It appears that I was wrong (or at least premature) when I wrote back on August 6th “Please note that only 3 teams. USST, KCSP and LaserMotive, have qualified at this point to compete for the NASA-sponsored prize money.  I do not believe that any other teams will be added to this mix in the future as the qualification window for the Climber / Power-Beaming competition is now closed.”  During this time period where changes were being made to the raceway, the team from the National Space Society (NSS) has been furiously working on their climber, hoping against hope that they could somehow qualify in time for the competition.

It appears that this may now be a possibility.  Next Monday and Tuesday, October 12th and 13th, the team from NSS will be at the TRUMPF facility in Plymouth, Michigan, testing and validating their Climber and power-control system. Personnel from both Spaceward and NASA-Dryden will be there too, along with yours truly.

I haven’t been able to make either of the previous two new raceway tests and that was a major bummer for me, so I’m really glad to be able to make this set of testing.

If NSS passes this set of tests, they will be fully qualified to compete.  And, regarding the actual competition itself, the actual date for this will be announced very soon (really, truly, trust me) and the competition will be soon, too.  The raceway is all ready – now it’s just a matter of scheduling the logistics of NASA, Dryden and TRUMPF.  The three (or maybe now four) teams are also ready.

I’ll be blogging and Tweeting from the TRUMPF facility and will post a wrap-up afterwards.  Also, I’m sure Ben will be updating us on events over at the official site of the Space Elevator Games.

Stay tuned!

Over at SpaceElevatorGames.org, the official website of the Space Elevator Games, Spaceward Foundation CEO Ben Shelef gives us his take on the just completed testing, complete with a short video of part of the testing.

The raceway is READY – now it’s just down to scheduling.  When can we get the venue, when can TRUMPF bring their laser and when can the teams finalize their schedule so that this can all happen?

It shouldn’t be long – we’re hoping for the competition to occur in October.

And, in case the Two Million Dollar Grand Prize goes unclaimed this time ’round again (though many of us will be surprised if that happens), the raceway and requirements for the 2010 Space Elevator Games would remain unchanged; i.e. an average speed of 5km over the full kilometer climb.  This means that if Spaceward and NASA do have to schedule another set of Games next year, there will be no change to the raceway – it’s ready to go…

Stay tuned!

Anne-Marie Cey, the Communications and and Public Relations Strategist for the University of Saskatchewan (home of the USST team), sent me an email to let me know that a new video, touting the USST team, has been posted on YouTube.  I watched it – it’s pretty neat and am including it in this post.

The video was created by a Saskatoon based company, Juxtapose Productions.  Thanks for the tip Anne-Marie!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwc8Fznovps[/youtube]

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With all due respect to Mark Boots, who is quoted as saying that the chief advantage of the Space Elevator is that it “…would make access to space way more inexpensive and way more affordable…“, I believe that the chief advantage is that a Space Elevator is scalable.  You can build one that can lift many tons to space EVERY DAY.  This is the way that you colonize space – having a carbon railway to the stars.

Anyway, enjoy the video – I certainly did!

This past weekend, the second test of the new, improved Climber / Power-Beaming raceway was held.  As with the first test, everything went really well.  Here is the update from Ben Shelef, CEO of the Spaceward Foundation and organizer of the Space Elevator Games:

Hi folks.

I wanted to update you on the results of the second test in Olympia this past weekend.

As you recall, we made several changes after the tests at Dryden – we changed the helicopter vendor, we mandated use of the GPS hover-aid, and we swapped out the winch with the Virtual Bob (R) motion-arrestor system. We tested everything for the first time with a 1000′ cable two weeks ago, and everything worked very well.

This second test was a general rehearsal for the games – we used the full length cable (total of 4300′ above ground level) and had a battery-powered climber run up to the the top while we checked that tracking was feasible within the parameters we’ve set – not exceeding a 15 degree half angle cone, and not coming too close to the helicopter.  We were able to do all of this successfully.   We also practiced pull-up and set-down of the system several times, and really, there’s nothing much to it anymore.

This is the place to give Keith Mackey his due credit, since without him this would never have come to fruition, to NW Helicopters who have been more than tremendously helpful, and to Doug Uttecht who flew the helicopter for us oh so beautifully.

