lot of fun!
This now makes a total of five space elevator games / challenges now in existence. We have the two American Space Elevator Games (the Climber / Power-Beaming challenge and the Strong Tether Challenge), the two Japan Space Elevator Games (JSETEC and LASER) and now the European Space Elevator Challenge (EuSEC). I love it!
Congratulations to WARR, the Technical University of Munich, the Klaus Höchstetter Foundation, Lrt, the Institute of Astronautics and EuroSpaceward for making this happen!
October 21st, 2010
I received the following email from Brian Turner, captain of the Kansas City Space Pirates:
Well, At some point you have to give up and move on. The ideal point for this passed some time ago. Perhaps years ago. 
The risk/reward ratio is just no longer where it needs to be to make the power beaming competition worth our efforts. Without the TRUMPF 8 kw laser we have slim to no chance of beating LaserMotive. Lasers cost about $75,000 per kw. That makes the prize $333,000 and it will cost us $200,000 to make a credible run at that. I have said before that between 4 and 5 to 1 was the ratio that would get us to go for a competition. We have enough into the power beaming competition that I would be willing to lower that to as low as 2.5 to 1. We just are not close.
But just because we lost does not mean we’re not pirates! What do pirates do when they get beat? Have a party. It’s just my way of saying thank you to all the people that have helped along the way. Oh, and there is that whole closure thing. We’ll have a bawl… er… I mean ball. It may turn into a roast Brian evening but that’s OK with me.
So I am working up the invitation list now. If you think you should be on that list, drop me a line.
A quick recap of what we accomplished.
Three times over 5 years we turned in the second most exciting performance in a international high stakes NASA technical competition. We missed out on millions in prize money by slim margins and provided innovative solutions that the industry had never seen before. All of this on a budget that was from 1/2 to 1/4 that of the teams that managed to beat us. We raised over a quarter million dollars in sponsorship and funding. And put in over 4,000 hours of time. It was quite a ride!
And because I don’t have a good way to invite companies to the ball I want to say thanks to them once again here.
Thor Labs
National Instruments
TRUMPF
Barr Associates
Asphericon
Wattmaster
Burns McDonnell
Optica Software
AndyMark
Citizens Bank & Trust
Palinurus Books
Diversity Model Aircraft
I also want to thank Tom and LaserMotive for being great competitors and the consolation prize arrangement that has let me keep my house.
Brian Turner
Captain
KC Space Pirates
So, what can one say about the Kansas City Space Pirates? I think they were everyone’s favorite competitor. I think even the other teams wished that if they themselves didn’t win the prize money, they hoped that KCSP would be the ones to do so. Their work was so innovative and every member of that team was just a joy to be around. They certainly demonstrated the technical capability to win the prize, but they were always thwarted by the unexpected event.
Their willingness to help everyone, their continued good humor in the face of adversity and, above all, their sense of fair play is going to be greatly missed. I salute them, one and all…
And Brian’s appearance on the Conan O’Brien show is a highlight that will live on in Space Elevator Lore. We at ISEC are collecting some items we’ll want to broadcast during the maiden run of the first Space Elevator and this Conan O’Brien show clip will certainly be one of them.
So, major bummer. I have had several conversations with Ben Shelef about the future of the Climber / Power-Beaming competition and, while it is much too early for me to spill any of the beans, I can safely say that some significant changes in the structure of the Games appear to be in the cards.
October 20th, 2010
In a word, disappointing. No team’s entry seriously challenged for the prize. No team’s entry performed even to 10% of what was needed to win the prize. Even with three teams entering carbon-nanotube or carbon-nanotube-reinforced entries, no visible, forward progress was made.
However, in another sense, progress WAS made. Because of the way that the rules have been modified (i.e, to allow entries much shorter than was previously required), this allowed less-expensive tethers to be built. And because of this, we had multiple, carbon-nanotube based entries this year, a first. And there is every reason to believe that these teams will be back next year with a better product and, hopefully, with additional competitors.
One item of note; after the third or fourth tether entry was tested, Yuri Artsutanov (who was there to witness the competition) offered his tie as an entry…
It’s truly amazing how hard this is. It’s truly amazing how hard it is to find someone who wants to build a carbon nanotube tether (let alone enter it into a competition). I, personally, had tried to find competitors for this year’s competition and found it to be next to impossible. There are several companies and universities out there making carbon nanotubes, but they, almost universally, are ‘in it’ for the electrical and other, non-strength related properties of carbon nanotubes. One would think that the prize money and/or potential market for super-strong materials should be enough to spur development, but it doesn’t seem to work that way. And the NASA rules precluding non-US-based entries certainly does not help.
But someone, somewhere, someday is going to do this. All the physics point to this as being possible. In the meantime, we’re all waiting as fast as we can…
So, until 2011…
23AUG10 Update - Andy Petro from the NASA Centennial Challenges program corrects me by pointing out that the rule precluding any non-US teams competing for prize money is a rule set by Congress, not by NASA. He also points out that non-US teams are welcome to compete, they just won’t be eligible to win any of the Prize Money. My apologies to Andy and NASA and thank you for setting the record straight.
August 13th, 2010
Here are pictures of the other two entries in the Space Elevator - Strong Tether Challenge.
The two loops are from the same competitor. In one of my earlier posts, I showed a nanotube thread - this is the end result of them (Spaceward as sent multiple threads) being wound into a loop.
The ‘long, shiny thing’ is, I understand it correctly, glass fibers coated with carbon nanotubes - I will find out more later and post it.
As always, please click on the picture thumbnails to see a larger version of the picture.
August 13th, 2010
All hail Maurice Franklin from Microsoft for coming in at the last minute and rescuing the uStream TV broadcast of the upcoming Strong Tether Competition - Thanks Maurice!
The URL to follow this is http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nasa-centennial-challenge—strong-tether-competition. The feed is live now, you can see people setting up - it will probably be on and off between now and the competition.
The competition is scheduled to begin at 4:15pm US Pacific time. I’ll be tweeting the status too.
Tune in - watch the future as it unfolds!
August 13th, 2010
Just in the past few minutes, the third tether entry in the Strong Tether competition confirmed that they will compete. A picture thumbnail of the nanotube loop being entered is included in this post (click on it for a full-size version).
As you can see, this has little in common with the meter-sized loops from previous competitions. The Spaceward Foundation changed the rules this year to encourage more participation - and with three, confirmed entries, all of the carbon nanotubes, I think I can say it succeeded.
Prize levels are different, depending on the weight of the entry and it’s specific strength. The different types of entries have been a challenge for Spaceward in adapting their “Tether Torture Rack” to them, but they have adapted as necessary.
And now, full disclosure on my part. The entry picture in this post is from Odysseus Technologies, a company I have invested in. So, I will admit to some bias in rooting for this particular entry to win ☺.
However, the important thing is that SOMEONE wins, because if they do, this means that the state-if-the-art in this field has been advanced, and, as the lack of strong enough material to build a Space Elevator is the ‘long pole in the tent’, a winner would mean that the day a Space Elevator can actually be built becomes more real.
Still no details on uStream - I’ll post that as soon as I have it, promise…
August 13th, 2010
The picture thumbnail is of one of the entries in today’s Space Elevator Games - Strong Tether Challenge.
This thread has now been wound into a loop and will be put on the “Tether Torture Rack” in today’s competition.
I still don’t have the uStream details yet, but hope to have them in the next hour or two and will publish (and Tweet) them as soon as I have them.
August 13th, 2010
Ben Shelef, CEO of the Spaceward Foundation, organizers of the Space Elevator Games, arrived in Seattle / Redmond today. He tells me that there will be at least two contestants, and possibly a third, in this year’s Strong Tether Challenge. All of the contestants are bringing entries made out of carbon nanotubes.
