As of right now, there are still only six teams that have qualified to compete in the 2006 Space Elevator Games Climber Competition.  They are the Kansas City Space Pirates, TurboCrawler, LiteWon, UBC-Snowstar, MClimber (from University of Michigan) and USST.  That’s a pretty broad mix.  The KC Space Pirates are a family affair, TurboCrawler is from a German University, LiteWon is from an American High School, UBC-Snowstar and USST are from Canadian Universities and Climber 1 is from an American University.  No company sponsored qualifiers, though.

As for the other six entrants, here is their status;

Recens – From Spain.  I have my information second-hand, but from what I understand, their Climber was lost (not delivered to the wrong address, but LOST) by UPS, somewhere in Kentucky.  Even if it shows up tomorrow, there is almost no chance they can compete.  If the information about their missing equipment is true, they were well and truly screwed – what a shame.

SpaceMiners – They burned out 4 cells on their photocell array on a qualification attempt and are still hopeful of qualifying tomorrow.

StarClimber – They suffered a mechanical problem while on the ribbon, trying to qualify.  While Matt is working on fixing it, he’s not hopeful.  It doesn’t look good for them, but they’re not totally dead yet.

Punkworks – They still think they have a shot at it.  They were doing some ribbon testing tonight and hope to qualify tommorrow.

Beamer (the Fischer team) – Another tragedy.  When their Climber was being weighed in, it somehow got disconnected from the scale and crashed to the ground.  The lens fractured and may not be usable.

Centaurus Aerospace – As far as I know, no one’s heard from them – I guess they’re no shows.

So that’s where we are.  At least six teams will be competing and there’s a chance that up to 3 more may make it (though I’d give odds on only 1 or 2 of them).

Below are some more pictures from today.  Click on the thumbnails for a larger version.

Dr. Bradley Edwards arrives.  Here he is with Spaceward CEO Ben Shelef – both getting their hands dirty.

Ben Shelef directing an all-hands meeting tonight, going over the logistics for competing tomorrow.  Evidently, there has been some sort of snafu in getting credentials issued and it promises to be a merry mess getting in, in the morning !

Meet Marty – Marty is our version of the “Cable Guy” – he’s the one who, today anyway, runs the crane handling the qualifying tether.  Here he is, sitting in the crane’s cab.