I’ll be blogging about the details in the next couple of days,

Ben

I’ve included some photos that Nic DeGrazia (from the Chicago video production company Bitter Jester Creative, Inc.) sent me.  The topmost one is unbelievably cool (IMHO) – it shows the Kansas City Space Pirates climber ascending the ribbon.  This picture is the closest thing we have yet to being able to show what a real Space Elevator is going to look like.  I don’t know if Nic composed the shot to show the sunshine spilling into the right half of the picture or not, but it’s a really cool effect.

The second picture is also of the KCSP Climber, this time not too far above the top of the Pyramid.

The third picture is of the pyramid itself while the fourth picture shows the Pyramid, too, this time with some of the base being lifted up by the helicopter.  As Nic mentioned in his email to me that accompanied this picture, “The base of The Pyramid (this was the helicopter’s anchor … you see it here doing it’s job – it plopped back down a moment later)“.  If you don’t know what I’m talking about, with the “Pyramid” and all, check out the official website of the Space Elevator Games for the details.

Thanks for the pictures Nic!

The Lasermotive Blog and Tweet log also has some information sent out during the testing.

So, now all we need is a date for the competition.  It certainly looks like it will be sooner rather than later.  Stay tuned to this blog or the official site of the Space Elevator Games for the latest updates.

(Click on the picture thumbnails to see a larger version of the picture)

I received this email from Brian Turner, captain of the Kansas City Space Pirates:

We are off to Seattle to do some testing with the new helicopter and cable arrangement this weekend.

The new helicopter is about 3 to 4 times smaller and more precise than the old one. I am quite happy about that. The preliminary tests that Spaceward ran 2 weeks ago were a roaring success.

One of the downsides is that after rethinking the cable system we have had to eliminate the part where we walk up and attach the climber to the bottom of the cable while the helicopter holds it up.  That means that we have to come up with a system that lets the little, fragile climber get picked up off of the ground and set back down by the helicopter while we stand a safe distance away.

I like the safe distance part. The old system had us attaching the climber to a cable that might move up or down suddenly with enough force to take off a finger. Or if was locked in position so it can’t move up and down might snap and hit us in the head. Probably not, but this is better. However the climber gets a much more harrowing ride.  So we are going to test that and a bunch of other stuff.

As some of you may remember. At the last competition the ribbon snapped several times. One of those times was as we were walking up to attach the climber. If that had happened about 30 seconds later it could have gotten my fingers. So perhaps I am a little too focused on that particular scenario.

If these tests are successful, then a date for the competition can be set. It could be as early as a few weeks if the rest of the details fall into place.

Wish us luck, and I really hope it goes well because this is starting to feel like a pregnancy that has gone well past term. Even for an elephant we are past due.

Brian Turner
Captain
KC Space Pirates

We’re getting close, really we are…

(Picture from here)

One of the many challenges in the Climber / Power-Beaming event of the Space Elevator Games is keeping the helicopter that holds up the steel cable raceway in the proper position.  Keith Mackey, the aviation consultant that Ben hired to assist in all-matters related to the aircraft had devised a GPS-based system to be used by the helicopter pilot for this purpose.  Sadly, the original pilot hired by Spaceward proved unwilling to use this system and this contributed greatly to the failure of the initial testing.

On a more happy note, the pilot now contracted by Spaceward was ready and willing to use this system and it has proved to be a great success, as noted on the post at the Space Elevator Games website.

The equipment that is performing this very necessary task has been provided by the Dynon Avionics Corporation and they now have a post about it on their company blog – it makes for very interesting reading.

Thanks Dynon!

Ben Shelef, CEO of the Spaceward Foundation and driving force behind the Space Elevator Games, has posted some additional information about the latest round of testing.

Truly, it went very, very well.  The system was stable and predictable and performed exactly as hoped.  Ben’s posts discuss several aspects of the new setup and gives you insight as to what the plan is now.

Additionally, Ben lets us know about a possible new (old) entrant into the Climber / Power-Beaming Competition in his latest post.

Visit his official site of the Games and check out the posts…

During the testing a couple of weeks of the new, simplified, improved Space Elevator Games ‘race track’, the LaserMotive team took some videos from their mock climber.

They say some people labeled them ‘vomitrocious’ but I think they’re pretty cool.

