Day 1 – (Part 6) !

The next team to make an attempt was the German Turbo Crawler.  This is the biggest climber in the competition, a full 26 kilos (1 kilo over the allowance – some negotiation and winning formula recalculation was necessary to allow them qualify).  But they, too, fell victim to the winds here.  Below are some photos showing what happened – as always, click on the thumbnails to view a larger version of the picture.

The tether twisting, twisting, twisting.  It got so bad at times that the tether actually wrapped around the line next to it.

 

 

 

 

German team struggling to get their Climber in a position to launch.

 

 

 

Another view…

 

 

 

Professor Dr. Detlef H. Meche explaining to one of the news crew that today’s test had to be cancelled due to high winds.  He made the point that their particular climber needs to have a stable tether for the first 5 meters – after that they can deal with the wind.

 

 

 

One other point of note; TurboCrawler uses 30,000 watts of light to drive their Climber.  They brought an 18,000 watt spotlight from Germany with them and rented a 12,000 watt spotlight here (from Hollywood, no less).

One thought on “Day 1 – (Part 6) !

  1. Jasper Bouwmeester

    First of all, thanks for blogging this. I really wanted to be at the games, but my funds didn’t allow me to. This gives me the opportunity to follow the efforts.

    I am a little bit disappointed in the climbers. Wind should have been taking into account in their design.
    But what I really would like to see is beam tracking and high wall plug efficiency. Using 30kW of power for a 25kg climber is way too much and shouldn’t be allowed next year (to keep a fair competition).
    If the efficiency would be 100%, you need 250W for a 25kg climber to go 1m/s. With 30kW, the efficiency is less than 1%, and that’s not even wall plug efficiency.

    Since I am not there, can somebody tell me if any of the teams use monochramatic light and/or automatic beam steering?
    How serious are the designs? Scalable to a real SE or just attempts to come back with 2k$?

    And I am very curious if any of the tethers win the prize this year. As long as CNT fibers don’t pass the 10GPa (normalized to 1000kg/m^3), it will be difficult to really ignite the SE developement.

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