2007 Space Elevator Games – (Entry 77)

THIS is what I came to see.

USST made a total of 5 runs.  All were spectacular.  None, unfortunately, were fast enough to claim the prize.  Their fastest run was 54 seconds.  We’re not sure exactly how quick that was as we need to measure the ribbon.  This will be done tomorrow.  But we’re sure that the ribbon was not 108 meters, and therefore there was no way they could have met the 2 m/s requirement.

But the runs were spectacular.  They actually picked up speed in a few runs the higher they climbed.  It looks like they have some work to do on their tracking software, but I’m sure they’re going to be taking care of that.

So, unfortunately, the results were like last year – USST was just a few seconds too slow to claim the prize.  But they greatly increased their speed over last year (approximately double) and are fulfilling NASA’s and Spaceward’s goal of advancing the state of the art.

Laser-powered climbs and carbon nanotube tethers were at the 2007 Space Elevator Games – how cool is that!!??!!

I don’t know how much blogging I’ll be doing over the next few days.  I’m off to the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary – to fulfill a long-held ambition of mine.  If I have any time, I’ll upload some of the videos and link to them.  But I may not be able to blog again until I’m home on the weekend.

Either way, I’ll be sure and post the rest of the footage I’ve taken.

Thanks for reading…

22 thoughts on “2007 Space Elevator Games – (Entry 77)

  1. Lisa in Regina, SK

    Thanks for the updates, I have been watching for new ones with great anticipation, cheering on the USST. Congrats to all participants on all their hard work and dedication to the project.

  2. Sean

    Thank *you* for posting! To be honest, I’ve been checking your blog practically every hour since Friday. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one. Thanks for keeping us all up to date, and take care.

    Skronk and Greezle, by the way, are awesome. Best article I’ve read in a while! 🙂

  3. dxoa

    Yeah, the teams are advancing NASA’s goals without NASA having to pay out. Hopefully they gave out some pretty awesome consolation prizes.

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  6. Sophia

    Wow this is amazing i had no idea scientists were working on an elevator that could carry you into space. The prospect for me is exciting yet a little scary, to see space and to have that kind of technology is amazing. The scary part is that i know this is just one more step towards the fall of civilization, because every step science takes nature takes one back. I can just imagine that as soon as we perfect this technology these elevators will pop up everywhere, all over the world, polluting our sky lines and possibly air. And what will this lead to, once we accomplish this, what is next? Its all ok but i think we all may need to stop for a second and think what we want our world to be like in 100, 200 years, with all of this technology and science we are messing around with we are pushing nature out and this worries me. I dont think we can comprehend fully what science and technology is doing and maybe we should stop and find out before continuing. Well look at me rambling on, if possible keep me updated on this.

  7. r boots

    Thanks for the blog from the folks back home. The team members didn’t have time to email, so we were glad to know what was going on. We checked the blog often. Thanks for posting it.
    A USST fan

  8. scott

    Nasa has once again ripped off these students who have worked this hard to do this. I hope they never compete in this competition again and let Nasa design their own space elevator. This is a load of crap. At least give them back the money they had to raise this year to compete. It was ~$300,000.

    “Let’s re-measure the cable” —2 years of BS.

  9. Joe Strout

    Please add some comments (and ideally, video!) about the “Light Racers” contest. I’m eager to hear how this went, as this is something I can imagine my family actually entering sometime.

  10. Pingback: TheBlogItAll » Blog Archive » NASA’s third Space Elevator challenge falls short

  11. Tyler Vincent

    Excuse the following: &$(# NASA. Why don’t people use a satellite array with parabolic mirrors and solar panels which send the energy down through the cable to the elevator? Or have lazers shoot it up past the cloud level and then have parabolic solar arrays do the rest of the work where the atmosphere is thinner and the energy conversion is more efficient? WHY WHY WHY

  12. Chris in Kanab, UT

    Have fun at Best Friends and thanks for blogging this. Apparently I’m not the only one who’s interested in both space elevator technology and helping animals.

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