Check it out…

Over at the official site of the Space Elevator Games, Spaceward Foundation CEO Ben Shelef fills us in on problems that occurred during the first sets of tests, changes that have been made and where we are now.

His first post is Return to Blogging (welcome back!) while his second, Old Wrap-up and New Plan, is the definitive word on “what went wrong” and what has been done to fix the problem issues…

Yesterday I wrote about how the preliminary test of the new Climber / Power-Beaming ‘raceway’ was quite a success.  Here is the email that Ben Shelef, CEO of the Spaceward Foundation, sent to the “inner circle” earlier today:

Hi folks.

A quick happy update.

We were talking with a new helicopter operator (in Washington state) who is not currently occupied by fire fighting when we realized (last Friday) that we have an opportunity to fly this past weekend.  We did a quick turnaround, got everything shipped out to them, and on Thursday Keith and myself arrived at their site. We put together the hardware on Friday (the tether setup and the helicopter instrumentation) and on Saturday morning met with the Washington Area volunteers (Dave Horn, Tony Rusi) and LM at the flight site.

Keith spent the first half hour with the pilot teaching him to fly the GPS system, (which worked perfectly) and then flew over to meet us at the site. We already had the tether setup (new and improved) ready, limited to 900′ AGL on this test, and they picked it up and flew it just perfectly.  The cable was rock solid, position keeping was perfect, tension was perfect – nothing to it. Did it several times with various settings too, until we basically exhausted this test setup – next step is a full altitude test.

So we’re a happy bunch of guys right now, and planning to fly the high-altitude test asap, so we can get these games done already!

Hope you are having as good a weekend as we are,

More soon – Ben.

The ‘Keith’ that Ben refers to is Keith Mackey, the aviation consultant Spaceward hired for the Games.  Dave Horn works at Microsoft and was the chief organizer of the just-finished Space Elevator Conference.  And the LM Ben refers to is LaserMotive, one of the Climber / Power-Beaming entrants.  They, too, are located in Washington and some of their team members attended the test to watch and to help out.  Over at the LaserMotive blog, they’ve posted their own summary and some pictures.  Make sure you check it out…

I just spoke to Ben Shelef, CEO of the Spaceward Foundation and the driving force behind the Space Elevator Games.  As I indicated in my previous post, Ben was coordinating another test of the Space Elevator ‘race course’ this weekend and he tells me that everything went as well as could have been hoped for.  They didn’t do a full-height test on the helicopter (that will be about 5,000 feet), but they did do multiple ascents / descents of the helicopter and steel cable raceway up to 1,000 feet.  All went well, everything remained under control.

This is great news and means that a second test, scheduled for sometime in the next couple of weeks can now take place.  This will be a test of the system to it’s full, 5,000 foot height.  If that works (and now we have great optimism that it will), then the Cliimber / Power-Beaming competition will be a  “go”.

I should have more details of today’s testing, including pictures, in the next day or two.

Yes I know, I haven’t posted in several days.  There’s just not much going on right now in the Space Elevator ‘world’ that is visible right now.

There IS progress being made behind the scenes, however, with the Climber / Power-Beaming competition in the Space Elevator Games.  As most of you know, problems occurred during the previous two tests of the competition raceway – these problems were chronicled (here and here) on this blog and in many other places in the blogosphere.  A somewhat redesigned system along with a different helicopter pilot is set for testing this weekend.  I really wish I could be there to report on it firsthand, but I have a previous engagement that I just can’t break.

I don’t want to go into all of the details of the new system – I’ll let Ben do that on his Space Elevator Games Blog – but I will say that it is simpler than the previous one.  The people at the NASA-Dryden research center think this new way is the way to go (they were involved in the design modifications) and I, from my limited viewpoint, also think this new system has a much better chance of success.

So, wish Ben and the rest of the team good luck this weekend.  If all goes well, we’ll be able to schedule the competition in the next few weeks and finally get to see some kilometer long, laser-powered, vertical climbs – and NASA will finally be able to hand out some prize-money in the Space Elevator Games.

(Crossed fingers picture from here)

One of my favorite Sci-Fi authors is Jerry Pournelle.  I like the stuff he writes on his own but when he and Larry Niven collaborate, they create some of the best Sci-Fi ever written (IMHO, of course).  Chief examples are Footfall, Oath of Fealty, Inferno and, of course, The Mote in God’s Eye.