This is über-mega-cool. In 2007, there was a single carbon nanotube entry from team DeltaX, a collaboration between MIT and Nanocomp. In 2009, there was another single carbon nanotube entry from Shizuoka University in Japan. Neither one performed very well. The Delta-X entry slipped at the knot tied in the loop (very high tech ) while the Shizuoka entry, a ‘tape’ formed from nanotubes held solely by Van der Walls forces, broke at a very low level.
But that was the past and this is now the future. With two, maybe three entries, we could see some very good performances. The lack of a material strong enough is the single biggest obstacle in the way of building a Space Elevator. Having some sort of breakthrough demonstrated at this year’s Space Elevator Games - Strong Tether Challenge would be nothing short of monumental.
Plus, if there are any winners, there is a cool $2 Million dollar prize purse, courtesy of NASA, to be awarded.
So, stay tuned. Despite a last-minute glitch, we’re still hopeful of broadcasting the competition live on uStream. Details will be posted here (and on Twitter) as soon as they are available.
August 12th, 2010
The Strong Tether challenge, part of the Space Elevator Games, is just three days away! It will be held at the upcoming Space Elevator Conference, on Friday, August 13th.
This challenge is part of the NASA Centennial Challenge program and is administered by the Spaceward Foundation. Oh, and by the way, NASA has provided a $2 Million dollar prize purse for this competition, just like they have for the Climber / Power-Beaming competition.
This year it looks like we may may have multiple entries - the first time that’s happened in a few years. But we’re only going to know for sure at the competition.
For up-to-the-minute information and status, subscribe to our Twitter Feed “SEGames”. And, if all works according to plan, we’ll be broadcasting the competition live over the Internet via uStream. Details will be posted here and on Twitter.
I know that the Climber / Power-Beaming Challenge is the ’sexier’ of the Space Elevator Games, but IMHO, the Strong Tether Challenge is the more important one. No one in the know seriously doubts the ability to beam power over distance and then do something useful with it (though the devil is always in the details and I’m certainly not saying it is easy - look how long it took a team to actually win some prize money in this challenge), but creating a fundamentally stronger material is more than an exercise in ’simple’ Engineering - it requires a real scientific breakthrough - and this breakthrough is required if we’re going to build an earth-based Space elevator someday.
If someone can win the challenge this year at the Space Elevator Conference, the year that Yuri Artsutanov and Jerome Pearson attend, well then I think it will be safe to say that Gods want a Space Elevator to be built.
Stay tuned!
August 11th, 2010
I received this email from Brian Turner, captain of the Kansas City Space Pirates. It’s pretty self-explanatory…
The dust has settled from the failed attempt to schedule the games for this fall. I will give a recap of how we got here.
A few months after the last games USST was informed that they would not be allowed to enter the games this time around. Turns out that the prize monies are reserved for US citizens. This was not a new rule but how would you tell a US team from a non US team? The rules said that the team captain had to be a US citizen. USSTs official captain was just a figurehead to meet that requirement. I will let you decide for yourselves if this is all fair or not. Personally I would rather compete to be the best in the world.
I do however have a bias. The KC Space Pirates were sharing laser expenses with USST. Also the cost of running the competition is divided among the teams. With USST gone our costs jump by $30,000 to $50,000. That was more than I thought we could handle. With only 1 competitor there really is not a competition. So the competition was delayed to give USST time to figure out a way. A wide array of options were explored. In May USST dropped out graciously.
The costs were just too high. I asked Spaceward to work on lowering the costs. A new venue was found up in Washington state that was close to the helicopter. This would lower costs significantly. Spaceward got a preliminary OK from the venue and I set about raising the funds needed. Amazingly I got pledges for the more than $50,000 we needed in just 2 weeks. But the time needed to find the venue and raise the money left little lead time for everything else to come together. We needed official approval from NASA the venue and TRUMPF to proceed.
An unfortunate snag was hit causing another 2+ week delay in the process of getting all the paperwork together and that was enough to push past fall and into winter. It’s not prudent to hold an outdoor event that requires mild weather in the winter in Washington state. So that leaves us with Spring 2011.
But there is still a cloud of doubt over the competition. Most of the pledges I received were conditional on fall 2010. So I still don’t know if we can raise the money and I don’t know if TRUMPF will still be willing to provide a laser. We also don’t know if even LaserMotive will stick around that long.
What we need is a few more teams to enter the competition. That will lower the costs and put the predictability back into the competition.
This has put me in the rather odd position of trying to recruit teams to compete with us. The threat of winning less money is balanced by the high cost of raising the money needed without additional teams.
I am even going so far as to offer help to new teams to help them up the steep learning curve of the competition. This offer is in exchange for a cut of their prize. Remember, we are pirates after all.
The altruistic motivations that provided the resources to run the competition in the past are substantially less this round. Mainly because the success of the competition has shown that power beaming works largely as predicted and is only currently practical for a few applications. The big motivators of cheap Space Access and the Space Elevator are firmly located in the future world of better lasers and bigger budgets. I think that both of those are coming.
But without new teams bringing in new innovation and resources the competition may not happen at all.
So the KC Space Pirates are on a recruiting drive. If you think you have what it takes, want to go where few have gone before, and have at least some kind of budget, contact me.
Brian Turner
Captain,
KC Space Pirates
So, the gauntlet has been thrown - any takers?
August 9th, 2010
In May of 2008, I posted about a DVD-story that had been created about Team Astroaraneae - a group of people that had entered into the first two Space Elevator Games - Strong Tether Competition.
This DVD, entitled the “Mighty Tether” is now available in 5 parts on YouTube.
Part 1
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Part 2
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Part 3
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Part 4
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Part 5
.
It’s a shame that they have not competed since the first two competitions…
Remember, the 2010 Strong Tether Competition will be held at the upcoming Space Elevator Conference in Redmond, Washington - it’s still not too late to make your reservation, but time is running out…
Here’s to a successful 2010 Competition!
August 7th, 2010
I received word yesterday from Ben Shelef, CEO of the Spaceward Foundation (the group that organizers the Space Elevator Games) that this year’s Power-Beaming competition has been postponed until March/April of next year.
The Strong-Tether portion of the Space Elevator Games is still scheduled to be held at the upcoming Space Elevator Conference.
As more news becomes available, it will be posted here and at the official site of the Space Elevator Games.
July 21st, 2010
I’ve written about the NASA MICI (NASA Minority Innovation Challenges Institute) before (here), telling you all about a video which had been posted on this website. This video showed portions of the competition in several of the recent NASA Centennial Challenges.
That’s all well and cool, but Ben Shelef, CEO of the Spaceward Foundation (organizers of the Space Elevator Games) has just let me know that, at the NASA MICI channel, “June is Space Elevator Month“. Two presentations relating to the Space Elevator Games have already been posted and two more are on the way. And, if you login to the site while a presentation is underway, you’ll be able to interact (via Chat) with the presenter, asking questions in real-time.
The presentations that have already been posted are:
- The Space Elevator (Ben Shelef)
- Robotics and the Space Elevator (Dr. Antonio J Soares)
Upcoming presentations are:
- Photovoltaic cells and the Space Elevator (Dr. Antonio J Soares) - June 21st, 3:00pm US Eastern time
- Lasers and the Space Elevator (Dr. Antonio J Soares) - June 28th, 3:00pm US Eastern time
The ‘catch’ to all this is that to register to view these presentations, you must be a professor that is “…currently employed at a university or college located in the United States” or a student that is “…(a) a US Citizen currently enrolled at a university or college or (b) a non-US Citizen who is currently enrolled at a university or college located in the United States. “ If you don’t fall into either of these categories, you can apply for login permission (you’ll see how to do this on their website).
