And the Germans say no…

It looks like the German WARR team will NOT be competing this year.  Today, I received this email from Andreas Hein, WARR team member:

Hi Ted,

Nice to hear from you! We already studied the rulebook for this year and unfortunately we don’t see a chance to participate successfully. This is due to the significant increase of the climbing height and the changed geometry from a ribbon to a rope.

In 2008 we’ll continue to optimize our system and conduct extended testing. There is also a study on its way to investigate whether we may participate in the competition in 2009 from a energy transmission point of view.

We’ll try to give you further information as soon as our future planning is set and hope to stay in contact with you!

Kind regards,

Andreas Hein

Damn – I would have loved to see that 30 meter emitter.  If I make it to the 2nd European Workshop on Space Elevator Design, maybe I can arrange a side trip to check it out…

Let’s hope we can see this team compete next year.