Dr. Pournelle also maintains his own website, Chaos Manor, and a few days ago, a writer wrote to him about using Prize Money to advance technology.  This is what the writer had to say, along with Dr. Pournelle’s response;

Competition and prizes win big,

Jerry,

I know you are a big fan of prizes to advance technologies. Dig this:

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htarm/20090818.aspx

“For several decades, the U.S. Department of Defense has been trying to build a robotic vehicle. But in early 2004, the Department of Defense decided to try something different, and give enterprising civilian organizations a chance to show what they could do. DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) held the DARPA Grand Challenge. Put simply, the first robotic vehicle (moving completely under software control, with no human intervention) that could complete a 240 kilometer course, would get a million dollars for its designers. No one even came close. But a second Challenge, held in late 2005, yielded several finishers, and the first one picked up the million dollar prize for navigating a 212 kilometers cross country course in just under seven hours. All vehicles operated under software control, as true robots. The third “Challenge” race was held in late 2007, and had a two million dollar prize for the first vehicle to complete a 60 kilometer course through an urban environment (an abandoned air force base) in under six hours.”

After several iterations of this competition:

“Earlier this month, two T2 vehicles equipped with sensors and control equipment, successfully passed realistic tests. One of the test subjects, controlled from a Stryker wheeled armored vehicle, successfully approached a village (equipped with mannequins set up as pedestrians along the streets), did a perimeter sweep at speeds of up to fifty kilometers an hour, then patrolled the streets, avoiding the pedestrians, and finally departed the area.”

“The DARPA Challenge races have been a bonanza in terms of advancing the state of the art for robotic vehicles. For less than $10 million in prize money and expenses, the Department of Defense has created new technology that would have otherwise cost more than $100 million, and taken a lot longer to perfect.”

It would never work in space, of course. We have to use the NASA monopoly. Of course..

Ed

(Dr. Pournelle’s response); I have never understood why prizes are not popular. They cost almost nothing — perhaps a million a year total to fund a commission that determines if a prize should be awarded — and you know the total to be paid. A ten billion prize for a Lunar Colony Prize (keep 31 Americans alive and well on the Moon for 3 years and one day) would either get us a Moon Base or it would cost nothing. A reusable space ship prize of 5 billion (send the same ship to orbit 13 times in one year) would again get us a space ship or would cost nothing. We spent more than half that on the X-33 fiasco.

I couldn’t agree more with the sentiment, although I think the writer is unfamiliar with the NASA-run Centennial Challenge program.  Look at what has been accomplished so far with the Centennial Challenges, specifically the Space Elevator Games.  From a standing start in 2005, we now have multiple systems capable of directing and tracking 8kw lasers so that they can beam power to a remote climber which will ascend/descend a kilometer long cable.  The representative from the Laser Clearing House who came to inspect and OK the competitor’s equipment commented that the teams had systems which were better than some she had seen in our own military.

So far, these competitions have cost NASA very little (just the costs of administering the competitions).  Even when NASA does have to pay its $2 million prize in the Climber / Power-Beaming competition, they’ll still have received a tremendous bargain.  If they want this technology, they can purchase it (they have 3 options), rather than have to develop it on its own…

(Thanks to the tip for this story from Space For Commerce)

I have a number of feeds in my RSS reader.  Periodically I go through and clear out a bunch that are no longer of interest to me.  One that I’ve never cleared out and always enjoyed reading is Alan Boyle’s Cosmic Log.  Alan always finds the most interesting bit of information to pass along.  If you don’t subscribe to his blog, you’re missing a treat…

Alan has also been an avid follower of the efforts to develop a Space Elevator and has been to most of the competitions and most of the US conferences, including this year’s US Space Elevator Conference.

Here is his take on this year’s conference and the Space Elevator in general.  The picture with the tether that the Japanese team brought to this year’s Strong Tether competition shows that tether draped over yours truly’s fat fingers…

Alan refers to Ben Shelef’s Space Elevator Feasibility Condition paper and I’m glad he does.  As I’ve opined here before, I think this is the most significant paper that has come out of the space elevator community in quite some time.  It’s most important point states that unless some sort of unforeseen breakthrough can happen in the development of carbon nanotubes, we’re going to have to live with a tether that is no stronger than ~50 MYuris.  A tether / Space Elevator is still possible with this strength, but it gives us less leeway than we thought we had in the past.