This site and it’s videos are there to encourage participation by US students and faculties in the NASA Centennial Challenges program. If you qualify (i.e. are a faculty member of student meeting the MICI requirements), then I would highly encourage you to sign up for this. We are always looking for more competitors in the Space Elevator Games and the majority of teams that have registered have been university-based. The more the merrier!
June 19th, 2010
Just a case of the rich getting richer… Team LaserMotive, winners of a cool $900K in last year’s Climber / Power-Beaming portion of the Space Elevator Games, has acquired some new sponsors in its attempts to collect the remaining $1.1M in the NASA-provided prize pool.
This is detailed on their latest blog posting on their website. Money quote:
“We’re pleased to announce these industry partners as sponsors of Team LaserMotive as we prepare to enter the next round of the Power Beaming Competition in 2010,” said Tom Nugent, president and co-founder of LaserMotive. “Laser power beaming — the wireless transfer of energy from one location to another using laser light — offers tremendous potential to businesses in a wide variety of industries, ranging from alternative energy to unmanned aerial vehicles. Not only do we believe that the sponsorships will enhance the development of our entry for this year’s Competition, but the technology developed can be used to further practical applications for laser power beaming, both near and long term.”
This is just going to make them an even more fearsome competitor in the upcoming competition. Congratulations again to LaserMotive!
June 17th, 2010
Anyone who is familiar with the Climber / Power-Beaming team from the University of Saskatchewan, the USST team, knows or knows about Clayton Ruszkowski. Clayton was the team captain for the first several years of their competing and, in the latest competition held in 2009, Clayton was there as an elder statesman…
Many moons ago (Dec 28, 2007), Stan Taylor of the Science Teachers Association of Ontario did an interview with Clayton and recently, he kindly emailed it to me. You can read the interview here (it’s in pdf format). It’s very interesting and we learn all sorts of interesting facts about Clayton. For instance, he is a Canadian and, when he was younger, he played hockey - what are the odds?
He gives his future plans as ‘joining the Canadian Air Force’. I wonder if it’s this Canadian Air Force he’s thinking of:
STAN FREBERG: …ahem, okay people, now when I give you the cue, I want the 700 foot mountain of whipped cream to roll into Lake Michigan, which has been drained and filled with hot chocolate. Then the Royal Canadian Air Force will fly overhead towing a 10-ton maraschino cherry, which will be dropped into the whipped cream to the cheering of 25,000 extras. All right - cut to the mountain!
(Appropriate SFX)
Cue the Air Force!
(Appropriate SFX)
Cue the maraschino cherry!
(Appropriate SFX)
Okay, 25,000 Cheering Extras!(Appropriate SFX, which end abruptly)
Now, you want to try that on television?
Of course, if you weren’t a fan of Stan Freberg, that probably didn’t mean anything to you…
Anyway, it’s a cool interview - check it out. And hey, Clayton - you still owe me a USST mug…
June 16th, 2010
Recently posted on the NASA MICI (Minority Innovation Challenges Institute) website is a short video showing portions of the competition in several of the recent NASA Centennial Challenges.
The Power-Beaming competition is shown, of course, with the 2009 prize-winners, LaserMotive, as the representative.
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If you visit their photos/videos page, you can see several other cool things worth watching.
Hat-tip to the LaserMotive blog posting which alerted me to this.
May 13th, 2010
The latest post from Team LaserMotive shows their Climber’s first ascent at last year’s Space Elevator Games - Climber / Power-Beaming competition, complete with ‘appropriate music’…
March 25th, 2010
As I posted several days ago, a gathering was recently held in Washington DC - a gathering of NASA people involved in the Centennial Challenges program (of which the Space Elevator Games are a part) and most/all of the recent organizers and competitors from the recent competitions.
Team LaserMotive arrived in force and a post about the trip is now on their blog.
They have good things to say about the new direction of NASA and Ben Shelef, head of the Spaceward Foundation (organizers of the Space Elevator Games), agrees. Let’s hope everyone’s new-found optimism turns out to be correct…
(The picture is from the gathering and is of members of Team Lasermotive and several NASA personnel - visit the LaserMotive blog post to see a (slightly) larger version of this picture and several others)
March 10th, 2010
The Chicago Video Production company, Bitter Jester Creative, Inc., the “official video chronicler” of the Space Elevator Games, has some updated and some new video clips available. The sound is in stereo, too…
Check out this page to view them. All of them are of the very high quality that we have come to expect from this talented and dedicated group.
Nic DeGrazia, one of the members of this group, sent me this email about these clips:
Hello Elevator Boys!
I sent you the crane building vid for your enjoyment but I thought I’d let you know that I added that clip (with a nicer fade at the start) and two others (one that you’ve seen, where Ben explains the space elevator on the white board and another new one … UBC delicately polishing their solar cells before the wind whips their climber around) to the BJC site as well.
Check out this page on our new(!) website to see the clips in question…
-Nic
The title of this post was a quote from Ben Shelef (in the video clip ‘Building the crane‘) talking about how the redesign of the raceway would, hopefully, dampen the oscillations in the tether caused by the wind. Alas, this tether failed during the competition (described here and here) due to those pesky oscillations, and was a primary reason why Ben moved to a steel cable (which performed spectacularly well) in the 2009 Games. This was just one of those things that you don’t know if it’s going to work or not until you try it.
Watching these clips of the 2007 Games brought back a lot of memories - most of them good, but some of them sad. The weather really was a handicap in this event; lots of rain, lots of wind and even some snow and hail for good measure.
I enjoyed watching all of these videos, but the one showing the UBC Climber was, IMHO, particularly fascinating. At the end of the clip, you can see how the wind just played havoc with everything, the tether and the climbers. The picture thumbnail of the UBC Climber, reflected off of their gigantic mirrors, was truly a video highlight of the Games. Click on the thumbnail for a full-size version of the picture.
March 2nd, 2010
This past Thursday and Friday saw a meeting at NASA HQ in Washington, DC of all parties involved in the NASA Centennial Challenges. This is the NASA Press Release:
NASA HONORS 2009 CENTENNIAL CHALLENGES WINNERS
WASHINGTON — NASA will honor the achievements of the 2009 Centennial Challenges prize winners and competition hosts with a technical symposium Feb. 25 and a recognition ceremony Feb. 26. Centennial Challenges is NASA’s program of technology prizes for the citizen-inventor. Nine prizes totaling $3.65 million were awarded in 2009. Both events will be held at the James E. Webb Memorial Auditorium at NASA Headquarters, 300 E Street, SW, Washington.
The Centennial Challenges Technical Symposium will take place from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. EST Thursday, Feb. 25. Winners will discuss their accomplishments and future plans and answer questions from the audience. A one-hour panel discussion will be dedicated to each of the challenges, including the new Green Flight Challenge and ongoing Strong Tether and Power Beaming Challenges. The public is invited, and government, industry and media representatives interested in the technologies and incentive prize competitions are encouraged to attend.
The recognition ceremony will begin at 10 a.m. on Friday, Feb. 26. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden will participate, as will winners of the Regolith Excavation, Lunar Lander, Power Beaming and Astronaut Glove Challenges. Reporters will have an opportunity to talk with the winners during a reception in the NASA Headquarters West Lobby immediately following the one-hour ceremony.
The competitions address a range of technical challenges that support NASA’s missions in aeronautics and space with a goal of encouraging novel solutions from non-traditional sources. The partner organizations that conducted the competitions are: California Space Education and Workforce Institute (Regolith Excavation), X Prize Foundation (Lunar Lander), Spaceward Foundation (Power Beaming and Strong Tether), Volanz Aerospace Inc. (Astronaut Glove) and Comparative Aircraft Flight Efficiency Foundation (Green Flight). NASA’s Innovative Partnerships Program manages the Centennial Challenges.
