As you all know, there were a total of eight teams which competed in this year’s Climber /Power-Beaming competition.  Two other teams, however, almost made it and they brought their climbers to display to the crowds and to the other competitors.

One was from Arthur Shay’s Team Zero-G.  This is a Stirling-engine powered climber, the third attempt, I think, at doing such an entry at the Games.  None of them have been able to compete, however, so either the technology is flawed or it just hasn’t been executed as well (or as soon) as it should.  Incidentally, Arthur was/is trying to make this climber an open / cooperative effort (ala Michael Laine and Liftport).  If you’re interested in participating with this team at next year’s Games, give Arthur a shout at zero.g.tec [AT] gmail [DOT] com – he’d love to hear from you.

The other was Michael Harvey’s entry; the Andromeda Connection.  This device was to be powered by MOLPSol, their “Solar Laser”.  From his website: “A solar laser. Of course any device producing white light cannot be considered a laser in the strictest sense of the word, but, it’s similar to a laser in that it produces a collimated beam of light with a relatively narrow bandwidth.”  It would have been very interesting to see this Climber in action.  And, I’m not trying to be snarky or anything, but this Climber looks for all the world like something out of “Lost in Space”. 🙂

I was able to talk with both competitors briefly, certainly not as much as I would have liked to – but other events / blogging kept me pretty busy.  Let’s hope that we see both of these competitors at next year’s Games.  The Prize Money is now a cool $900,000 – enough to get anyone’s pecuniary juices flowing, for sure.

Click on the thumbnails for larger versions of the Climbers.