I hope Ben is wrong about this (so does he), but if a ~50 MYuri tether is all we’re going to get, then we should start designing towards that.  This will be the subject of a future post.

It’s ‘fire season’ in California / western US and that has bad consequences besides the obvious.  For the Climber / Power-Beaming competition of the Space Elevator Games, we need a helicopter to hold up the racetrack.  All of the helicopters are now being used to fight these fires so none are available for our testing.

Damn.

So, we’re weather-dependent again…  If it gets really rainy where the fires are burning, then, hopefully, the helicopter we want will free up.  Until then, we’re all waiting as fast as we can…

A couple of the teams have posted updates.

Brian Turner, captain of the Kansas City Space Pirates, sent me this email a few days ago:

This Fortune Small Business Magazine has a nice article about the competition. I have not been able to figure out if it is in the print edition just yet.  It is online at http://money.cnn.com/2009/08/13/smallbusiness/space_elevator.smb/index.htm?postversion=2009081407

As for the competition date. The testing with the new helicopter looks to get slated for the end of fire season. Apparently most helicopters of the size we need are reserved for that work this time of year.  So we are looking at an end of Sept. date at the soonest.

I have been using the extra time for getting caught up on work and family time. Doing things I used to take for granted like mowing my own lawn and changing light bulbs. We have also been working a bit on improving the reliability of the climber system.

Brian Turner
Captain
KC Space Pirates

And, on the LaserMotive Blog, Tom Nugent has updated us with this;

As you probably know by now, the Power Beaming competition was delayed again due to problems with helicopter operations. It seems that the earliest the competition can now happen is late September or October. We’re staying in close contact with Spaceward to keep up with developments, and taking advantage of the extra time to tweak our system. We’re also taking it easy – everybody had been working long, hard hours leading up to the competition, and now we need to rest and reacquaint ourselves with our families while we have some time to breathe…

There’s more – check out Tom’s blog post for the full story…

Finally, USST did post their summary of how the testing went at Dryden, too.  They’ve got some good pictures and it is well worth checking out.

(Picture of California fire status (the ‘Lockheed fire’) from here – click on it for a larger version)

Well, the 2009 Tether Competition, one of the two Space Elevator Games, is over and it was a) very educational and b) a lot of fun.

Only 1 team competed, an entrant from Shizuoka, Japan.  They brought a carbon nanotube tether with them to a) compete against the ‘House Tether’ (the first hurdle) and, if they succeeded, to then try and beat the 5 M-Yuri mark which would make them eligible to win the NASA-donated prizes.

Alas, they did not succeed in beating the House Tether, so they did not qualify to try for the prize money.  But they did a very important thing; they showed up and they showed up with a carbon nanotube tether.

I don’t have the exact numbers of when/where their tether broke.  Ben Shelef (CEO of the Spaceward Foundation – the group that organizers the Space Elevator Games)  had developed a table of this for a 2 meter, 2 gram tether.   The Japanese brought a tether which was both longer and lighter than required.  This put them at a serious disadvantage.  When Ben calculates the exact ‘strength numbers’, I’m sure he’ll put them on the official website of the Space Elevator Games, www.spaceelevatorgames.org.

The tether the Japanese brought was very different from other tethers we’ve seen, it looked like VCR tape – other tethers (especially competition tethers) look like thin ropes.

The nanotubes in their tether were not spun together, they were held together strictly and solely by Van Der Waals force.  The reason they did this was their belief that spinning the nanotube strands ultimately weakens them.  I’m not qualified to speak to that, but time will tell if their approach is superior or not.  They are going to try and use covalent bonding forces (it’s been a long time since High School chemistry) to strengthen their nanotube product.

I’ve included some more pictures in this post – pictures are always interesting 🙂

The topmost picture is a side view of the Japanese tether – as you can see, it looks like a tape from an old VCR Cassette.

The second picture is of this tether after it has been mounted on the “Torture Tether Rack”.