NASA Television will broadcast the events. For NASA TV downlink, schedule and streaming video information, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/ntv
For additional information about the Centennial Challenges, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/challenges
Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to have made their podcasts.
Ben Shelef of the Spaceward Foundation (organizers and hosts of the Space Elevator Games) attended as well as team members from LaserMotive and the Kansas City Space Pirates.
LaserMotive blogged about attending this event (which you can view here). There have been some articles in the press about this - one of them can be found here.
I talked with Ben about the meeting and he said that it was quite good and had exceeded his expectations. I hope to get a more complete summary of the meeting in the near future from him and/or some the attending team members.
February 27th, 2010
I received this email today from Brian Turner, captain of the Kansas City Space Pirates:
This is one of those newsletters where I mostly have bad news. It looks like the competition date of May 10th is coming unstuck. We don’t have a new date at all right now which is just as well because once you miss one date then there is a pretty good chance that you will miss another. So a little time to make sure that the new date is firm is good.
The helicopter has a hard time lifting the cable on the hot days of summer in the desert. Perhaps we can use a lighter cable now that we know how all of that works, I will have to look into that.
If not, then we have to pick a different location for the competition or wait till Sept. I don’t have the resources to keep this as a priority in my life for that long and neither do my teammates. That means that our competitors will have an opportunity to gain on us if they spend a lot more time between now and then.
Seems that Lasermotive has used the proceeds from their last win to take two team members full time. I expect a highly professional, polished system from them in the next round. I always knew that once a team won that they would be more difficult to beat the next time around.
The trip to Photonics West went well but did not yield any leads for new sponsors. That means that it will be back to my private supporters to try and raise the money for this next round. That water well is pretty low after 4 years and no wins.
So where is the good news? I have been spending a lot more time with the family and my regular customers are keeping me as busy as ever with my day job. So I can afford to wait even if it is rather annoying. And we have a list of tests to perform to try and tuneup the performance of our current system.
I will update you if things change.
Brian Turner
Captain
KC Space Pirates
And that’s where we’re at…
February 10th, 2010
I received this email today from Brian Turner, captain of the Kansas City Space Pirates…
Well I am off to Photonics West. This is the trade show where just about all of my sponsors have a presence. I have been invited to do a poster presentation on Tuesday evening. It should be a good opportunity to talk with other people in the profession.
Kind of interesting how this all went from “game” and “hobby” to “profession”.
Anyway. We need to raise about $40,000 to cover all of the expenses for the competition. And if we want to upgrade to premium solar cells we need another $80,000. I am not holding my breath for the $80,000.
The up side is that the competition has established itself as a draw for fans and viewers with over 25,000 surfing to the online video feed. Several dozen articles on numerous web sites and coverage on FOX news as well as other TV stations.
So now we need to connect the sponsors to the audience.
Brian Turner
January 22nd, 2010
This video is from the recently completed Space Elevator Games. It shows what ‘went wrong’ with a Climber pick-up before the problems were fixed and then it ‘went right’. Brian Turner, captain of the Kansas City Space Pirates, is narrating.
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And one more Space Elevator-themed video. I think I posted an earlier version of this, but this is the ‘final version’…
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In general, this video has it’s facts correct with a few exceptions.
The main advantage of a Space Elevator is it’s scalability (i.e. it’s ability to scale up to carry huge amounts of material into space), not it’s relatively lower cost/kilogram to get something into orbit. I can’t emphasize this enough. With a Space Elevator (and only with a Space Elevator), you can lift the enormous quantities of material you need to colonize the moon or mars or establish a significant amount of space solar power.
Scalability people, think scalability. The video is correct in comparing the Space Elevator to the intercontinental railway for that’s what a Space Elevator is - a carbon railway to space.
Another mistake in the video is at the end when he is fancifully showing space elevators begin stationed near Spain or Japan. While it’s possible to build a Space Elevator in those areas, the many problems which will occur (and have been described in the Edwards-Westling book) will almost certainly preclude it.
And finally, I must disagree with a third point of the video - that whoever builds the first Space Elevator will control access to space. Even if the United States (or Russia or the ESA, etc.) does not build the first one, they have the resources to build one later on. Certainly whoever builds one first will own a huge commercial advantage, but only until that second elevator is up and running.
It might sound like I’m dissing this video - I’m not. It’s well done and has most of its facts correct. But we need to have all of our facts correct if we’re going to convince someone that this is an idea worth doing…
December 15th, 2009
A few weeks ago, Brian Turner (captain of the Kansas City Space Pirates - KCSP) sent out this email to his mailing list. This email, detailing “What Went Right”, is a follow-up to his “What Went Wrong” email I posted here.
In my last email I talked about what went wrong. In this one I will cover what went right. The glass is half full point of view. Sorry if I get a bit technical. And I must point out that all numbers are estimates.
Tracking:
Keeping all the power of the laser on target is no small task. We were the only team with a fully functional and automatic tracking system. The performance was spectacular. We were able to keep the laser on target 99.99% of the time for the first 500 meters. That performance dropped to 99.7% or so from 500 to 700 meters. At that point the .3% was driving our motor controller and power tracking nuts. This was markedly better than the manual tracking that the other teams were using. USST’s automated systems were down. Probably because of the same radio interference issues that we were suffering from. LaserMotive was using manual tracking that utilized 2 expert video game players with lots and lots of practice. Some time ago I had estimated that the cable would not be as stable as it was and that manual tracking was at the edges of human ability. So I was wrong in that the cable was really very docile. But I was right in that it is at the edge of human ability as Lasermotive was only able to keep it on target about 93% of the time from what I could see in our tracking camera. We do still have room for improvement here and I already know ways to make it better. I will be talking to National Instruments about a bigger and faster FPGA processor in our Compact Rio so we can improve the tracking even further.
Optics:
All three of the top teams did well in creating a competitive optics system. One that could handle the power while directing it quickly and accurately. This was however a major stumbling block for the teams that did not qualify. I would like to thank Thor Labs for providing the bulk of the high quality components needed to pull this off.
Weight:
Our climber was 1.2 Kg with payload vs 8.8 for USST and 5.4? for Lasermotive. We were less than 1/4 the weight of our nearest competitor. The climber was also simpler. We were the only team willing to run without added structure to save the climber from damage from landing mishaps. I suspect that we will be seeing lighter climbers from the other teams in the next round.
Power Transfer:
We had a peak power transfer of 190 watts. For our lightweight climber that is enough to do 5 m/s. In our field testing we had power conversion of more than 200 watts at the full Km distance. LaserMotive had a peak of 1000 watts in the competition. USST was boasting 1200 watts at 800 meters in their testing. This puts us at just under 1/5 the power levels of our competitors. What is impressive is that we are in the hunt with them using only 1/5th the power. The reason for this disparity is the cost of the solar panels. USST commented that their panel cost $120,000. That exceeds our entire cash budget. We do get over that number counting Sponsors like TRUMPF, but clearly our competitors are much better funded than us. LaserMotive is using experimental cells that have no price on them. I would estimate that they are around $60,000 in value because they are less exotic than USST’s cells. Our cells cost less than $4000 per climber. I think this illustrates that no team does more with a watt or a buck than we do.
Summary:
Although we can probably eek out a 5 m/s run with our current system we clearly can’t be competitive with the power levels of the other teams using our current PV(solar) panels. We also crossed the finish line running well into the red on our finances. Although I have seen a few ideas that might have potential, I have to assume that there are no silver bullets to give us $75,000 PV panel performance from $4,000 panels.
What’s Next:
I had “The Talk” with my wife and she pointed out that the basement is full of this stuff, either sell it or use it. With the usual provisions about not losing any major items the house or cars. I really love how understanding she is. So now I need to talk with the team and work out details with them. Then I need to switch to fund raiser mode and raise enough to buy and build the PV panel that we need to be competitive.
