During the lunch break today, Ben Shelef of the Spaceward Foundation talked to the crowd about the Space Elevator Games, both Power-Beaming / Climber and Tether competitions.

In this picture, however, Ben is responding to a presentaton given earlier by Ivan Bekey, highlighting potential problems to the Space Elevator, this case space debris.  Ben is pointing out that the problem is not as bad as feared; the great majority of debris is so small that it’s damage to the elevator is ‘manageable’, while the larger objects are so infrequent that moving the elevator can take care of it.

Mmmm, chocolate fudge cake.  A note that Randy Lieberman (who spoke earlier) was responsible for the delicious lunch today.  Thanks Randy!

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The conference started off with the keynote address by Dr. Bradley C. Edwards.  Dr. Edwards summarized developments of how we got to where we are today in Space Elevator development and things that hopefully / should happen in the near future.  A few pictures:

Here is Dr. Edwards in front of his opening slide.

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Dr. Edwards with another slide.

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THIS is interesting.  There is now a study being done by Sotheby’s International to see if a Space Elevator ‘ride’ might be viable.  People who have visited DisneyWorld or MGM and have been on their various theme rides (riding through asteroids or whatever) know that something like this can be made very realistic.  This ‘ride’ could be combined with an audience-viewable research center and the profits of all this could go to real Space Elevator research.  This is a really cool idea and I hope it comes to fruition.  I’ll keep you all posted.

Here we go.  It’s now 9:10 am, Pacific time, and the 2008 Space Elevator Conference is underway.

Two bits of breaking news.  First, the team from TXL has dropped out of this year’s Space Elevator Games.  I spoke with David Nemir from TXL (who is here at the conference and is giving a talk on “Thermoelectric technology and the Space Elevator) and he told me that his Board was afraid that the Space Elevator competition was taking away from the focus of their company.  I don’t know what’s the matter with these people, trying to stay focused and make money.  Geez…  Anyway, we’re very sorry to see them go, I (and everyone else) wanted to see how their thermoelectric technology would work and it would have been nice to have at least one team which was corporate sponsored.  Oh well, when their Board sees a big check going to someone this year, they can think “gee – this could have been us.”

Second, the support mechanism for the competition tether this year has been changed from a balloon to a helicopter.  For various reasons, the balloon idea just didn’t work out and this other plan has been put into place.  It’s simplified some issues tremendously, but has complicated others, of course.  More about this later.