The third picture shows the Rack with the Japanese tether and the “House tether” mounted, side by side.  On the left is the House tether and on right is the Japanese tether.  As you can see, the Japanese tether is quite a bit longer.

The fourth picture shows the Japanese tether after it broke -you can see the end of it laying against the bottom of the Rack.

The last picture is of the Japanese team (Yoku Inoue is in the middle) being congratulated by Andy Petro (on the right), the head of the NASA IPP (Innovative Partner Program).  Andy thanked the team for coming and gave them both NASA Pins to commemorate the event.

I’m sure the Japanese will be back next year, and this time with a year’s experience under their figurative belt – they will be much, much, better…

(Click on any of the picture thumbnails to see a larger version of the picture)

In less than an hour, we should see the Strong Tether competition.  As I wrote yesterday, only one team has showed up, a Japanese team from Shizuoka University.  They’re giving a presentation as I write this post.

I’ve got some pre-competition pictures which I wanted to share with you.  The first one is of Yoku Inoue (on the left) of Shizuoka University and Ben Shelef, CEO of the Spaceward Foundation, host of the Space Elevator Games.  In between them is the scale which will be used to weigh the tethers (note the Microsoft cup in the scale as an homage to our sponsors (thank you again Microsoft!).  Behind Yoku and Ben is the “Tether Torture Rack”.

The second picture is of Andy Petro, the head of NASA’s Centennial Program (these are the people putting up the 2 million US Dollar prize money) and Ben examining the “House Tether” – this is what the carbon nanotube tether brought by the Japanese team must compete against.

The third and final picture is of the raw materials that the “House Tether” is made of.  On the left is a spool of Zylon thread while on the right is a can of 3M Super 77 adhesive.  To make this tether, Ben just wraps several strands of the Zylon around a couple of posts.  Once the tether is of the proper weight (3 grams), Ben sprays the looped strands with the adhesive. The adhesive is used to help keep the tether unraveling, but the main source of strength (outside of the strength of the material of course), is the friction holding the strands together.  The adhesive insures that the friction will happen.  When the tether begins to fail, you can hear the ‘ping’ as the individual strands making up the tether begin to separate.  Once enough of them have separated, the tether then suffers a catastrophic failure; i.e. it snaps.

I won’t be able to blog during the competition (coming up in the next half hour) – it’s just too difficult.  However, I will be Tweeting…

Log on to www.twitter.com/segames to stay up-to-date.  After the competition is offer, I will put up a blog post giving details of the results and some more photos.

(As always, click on the picture thumbnails to see a larger version of the picture)

Yes, the RC car in this video really is being powered by the TRUMPF laser, the same one which will power both the Space Pirates and USST Climbers in the upcoming Climber / Power-Beaming competition (LaserMotive, the third contestant, is using a laser provided by DILAS).

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eb0cy-CMVWg[/youtube]

And, over at the official site of the Space Elevator Games, Ben Shelef has posted the definitive take on “What Went Wrong” during the latest round of testing.

Correcting the problem and moving forward (in Ben’s own words):

“We have engaged a new helicopter operator and are in the process of determining if they can do the job – we need to be more thorough on this aspect this time around. We are also pursuing other alternatives in order to make the next flight happen as soon as possible.  (But no sooner!)”

Note that this problem affected only the cable assembly testing, not the laser testing (which went splendidly).

And also note that this problem does not affect the other half of the Space Elevator Games, the Strong Tether competition, which will happen next week at the Space Elevator Conference (note that you must be a paid attendee of the conference in order to watch this competition – yet another reason to come to the conference!).

Stay tuned to this blog or the official site of the Space Elevator Games for all the latest news.

Over at the official website of the Space Elevator Games, Spaceward CEO Ben Shelef has recently posted some updates on events that occurred during the most recent week of testing at the NASA-Dryden facility.

These were posts that Ben started while the action was happening, but because his time get getting hijacked by mundane stuff such as getting things to work, he was unable to post them until very recently.  While some of these postings then are, in a sense, out-of-date, all are very interesting in that they show what the teams were doing (or not doing, as the case may be) during the testing week.

Check out his posts on the USST (here and here), the University of Alberta and the National Space Society (NSS) teams.

Please note that only 3 teams. USST, KCSP and LaserMotive, have qualified at this point to compete for the NASA-sponsored prize money.  I do not believe that any other teams will be added to this mix in the future as the qualification window for the Climber / Power-Beaming competition is now closed.