So if anyone knows a company that would like to sponsor a high profile, underdog, high tech team, be sure and let me know.
Brian Turner
Captain
KC Space Pirates
Let’s hope they succeed in their funding efforts. I expect they will and further expect to see them at the next round of competition (May, 2010) ready and loaded for bear…
December 10th, 2009
Here is the latest video from Ben Shelef, CEO of the Spaceward Foundation - organizers of the Space Elevator Games.
He explains it in his latest post on the official site of the Space Elevator Games. He says, in part:
The video clip tries to capture the scope of the project, and is dedicated to everyone who helped make it happen.
This clip was officially unveiled at the just-completed EuroSpaceward conference in Luxembourg.
December 9th, 2009
On the LaserMotive Blog, mention is made of a recent article in the SunBreak, a local Seattle newspaper (team LaserMotive is based in Seattle).
It’s a very interesting article and well worth the read. LaserMotive’s Jordin Kare talks about power-beaming and why that interests LaserMotive (as opposed to a Space Elevator, which they are not interested in).
Jordin is quoted:
“Some of the people who are competing are very much believers in the space elevator–Tom Nugent and I, who started the LaserMotive team, are pretty skeptical,” admitted Kare. “It’s one of these things where it’s a lovely idea, and it may be physically possible–which I wouldn’t have said a decade ago–but it’s a very long jump drawing pretty pictures and writing basic equations to being able to build something a hundred-and-some-odd-thousand kilometers long.”
He’s absolutely correct, of course - right now a Space Elevator IS not much more than ‘pretty pictures’. As the President of ISEC, it’s my job to change that ‘equation’…
It’s ironic - the team that really is not a fan of the idea of Space Elevator is the team that won the recent Space Elevator Games. On one of the many news-clips that resulted from the Games, a reporter asked why LaserMotive bothered to compete in the Games if they don’t believe in the concept. The reply was that they wanted to demonstrate their prowess in power-beaming. I don’t think the $900,000 hurt anything either…
(Picture of Jordin from here - click on it to see a full-size version)
November 29th, 2009
And, rounding out the post-competition analyses (KCSP is here and USST is here) , LaserMotive’s Steve Burrows gives us his team’s take on the recently completed competition.
Money quote (which occurred after their prize-winning runs on day 1) #1: ‘Waiting just a moment, Steve Beland requested clearance from Test Operations for the Team to begin breathing again. Test granted the request, but for “shallow breaths only”.’
Money quote #2: “LaserMotive team members are grateful for the hospitality and safe and smooth operations of our host, NASA Dryden Flight Research Center. We hope they can invite us again to complete the NASA Power Beaming Centenial Challenge — we now have a title to defend!”
Congratulations again to LaserMotive and, indeed, all the teams for providing us with an extremely competitive and enjoyable three days. Only 169 more days until the 2010 Games!
November 22nd, 2009
On the first day of the recently completed Space Elevator Games, there were several reporters and cameras (still and video) at the ISF (the conference center where Bryan and I did the first two days of live coverage of the Games over uStream).
One young lady was from ABC, another from AP and still another from Fox News. I didn’t see a whole lot of coverage from ABC (but I’m still going through video clips) and the AP reporter somehow carried away the ‘fact’ that there was a team ‘from Alaska’ that was competing (that was funny - after that report went out, I got calls from two local reporters in Alaska wanting to know how to contact the ‘local team’).
However, Fox News did a lot of coverage of this - the reporter, Christina Gonzalez, did the interviews (including one with yours truly) and the best clip I’ve seen so far is the one below. One reason I like it, of course, is because they actually spelled my name correctly - not something that I’m used to…
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It’s so easy to sound stupid on TV. I’m talking about using a space elevator to “colonize the moon or ‘the’ Mars”… Doh! I wanted to say ‘the moon or the rest of the solar system’ but tried to change it on the fly to “Mars” and wound up with ‘the Mars’. Oh well - I think I got the main point across. A Space Elevator should be built to haul large amounts of stuff into space on an ongoing basis. It’s a ‘carbon railway’ to outer space and that’s what we need to think of it as…
November 21st, 2009
Or, so that’s what it says over at the official site of the Space Elevator Games.
The Climber / Power-Beaming competition has already been tentatively scheduled for next year, for the week of May 10th.
This is double-plus cool. LaserMotive has already proved that they’re the real deal. The Kansas City Space Pirates have built a kick-ass tracking system and now just need to upgrade their climber to complement it. And, who knows what the USST team is thinking? They’ve been the best performers for the first three games, the last two just barely missing out on the prize-money. It must rankle a bit for them to see LaserMotive walk away with a cool $900K… I’m sure they’re now on a mission to reclaim their glory days…
It’s on! (again)…
And, by the way, if you visit the official site of the Games, you’ll note that the picture gallery (upper left) and movie/video gallery (upper right) have been enhanced and added to. Lots of new stuff from the just-completed games - check it out!
November 20th, 2009
In yesterday’s post, I wrote about the contributions and leadership provided by Ben Shelef, Andy Petro and John Kelly. Today I’d like to thank the three people who actually made the whole space elevator raceway work. Readers may remember the problems that previous incarnations of the raceway incurred. Much of this was caused by the previous helicopter pilot’s inability to maintain position; i.e. keep his helicopter in the ’safe zone’, away from the people below. With the finding of pilot Doug Uttecht, this last hurdle was solved and the raceway became a safe, predictable, stable thing of beauty.
There were a trio of people involved with operating the raceway. First, of course, was the pilot, Doug Uttecht (pictured in the center). Doug was the guy responsible for picking up the raceway cable, keeping it on station and at correct tension and then bringing it back down when the run was completed. This guy was amazing. His control of his MD530FF helicopter was remarkable and brought about the best line I heard at the Games; “If this guy was any better, we almost wouldn’t need a tracking system”. Truly he could make that helicopter dance. During the pre-ops briefing held on the final day, Doug actually received a round of applause from everyone else there (50+ people) for the outstanding job he was doing. The guy is money…
The second part of this trio was Keith Mackey (pictured on the right). He is an aviation safety consultant that Ben Shelef, CEO of Spaceward, found on the Internet! His list of credentials and long experience is just amazing. Ben thinks he might be the most credentialed pilot in the world today. He is licensed to fly just about everything, commercial jets, private aircraft, helicopters, even blimps! Keith was the person who came up with the GPS system which allowed the helicopter to station-keep with such amazing accuracy. How this device works is described over at the official site of the Space Elevator Games. Keith’s ‘job title’ at the Games was ‘helo ground control’. He interfaced with Doug via the radio, telling him when to ascend and descend and how fast. As Keith is a helicopter pilot too, he knew exactly what Doug needed to know and just the words to say it in. The conversations between the two were succinct, with not a word wasted or out of place. Between Doug and Keith, that raceway was kept a tame beast, waiting to do the competitor’s bidding…
And finally we have Tetherman (aka Michael Keating - pictured on the left). Michael was the guy who was responsible for the safe ascent and descent of the Climbers themselves. Before ascent, he would hold the Climber and cable (with his special ‘ring tool’), waiting for Doug to pick up the cable and bring the Climber to it’s starting position. In descent, he would have to track the cable and Climber down and guide the Climber to a gentle landing. This was a huge responsibility - these Climbers represent tens of thousands of dollars and tens of thousands of man-hours of work - keeping them from plummeting to the desert floor was a good thing. Tetherman has developed a cult following and I fully expect him to arrive in a cape and special helmet for the next Games.
