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.

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…

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…)

We’re all here getting ready for Day 2.  First up will be USST as they did not get to go yesterday.  Once they are done, then Round 1 will be completed.

The original plan was to decide the order of future rounds once the preceding round was completed.  However, the teams today wanted to set the order for Round 2 and 3 so that was done.  The order of the rounds are:

Round 1: (Wednesday & Thursday)

• KCSP (completed)
• LaserMotive (completed)
• USST (yet to run)

Round 2 (Thursday)

• LaserMotive
• USST
• KCSP

Round 3 (Friday)

• USST
• KCSP
• LaserMotive

They’re even beginning to make plans for the Prize Ceremony on Friday – this is good.

More later.  Tune in to http://live.spaceelevatorgames.org to watch everything LIVE!

Stay tuned!