Daily Archives: October 3, 2007

The field narrows…

In the last few days, two of the teams which had entered the Climber / Power-Beaming event at this year’s Space Elevator Games have announced they will not be competing this year.  Donald Longerbeam’s Starlifters dropped out, citing financial issues, while just today, Michael Harvey and the Andromeda Connection threw in the towel, citing problems in getting solar cells capable of handling their MOLPSol “laser”.

This winnowing out is a normal process; it occurred in both the 2005 and 2006 Space Elevator Games – not every attempt to build and power a Climber is successful.  And it gets harder each year as the requirements continue to become more stringent.

But not to worry; there are several teams who have already demonstrated their teams capabilities and will be competing.  This year’s events will be, by far, the most competitive in the history of the Space Elevator Games.  We’ll be seeing teams using, for the first time, both laser and microwave propulsion systems and we’ll see how quickly this technology is advancing.

But I must say that I hope that the Starlifters will continue to attend our weekly chat session – they were always so cheerful and upbeat and just a joy to be around 🙂