Spaceward CEO Ben Shelef has created a special video to honor this threesome (I think this is your best effort yet Ben - really well done!). You only see Tetherman in this picture (until the very end and then Keith makes a brief appearance) but rest assured that Doug and Keith are doing their jobs, too. All three had to work together as a coordinated team to make this thing work and they did so flawlessly. Thanks guys - this wouldn’t have worked without you!
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(Graphic of the Three Caballeros from here - and truly, if you haven’t seen this Disney classic, you’re missing a treat - the music alone is worth a view. Click on the picture thumbnail of Michael, Doug and Keith to see a larger version of the picture)
November 14th, 2009
Time to start giving thanks where thanks are due. There were many, many people and organizations who’s help was crucial to the success of the recently completed Space Elevator Games.
Pictured are, from left-to-right, Andy Petro, John Kelly and Ben Shelef. Andy is from the NASA Centennial Challenges ‘office’ and he was the guy there ensuring that the Challenge was successfully and legally met and also had the happy task of handing the $900,000 check to Team LaserMotive. Andy was the guy who had to fill the very large shoes of previous Program Manager Ken Davidian, but the shoes certainly seem to be a comfortable fit. When Andy first took the position, I asked him to say a few words about himself for we in the Space Elevator Games “community” - his response can be found here. Finally, how many people have a “look-a-like” contest named after them? Andy is such a lucky guy…
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The guy in the center is John Kelly. He was the NASA point man at the Dryden Flight Research Center (DFRC) and there’s only one word to describe him; awesome. When Ben first approached Dryden about hosting the Games, it was John Kelly who grabbed this ball and ran with it. He marshaled more and more forces at DFRC until, it seemed, that he had the entire organization working with us. Whenever we needed something, he came through for us. He took very large chunks of the organization process off of Spaceward’s shoulders, allowing Ben Shelef to concentrate on the few critical issues that only he could handle. He was the middle-man who successfully interfaced the rigid structure of the NASA organization to the loose amalgamation of Spaceward and was absolutely key to making it all work. On top of it all, he’s just great guy, with a wonderful sense of humor and a real joy to work with. Plus, and also very important, he knew all of the good restaurants in the area.
Andy and John - we owe you huge thanks - THANK YOU!!!
Finally, the guy on the right is Ben Shelef, the CEO of the Spaceward Foundation. It was Ben who dreamed up the idea of the Space Elevator Games, creatively and succesfully piggy-backing onto the NASA need for power-beaming and strong-tethers. This competition has been Ben’s baby since Day 1. I’ve had the pleasure to work with Ben over the past 3+ years and I know that a) he always finds a way to get something done, even when things look bleak and b) he’s persistent, persistent and persistent. I know Ben has taken some heat because of previous Games not producing any winners, but he has kept his focus; forcing competitors to continually improve their capabilities and thus advancing the state of the art (which is what NASA wants). He richly deserves the congratulations that he is now receiving. Finally, I’ve had some brief chats with him about his future plans and, all I can say is ‘You ain’t seen nothin’ yet…’.
So there you have it - these three guys are the key organizers of all the efforts to have a successful Space Elevator Games and they all deserve our thanks and our gratitude. THANKS GUYS!!
(Graphic of the Three Caballeros from here - and truly, if you haven’t seen this Disney classic, you’re missing a treat - the music alone is worth a view. Click on the picture thumbnail of Andy, John and Ben to see a larger version of the picture)
November 13th, 2009
As many/most of you know, the recently completed Space Elevator Games were broadcast live on uStream.tv. I hope you were watching and listening. After a very ragged first day, commentators Bryan Laubscher and myself did OK, I think, in bringing you all of the action.
For the competition next year (plans already in the works), we’ll be doing this again and hopefully, even better than this time around.
One of the neat things you can do with uStream.tv is record what you watch. Marc Boucher from SpaceRef.com did just that with LaserMotive’s first prize-winning run and it is now available on YouTube. You can watch the run in all it’s glory and listen to Bryan and I (in all our “unglory”) as we call the action. Thanks Marc!
November 12th, 2009
Mark Boots, one of the captains of the USST team, sent out this wrap-up of their team’s performance at the just-completed Space Elevator Games:
The X-15 rocket plane is one of the most famous test aircraft ever flown at the Dryden Flight Research Center. Flying higher and faster than anything before, it explored boundaries that made possible the design of winged spacecraft like the Shuttle. The project manager and chief test pilot once said: “The purpose of test is to separate the imagined problems from the real, and to seek out the unimagined or unexpected problems.”
That statement sums up this past week for the U of S Space Design Team. We left Saskatoon with a world-class design, and our strongest effort to be prepared. From the time we arrived, we faced a set of unexpected problems that we’d never seen in our testing at home. Despite an all-out problem-solving effort by everyone on the team, we didn’t get past all of those problems in time. The final results: Our congratulations go to LaserMotive, a corporate team that succeeded in beating the 2m/s prize criteria and winning $900,000. Neither us nor the Kansas City Space Pirates (Yarr….) were able to make it all the way to the top, and no one took the 5m/s prize.
“What happened?” is the big question that everyone is asking. There were two major problems that we faced: During testing the day of the competition dry-runs, we broke the shaft connecting our main drive motor. Our backup motor had unexpected problems with its controller, and Shea spent an epically stressful day and night trying to get that motor running, while Matt and the mechanical team worked with the machinists in the NASA Dryden fabrication shop to repair the shaft on the original motor. (These guys were awesome, and we owe them huge thanks.) Unfortunately the motor problems caused us to miss the first two of our three 45-minute competition windows.
The other critical issue was with our GPS-based tracking system: We had tested it as much as we could in Saskatoon on cranes, and even chased motorbikes at 1km. This week, we watched it track our climber flawlessly as the helicopter pulled it up from the ground to the starting position at 100m. However, every time we reached the starting position, a strange source of interference hit the receiver on the climber and caused it to continuously lose its lock on the GPS satellites. We had never seen this before in all of our testing, and we’re still mystified by what could have been causing this. We put our manual tracking system into use, and although Ariq did an amazing job at the controls, we didn’t have enough time in our final 45-minute competition window to perfect the switch-over between manual and GPS tracking, or adjust the climber programming to let it be more tolerant of losing the beam.
We’re all hugely disappointed, especially because we know how close we came. The fact that no team took the 1st place prize reminds us that this is a really difficult challenge, and when you’re pushing the boundaries of what’s technologically possible, things can go wrong.
We really want to thank all of our families, wives, girlfriends and boyfriends, and everyone from the University that has supported us so much, sacrificed for us, and enabled this crazy opportunity. We’re really sorry we couldn’t bring back the prize, and we tried so hard to represent Saskatchewan as world-leading innovators and respectful professionals.
To our list of thank-you’s, we need to add a special shout-out to the machine shop staff: both Keith and the guys in the UofS Engineering Shops, and the NASA Dryden people, for the outstanding work they did for us. We’re also hugely grateful to the Dryden team: John Kelly (for running the show, kindness, and wisdom), Mike Kapitzke (for running very smooth, tight operations and keeping everyone safe), Elizabeth (for getting us where we needed to go, and being our cheerleader, even at 5 in the morning — you’re awesome!), Freddy (the coolest van driver ever), and John Piatt (who handled the challenge of laser safety on the lakebed in a keenly responsible, always critical, yet flexible and understanding way.)
Last but first, we thank all of our donors and sponsors; the critical link that made this opportunity possible. We especially want to thank the TRUMPF team: Dave Marcotte for having the business guts and the “more power — let’s do it!” race-car driver attitude to make this project possible, and the one-and-only Ivan, who kept an 8kW laser system running in the middle of the desert, without a single issue! We’re sorry we couldn’t do the same on our end.