Over at the official website of the Space Elevator Games, the CrazyEddieBlogger (aka Spaceward CEO Ben Shelef), reviews the status of where we are at.

Simply put; “…the helicopter flight was not successful in maintaining constant tension or position, which resulted in a safety device dropping the line.”

This is being addressed and as soon as an agreed-upon plan has been put together to solve the helicopter flight issues and a new schedule created, we’ll let everyone know.

In the meantime, stay tuned to this blog for the latest updates and all the space-elevator related news…

Last week, I posted a story about how a component of the ‘cable assembly’ system pulled apart and aborted a portion of the testing for the Climber / Power-Beaming competition of the Space Elevator Games.  This issue has caused a delay in the scheduling of this Competition.  We at Spaceward (I say “we” because, in addition to maintaining this blog, I’m also a volunteer with Spaceward) are working with the people at NASA-Dryden to address this issue.

It’s difficult to say how long this delay will be, but it’s safe to say that the competition is postponed until at least September, perhaps October.  Stay tuned to this blog or the official website of the Space Elevator Games for more information.

The other competition in the Space Elevator Games, the Strong Tether Challenge, is going to be held as planned, on Friday, August 14th, at the upcoming Space Elevator Conference.

One of the tests run today was a test of the helicopter / cable / winch system.  Everything between the winch and the helicopter is referred to as the ‘cable assembly’.  This includes not only the steel cable which the climbers will ascend and descend, it also includes things such as hooks, shackles, load cells, etc.  If any of these components fail and causes a breakage or separation of the assembly, it is referred to as a ‘cable separation event’.

During the testing today of the helicopter / cable / winch system, a “cable separation” event occurred.  One of the components in the cable assembly is a frangible link and it was included to protect the helicopter in case a specified load on the cable assembly was exceeded.  That link separated today during testing.  Either the link failed to hold to the required load or else the load exceeded the link’s rating.  There might be a third possibility, but I can’t think of what it might be offhand.

The picture thumbnail shows the link.  This link is in the assembly with other components above and below it.  The plug, shown in front of and to the left of the link, pulled out of the link – it should only do this when its rating is exceeded.  As I wrote earlier, either the load did exceed the rating or else the link failed and separated prematurely.

Obviously, there will be testing and analysis to done to determine why this all happened, just as happened after the pulley failure in the previous test round.  Stay tuned to this blog or the official website of the Space Elevator Games to keep up-to-date.

Incidentally the redesigned pulley performed flawlessly and this looks like a solved problem.

One other thing which should be noted is that a ‘cable separation event’ was one of many contingencies which had been previously thought of and a procedure designed for.  The NASA person in charge of this operation immediately called this procedure into effect and executed it.  Procedures are useful only when they are followed and this one was followed promptly and correctly.

Laser testing continues to go well and will conclude tomorrow (Friday).  The TRUMPF laser continues to perform nominally and the remaining teams are taking full advantage of it.

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This is more like it!  When USST showed up for the first round of testing, there were only four of them.  I was quite disappointed, expecting their usual army.  For this round of testing, however, they are here in force, 13 in all.

And they’ve come in style – look at the picture of that truck!  Yes it’s a rental, but it’s easily the coolest vehicle I’ve seen so far in this competition.  The truck is a Chevy (with a Santini paint job) and is a monster.  They are using it to pull the motor home they have with them – I think it could pull a lot more.  I asked them if they would wash it for me so I could get a good picture of it, but they declined.  Spoilsports…

When I visited their work area yesterday, their climber was mostly assembled – you can see it here.  However, you’ll note that they have nothing on there to hold payload (at least I didn’t recognize anything that could be used as such).  When I asked what they were going to use (last year they had some tubes mounted to their climber), I just got some smiles and an offhand comment about “we’ll have something”.  I’m sure they will.

And, it looks like from this picture that they’ve been putting in some long hours (as everyone involved with the Games has)…

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NASA has now got their live TV coverage from the lake-bed working.  It was actually working about an hour ago, but I logged on in an attempt to clean up a screen title and screwed things up.  Fortunately the NASA guys are pretty sharp and fixed it.  Sorry guys…

The direct link to see us is http://www.ustream.tv/channel/space-elevator

You can also go to http://www.ustream.tv/segames and then click on “Go to Show Page”.

