This week’s edition of Weekend Walkabout starts in Europe, moves on for a stop in Brazil and winds up in India. And we get not one, but two new translations of Space Elevator…
We start in Europe where the WARR Student Group at the Technical University of Munich hosted the most recent space elevator related competition, EUSPEC 2024. Four teams competed: Space Robotics, Alpha Centauri, Inoue Lab Team and Meier’s 11. Check out their webpage for more details and also photos of the competition.
The people behind this competition are the WARR Space Robotics people. From their website: “WARR Space Robotics is an interdisciplinary team of robotics enthusiasts at the Technical University of Munich. The team is the result of the merger of the former WARR exploration (founded in 2017) and WARR space elevator (founded in 2007) teams in 2023.” A January blog post briefly describes their participation in the Japan Space Elevator Challenge (JSPEC) held last December in Fuji, Japan.
The EUSPEC 2024 webpage mentions EUSPEC 2026 so besides the hoped-for-revival of the Space Elevator Games, we have another competition to look forward to.
Next we jet to Brazil, where this very cool artwork by Dave Seeley imagines a space elevator located on a river in Brazil.
Looking at a map, we can see that the north branch of the Amazon River exits Brazil into the Atlantic Ocean at Macapá, the capital of the Brazilian state of Amapá. What’s really cool about this is that the equator runs right through the middle of Macapá, giving it the nickname “The Capital of the Middle of the World“. And, as we all know, the equator is the prime location to place a Space Elevator. What’s even more cool is the flag of Macapá (pictured). The flag’s red, yellow, and green stripes frame a silver Fortaleza de São José tower silhouette, eerily resembling a climber on a tether. Did a time traveler design that flag?
In Macapá, locals might call a space elevator ‘Elevador Espacial’ in Portuguese, the official language of Brazil.
Finally, we land in India, a potential powerhouse for a future Space Elevator. I’ve often written about how I think that India could be a real contender when a Space Elevator becomes feasible. The Edwards/Westling seminal book on Space Elevators identified a couple of locations in the Indian ocean that could be prime locations for a Space Elevator Earthport and, of course, India has direct sea lanes to those locations and a real Navy that could defend them. A space elevator could boost India’s space ambitions, complementing its navy’s strength and strategic Indian Ocean access.
Business Today India recently posted a nice series of graphics (“22,000-mile cable to space”) about a potential space elevator.
And, if the Indians ever get serious about this, they’ll probably want to purchase the website spaceelevator.in – which is already taken by the Space Elevator company. From their website: “At Space Elevator, We’re Committed to Raising Your Expectations When It Comes To Vertical Transportation Solutions…Space Elevator Is A Distinguished Name In the World of Elevators And Lifts, Known For Excellence in Manufacturing And Providing Top-NotchServices“. Sounds good to me…
And this brings us to our weekly Translation Project updates. This week we’re going to get two new translations, not just one.
India has 22 scheduled (official) languages but has many more – the 2011 Indian Census recorded over a thousand distinct “mother tongues”. Of these, the languages with the most speakers are Hindi (by far), followed by Bengali and Telugu. I already have the Hindi translation in the Translation Project and am now adding Bengali and Telugu.
Bengali: মহাকাশ লিফট (Mahākāśa liphaṭa – “Great Sky Lift” or “Space Lift” – Fun fact: In addition to being the second most common language spoken in India, Bengali is the official language of Bangladesh.
Telugu: అంతరిక్ష ఎలివేటర్ (Antariksha elevēṭar – “Space Elevator” or “Cosmos Elevator”
And that’s a wrap for this week’s Weekend Walkabout.