Another huge shout-out goes to the helicopter team that supported the vertical cable: “Foxtrot” (Doug, the excellent heli pilot — If he was any better, we almost wouldn’t even need a tracking system!), “HeloGround” Keith Mackey (for keeping Foxtrot on target despite our very confusing directions, and his helpful advice), and “Tetherman” Michael Keating (for his hustle and tireless dedication to running around the desert floor catching climbers all day). We should also probably thank Ben Shelef, the competition organizer and head of the Spaceward Foundation (even if you did make us pay for the whole thing ; ) We recognize how hard it is to single-handedly organize all of this, and seriously: nice work.
Even in this huge disappointment, we’re really proud of our team. Ben refers to us as the “many-headed hydra”, and we take this as a huge compliment. It recognizes that everyone on the team had a crucial part — everyone individually has something that they are the best at. Every day we saw new problems, and every night someone came up with a creative solution. Unfortunately, we just never got to the end of all those problems in time.
It’s hard to imagine the level of dedication that causes someone to stay up for three nights in a row, and still be coming up with solutions on the last one, until they fall asleep standing up during a NASA tour on the last day. (John M., you’re a hero.) This level of dedication is there for everyone on the team, and we really gave it our all. After doing this for a year and a half, it’s so disappointing to end up here.
We are looking for the positives. This was a learning experience for everyone that surpassed anything in our official curriculum — both technically, and in what we learned about leadership, teamwork, and project planning. We, as undergraduate students and recent graduates, developed technologies and a core design that were (and still are) superior to anything in the world. This is shown from the reactions of people such as Lawrence Davis, head of NASA Test Pilot School; NASA personnel; and even our competitors. On the way back, we had a chance to tour the SpaceX facility in Los Angeles, where they are designing and assembling the Falcon 9 spacecraft which will replace the Shuttle for trips to the International Space Station in 2011. It was reassuring that we could pick out similarities in almost all aspects of their work and what we have done on this project. Some of the team members are already talking about what’s next: there’s still a $1.1 million prize out there for 5m/s, and we have a design that’s easily capable of achieving that — we just need to get it all working at once. It is great to see that the team is not discouraged by the outcome, but sees it more as a challenge and lesson to move on and and keep going.
From here on, it’s about talking about lessons learned, catching up on schoolwork, deciding what comes next, and figuring out other ways on how we can give back to the University community, even if we don’t have that $2 million prize money.
All of us were surprised, frankly, that USST didn’t run more successfully. In every previous competition, they have had the best performance. But no one who knows anything about this team doubts their ability and their desire to win. I’m very sure there will be another competition next year (after all, there is still more than a million US Dollars in the prize pool waiting to be claimed) and USST will be back, even more determined to show that they are a force to be reckoned with…
The photo, of course, is of the USST team. Those pictured are, starting from the front and going left to right; Ben Shelef (Spaceward Foundation), John Steeves, Andrew Williams, Ariq Chowdhury, Dave Williams and Shea Pederson. Back row: Nathan Windels, Jordan Gareau, Clayton Ruszkowski, Mark Boots, Dawson James, Matt Evans, John McClean, Rylan Grant, Patrick Allen, Justin Equina, Doug Grant, Kevin Krieger and Bethany Murray.
Finally, if you were listening to the uStream.tv broadcast (and you should have been) on Friday during the USST run, team member Nathan Windle was providing commentary about their team efforts. Thanks again Nathan - you did a great job!
November 11th, 2009
Brian Turner, captain of the Kansas City Space Pirates, sent out this email to his supporters and ‘inner circle’:
As you may have heard by now we were unsuccessful in our attempt to win prize money in the NASA power beaming challenge. LaserMotive was alone in the 2 meters per second $900,000 prize level. USST was unable to to climb more than a few hundred meters up the cable. The 5 meters per second $1.1 Million prize went unclaimed.
We were challenged with a number of problems in our attempts but I will give you a quick rundown of the biggest failure points for each of our three attempts.
Day 1. Our radio link that tells us the height and speed of the climber was unable to handle the radio environment of the competition. We made it approximately 750 meters up the cable before we guessed wrong on the altitude and speed settings while driving blind and had to descend. We had this same problem in our test in Seattle a month back. I thought that we had the problem solved and could not justify the $1000 plus dollars to change it out to a different frequency that might prove to be even less robust. So Tuesday we ordered the other frequency for first overnight delivery from EagleTree systems. We had it installed and running for our next run the following day.
Day 2. We made it a little above 500 meters when our beacon light decided to turn itself off repeatedly. When we loose that beacon the laser starts wandering around the sky and has to be shut off immediately. We then turn the beacon back on, find the climber again and turn it back on. This takes from 5 to 15 seconds each time it happens and the climber is descending the whole while. When the beacon was shutting off every 25 or so seconds we could not manage to continue climbing. The sun set while we were running and our camera could no longer see the climber. Again, we had very rarely seen the beacon off problem before. We saw it on the battery powered practice climb on Tuesday and even had the software fix programed up and ready to install the day before. However we did not have time to get it in because we were working on the telemetry. We got it installed and running for the next day.
Day 3. We got the last slot of the competition. We loaded up the climber named Maryann with enough payload to take first place. Perhaps we were too greedy as she did not perform well and overheated. With time running out in our window I called for a climber switch and we put on Skipper. Skipper was sitting on the bench waiting to make a shot at the 5 meters per second prize after Maryann was done. Because we were having problems getting the peak power out of the climbers in the dynamic competition conditions we considered Skipper to be a long shot for the 5 meters per second prize but he should be able to cruise into 2nd place for the 2 meters per second prize level easily. He was set up light and fast. Nothing like his namesake. Skipper was performing well with forward motion faster than 5 meters per second when we had all parameters tuned well. However when one of the many parameters fell out of the acceptable range Skipper was shutting down. The capacitor pack that was supposed to prevent this from happening was not performing properly. The climb once again became a thumb wrestling match with dozens of controls in our trailer while Skipper alternated between sliding backward and moving forward. We fell off the 2 meters per second pace in a high intensity balancing act that we were slowly loosing. The time ran out on our turn. But like in football the games is not over until the end of the last play. We decided to push for the top. We were gaining on it when the radio down link cut out for a moment. The camera was far enough out of focus that I could not verify the safety of the helicopter so I called to turn off the laser beam. I turned on Skipper’s brake and hoped he would not slide too far backward while I fixed the focus on the camera and also hoped the radio down link would come back up. The helicopter’s fuel reserve limit came up. So with a dark motionless climber the operations manager understandably called it a day.
This email is far too short to really tell you everything that happened on this roller coaster we call the Space Elevator Games. But I would like to thank everyone that has helped us along the way. We have to wait for things to settle down before I can talk about “What’s next”.
Brian Turner
Captain
KC Space Pirates
So, there you have it from ‘the man’.
The picture is of the KCSP team and their climber. Team members shown are (from left-to-right) Don Stowers, Dan Leafblad, team captain Brian Turner, Frank Smith, Duane Johnson and Ryan Smith. Not present were Chad Hampy, Jerry Fredrick, Terri Niles, Debbie Leafblad, Rich Brull, Martin Lades, Warren Moore and Ravi Shankar Durgavathi. In the foreground is Spaceward CEO Ben Shelef and I’m sure you noticed that the KCSP team have their ‘hat headlights’ on…
Though their team didn’t qualify for the prize money this time around, they certainly showed that they are a force to be reckoned with and we know they’re going to be back, aiming for the 5 meter/second prize.
November 10th, 2009
NASA turned the Awards Ceremony into a full-blown presentation, complete with speeches, media coverage and, of course, the awarding of the $900,000 prize to Team LaserMotive. This ceremony was held in the hanger / machine shop that was the team headquarters throughout the competition (and throughout the testing).