You must have the Flash Player installed to make it work.

Enjoy! (and thanks NASA!)

Below is a screen shot of the uStream feed from a few minutes ago…

I spent 8 years living and working in Saudi Arabia.  As anyone who lives in the desert will tell you, the sunrises are spectacularly beautiful.  This picture is of sunrise over Edwards Air Force base this morning…

In the sunrise picture, you’ll note a garbage can in the foreground labeled “FOD” – I’ve included a close-up picture of this also.  FOD is an acronym for one of two things; the “FO” stands for “Foreign Object” while the “D” can stand for ‘debris’ or ‘damage’.  If you find an object on the desert floor out on the lakebed, you pick it up and put it in a FOD can (or throw it away or something – just get it off of the lakebed).  Airplanes land there and the last thing they need is any “Foreign Object Debris” to cause grief.  If a plane is damaged by some such object, than it is said to have been “FODDED” – “Foreign Object Damage”.

Great care is taken here to prevent FOD.  When vehicles come off of the lakebed and cross the runways to get back to the hanger (or wherever they’re going), they are required to do a FOD check before they cross the runway.  You stop the car and go around and check all the tires for rocks and other debris.

FOD is a big deal here and rightly so.  Anyone who doubts that a small piece of metal or other debris could be harmful to an aircraft only need remember Concorde Flight 4590 – a flight that crashed due to picking up a piece of metal on takeoff.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qid2s89OfZU[/youtube]

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Tomorrow should be a fun day.  If all goes well, we’ll see our first climbs on the helicopter-hoisted cable.  The climbers will be powered by batteries, not lasers, but this should still be cool nonetheless.

Also, if all goes well, we’ll be live-streaming this out to everyone to see.  You have two options to view this.  You can go to www.ustream.tv/segames – that should take you to the live, streaming website.  Also, you can go to the official site of the Space Elevator Games, www.spaceelevatorgames.org, and click on the Live Coverage tab at the top.  This should take you to a page where you will see both the streaming video and a Twitter Feed to let you know what’s going on.

Stay tuned!

Our base of operations here at Dryden is Hanger 4823.  It’s an adjunct to a machine shop, a very cool, professional and accomodating machine shop I might add.  They’ve already turned out several parts for us on a moments notice.

When we here for Round 1 of testing, conditions were a bit more primitive then they are today.  There are bathrooms and water was available but Internet access was almost impossible unless you were lucky enough to have Verizon wireless data service (like I do).  For the testing this week, they have set up several tables; each with power and wired Internet access.  Lots of bottled water and Gatorade.  It’s all very civilized…

One of the new things added for this round is a Televison monitor.  We’ve seen CNN and the Weather Channel on it and today, they switched to Base Camera 8.  This monitors activity out on the lakebed.  We are now able to monitor the activities out at the lakebed testing location.  The picture isn’t all that clear (long distance, heat waves diffusing up from the desert floor and I think they are just retransmitting something they sent to uStream – add that all up and you lose some detail), but it’s very cool nonetheless.

And, a little while ago, I had a visit from the Geeky squad (aka the KCSP team).  They have purchased these ‘cool’ hats, complete with white LEDs.  Geekiness lives…

(I want one)

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The surprise entry in these Games, at least IMHO, is the team from the Universityof Alberta (UASERT).  This is partly my fault; there are team chats every Sunday which I used to attend.  However I haven’t recently, but the UASERT has.

They and their equipment arrived yesterday and they are now in the Hanger with the rest of us, assembling their entry.  I’ve taken a couple of photos and included them in this post.

The first two pictures are of the bottom side of their solar array, one shot looking downward on the array while the other shot is looking edge-on to the array.

The third picture is of the steel box which holds their optics.  Hmmm, steel, painted black, sitting out in the Mojave desert sun for several hours.  I hope they brought asbestos gloves…

They’re still assembling their system and hope to get out to the lakebed tomorrow for laser testing.

One other note about this team; if you visit their website, you can read both their blog (which is very interesting and gives the reader a good view of the team’s activities as it scrambled to get ready for this competition) and a number of photos.  Good stuff…

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