First up to speak was David McBride, acting Center Director for the NASA-Dryden Flight Research Center. He was only recently (April, 2009) appointed to this position and I have to think he was very pleased by this turn of events - it marks a success for his center and he and his team.
Next up was Andy Petro, Program Executive for the Innovation Incubator - part of the NASA Innovative Partner’s Program. He spoke about how the Spaceward Foundation’s accomplishment in this just-completed Challenge was exactly what NASA had in mind when they started this program - using prize money to encourage people outside of NASA to think outside the box in developing technologies that NASA believes has a future in space exploration.
Then it was Ben Shelef’s turn. Ben is the CEO of the Spaceward Foundation, the organizer of this Centennial Challenge (and also the Strong-Tether Challenge). Ben gave a brief history of this Power-Beaming challenge and then thanked all of the people who helped put on this event (it was a lengthy list). He then introduced the team captains.
USST’s Patrick Allen spoke about how, though his team was disappointed in the outcome, they were very happy to have been part of this Challenge. He thanked his University (the University of Saskatchewan) for their support and then thanked all of the USST team members, past and present, for their efforts.
The Kansas City Space Pirate’s Brian Turner was up next. He gave a short, emotional speech thanking the event organizers, his team sponsors and most of all his team members for their efforts and for ‘believing in him’ even when he doubted himself. He also talked about how he is a person who is driven to compete and he thanked the other two teams for being worthy competitors and driving KCSP to be the best they could be.
Last up was the LaserMotive Team. Dr. Jordin Kare (on the right) spoke first and gave a brief history of how he and Tom Nugent started LaserMotive and their evolution to their current success. He thanked the event organizers, NASA, the team sponsors and team members. Tom Nugent joined him and echoed Jordin’s thanks to all concerned.
Finally, Andy and Ben took the podium again and presented the $900,000 check to Jordin and Tom from Team LaserMotive. It was a exciting and very satisfying outcome of this Challenge.
Well done to all!
November 9th, 2009
And here is NASA’s take on the just completed competition.
I’m going to write more about how the NASA people helped us during this competition, but for now I just want to say that they were superb. They are technically very competent and a real pleasure to work with. They obviously wanted this competition to succeed and they did everything they could to make it happen.
To the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center personnel, we owe you HUGE thanks…
November 8th, 2009
Last night, we had a celebration party at Domingo’s - a restaurant in nearby Boron that is the place the Shuttle astronauts eat at when they land the Shuttle at Edwards Air Force Base.
We had the entire patio reserved and, outside of being a bit chilly, the atmosphere was superb.
There were at least 60 people in our party. There were people from NASA, Spaceward, the helicopter crew, TRUMPF and, of course, the three teams.
Good mexican food and beer, lots of camaraderie and a celebration of an event that was extremely successful - what more could you want?
I’ve included a few pictures in this post. The topmost one is of the outside of Domingo’s - very festive as you can see.
The second is of part of the assembled party-goers. Truly, everyone had a good time.
And the third shows LaserMotive team member Dave Bashford wearing a sombrero. It was his birthday yesterday (Quite a birthday, yes? - being part of a team that had just been awarded $900K!) and the restaurant gave him their ‘birthday salute’. They smeared his face with whipped cream, put the sombrero on his head and sang Happy Birthday to him in Spanish and English (I missed the whipped cream part but was told about it).
Happy Birthday Dave!
November 7th, 2009
I’m sorry for the lack of posts today, but this is literally the first free moment I’ve had to blog…
The 2009 Space Elevator Games - Climber / Power-Beaming competition is over and it was a roaring success.
This competition saw several firsts, the most important being:
- The first laser-powered climb to a kilometer (accomplished by Team LaserMotive 4 times)
- The first laser-powered climb to exceed 2 meters/second (again, accomplished by Team LaserMotive 4 times)
Team LaserMotive was the only team to climb the full length of the tether. The Kansas City Space Pirates climbed an appreciable fraction of the tether (> 50%) several times while the USST team frankly struggled a bit. They were still able to power the climber over short distances with a laser, though.
For their accomplishment, Team LaserMotive won the $900,000 prize for performing a beam-powered climb to a full kilometer at an average speed of 2 meters / second or greater. Their best showing was nearly 4 meters per second and, for good measure, they accomplished these prize-winning climbs 4 times. Their system was very, very impressive.
I’ll have much more to blog about this competition over the next several days - and lots of pictures and video to share with you.
The picture thumbnail is of the winning LaserMotive team holding the winning check given to them by Andy Petro, the NASA Centennial Challenges honcho. LaserMotive team members shown (from left to right) are: Steve Beland, Bill Boyde, Carsten Erickson, Tom Nugent, Nick Burrows, Jordin Kare, Mary Kay Kare, Dave Bashford and Steve Burrows. Not present were Brent Davis, Don Moore, Jeff Alexander, Joe Grez, Dave Truax and Nick Bratt.
There are so many people to thank and I want to do separate posts on each of them. But for now, I want to say that the ‘tether trio’ of Doug Uttecht (Helicopter Pilot), Michael Keating (Tetherman) and Keith Mackey (Helicopter ground control) performed magnificently. Also, we owe enormous thanks to John Kelly and all of the other people at the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center where the competition was held. Their backing was amazing and inspiring - we kept throwing curve balls at them and they kept hitting them out of the park.
Congratulations LaserMotive and all the other competitors at the 2009 Climber / Power-Beaming competition!
November 6th, 2009
USST was unable to climb today. KCSP, after some delay caused by a higher priority air mission, made multiple runs.
Unfortunately, the KCSP Climber never made it to the top. They seemed to climb for about 3 minutes and would then just ‘lose it’. It’s useless for me to speculate as to why, so I won’t try. I do know that during their first attempt, they experienced a ‘dark climber’ condition (i.e. their laser lost tracking). I don’t know if that was what happened in subsequent runs. I’m sure there will be some (more) midnight oil burned by the KCSP team tonight working on this.
So, the summary is this. LaserMotive is sitting pretty. They’ve qualified for the $900K prize.
Tomorrow is the third and final round of the Games. Up first is USST, then the Space Pirates and finally LaserMotive for their third and final Climb window. If any team passes on their chance tomorrow, they won’t get another one.
First climb window is from 7:00am to 9:00am, second window is from 9:00am to 11:00am and the third and final window is from 9:00am to 1:00pm.
Tune in to http://live.spaceelevatorgames.org to follow all the action LIVE.
November 5th, 2009
USST was originally scheduled to run between 12:00 noon and 2:00pm while the KC Space Pirates were scheduled to run between 2:00pm and 4:00pm.
USST has passed on their window. The KC Space Pirates are doing what they can to speed up their launch window, but they are under no obligation to do so. If they can launch by 1:00pm or so (which looks very unlikely), then USST will get another chance at around 3:00pm.
If the Space Pirates cannot launch by that time (or shortly thereafter), then I would assume that USST could use that slot if they get ready.
We’ll see…
November 5th, 2009
So, if you have climbers of different weights carrying different payloads and having different times to complete the run, how do you come up with a fair way to judge who the winner is?
The way Spaceward has done this is to give preference to climber speed and to payload ratio (the amount of payload vs. the weight of the climber). In the latest post on the Official Site of the Space Elevator Games, we learn that the formula used to calculate this is:
The speed of the climb (in meters/second) times the payload (in kilograms) divided by the weight of the climber (again, in kilograms).
This formula allows the user to normalize the results; i.e. put them in a format where you can do an ‘apples to apples’ comparison.
Plugging in the numbers for LaserMotive’s best run yesterday, you get a score of .45. Other teams will try to beat this.
(Update Nov 11 - Reader Joel Polowin points out an obvious mistake I made. The speed factor is meters/second, NOT total elapsed seconds. My bad. I fixed the post. Thanks Joel…)
November 5th, 2009
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