Yes the Games are over and yes I’m sure that 99% of the readers here already know the results.  But I did a search on the various articles written in a “wrap-up mode” and am posting some of them here.  All of them (IMHO) contain some info I didn’t know or were , in other ways interesting…

This article is from the Punkworks blog and talked about getting ready for the competition and the accident which occurred on route to the games (talked about in more detail here and here).

This article is also from the Punkworks blog and is most unhappy in its tone.  They state definitively that they are “…definitely not coming back to Spaceward’s games ever again.”  This is unfortunate, but they really weren’t ready to go, also mentioned in this same posting; “We were basically integrating on the launch platform.”  It’ s hard to win when you do that…  Punkworks had teamed up with the McGill Team to try and make a go of it.

The Davis County Clipper (a local publication) had at least two articles about the Games (here and here).  The second article contained a bit of information I hadn’t known until reading this; “The weather played a significant part in the dismal results. “They were considering packing up and moving to Ames Air Force Base in California,” said Curtis Koch of the Davis County Events Center. Instead, they agreed to stay when the fee for using the event center was dropped, acknowledging that the expected 20,000 anticipated attendance did not materialize. The final rental amount for the event center space was $5,300.”  I’ll have to ask Ben if this is true 🙂

One more local article from the Deseret Morning News.

Ben Shelef from Spaceward was interviewed on Planetary Radio from the Planetary Society prior to the Games.

One of the Journalist/Bloggers I met this year was David Shiga from New Scientist.  He was a very pleasant guy, was easy to work with, and had several postings about the Games, here, here, here. and here.

Wired Science has their take here.

CNETNews.com had a couple of articles, here and here.

One of several local (Canadian) articles lamenting how USST fell just short of winning the prize…

When LaserMotive attempted to qualify on the night of the 18th, they invited me out onto the Launch pad to view and video tape the proceedings.  When all was said and done, however, I couldn’t find the video I had taken of the proceedings.  After some hunting around, I concluded that I had just screwed up somehow and lost the video or had mistakenly hit the “off” switch or something…  However, a couple of days ago, I finished compiling a catalog of all the videos I had taken and, lo and behold, there it was – I had misfiled it into the wrong date subdirectory in my video collection of the Games.

As you all know, two laser-powered teams entered the Games this year, USST and LaserMotive.  The difference between the way the two set up was quite stark.  Bryan Laubscher, safety officer for the Games and all-around Space Elevator guy, put it very well; “USST brought a system.  LaserMotive brought a Lab.”  I’m not knocking or denigrating LaserMotive or their attempt in any way, but they had not spent enough time on the setup and takedown preparation that USST (and others) had done and, in the end, it contributed greatly to their failure to qualify for the prize.

The video I took of their attempt follows.  It shows the scene, at night, inside the LaserMotive “Lab” as they attempted to qualify.  For the 30 or so minutes prior to this, LaserMotive had been setting up their system.  When Jordin Kare, the LaserMotive Laser expert spoke the words “Lasers coming on”, I started taking the video.

There was a “cracking sound” and a cloud of smoke and, well, you can see the rest.

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

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You can clearly see the laser beams as they are projected onto the mirror.

I don’t mind admitting that the smoke and the “cracking” sound scared the crap out of me.  It brought back a very unpleasant memory.  In a previous job, I was in charge of all Software Development at a company called InFlight Phone Corporation.  Saudia Airlines, the national airlines of Saudi Arabia, was a potential client of ours.  I had flown over there, with a couple of other people from our company, to do some flight testing and certification of our equipment on a 747.  There were two groups of us doing this.  This first was Honeywell and the Ball Antenna Group, testing and certifying a satellite antenna.  All went well for them.  The 747 returned to Jeddah airport, did a “touch-and-go” (if you haven’t experienced one of these in a 747, well, there are no words to describe it) and then climbed to 20,000 feet to test our equipment.  When they turned it on, I heard a “cracking noise” and blue smoke quickly filled the cabin.  This is NOT what you want to see in an airplane flying at 20,000 feet.  The pilots got the plane back to the airport and landed as quickly as possible.  Some engineers were waiting and immediately boarded the plane.  After a quick look in the cockpit, they concluded that the previous maintenance crew had left a wire hanging across the main and an auxiliary power bus.  This auxiliary power bus was what powered our equipment.  When they turned it on, it shorted out, causing the noise and smoke.  I knew enough Arabic to know most of the obscenities that the pilot and co-pilot were screaming at the maintenance crew as they left the aircraft.

One more LaserMotive video – this was taken while they were doing an alignment check of their lasers.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJhWvt8Tlx0[/youtube]

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The first of the two pictures is of part of their system, indoors, while being worked on.  The second is of the Laser Safety goggles that LaserMotive gave me to wear while recording their work.  I put a 3×5 card behind the lens so that you can clearly see the “spec’s specs” 🙂

Their laser ran a 808 nanometers – you can see that the goggles are rated from between 804 and 830 nanometers and thus appropriate for their system.

As always, click on the thumbnail for a larger version of the pictures.

As most of my readers know, Ken Davidian is NASA’s program manager for the Centennial Challenges.  Without Ken and NASA and the $$$ Prize Money they provide there would be no Space Elevator Games, so we owe them (and the Spaceward Foundation) a HUGE vote of thanks.  THANKS EVERYONE!!

Ken has graciously agreed to my request for some “final thoughts’ on the games:

Dear Space Elevator Blog Reader,
 
It’s been a couple weeks since the conclusion of the 2007 Spaceward Games and I wanted to provide the NASA Centennial Challenges perspective of the event. Because we’re coming up on the U.S. holiday of Thanksgiving, please indulge me as I get in the “holiday” mood…
 
First, I’d like to thank Ted Semon for hosting this blog. The visibility he has given to this technology and the competition events has provided a great service to the readers as well as to the Spaceward Foundation and to NASA as well. Thanks, Ted!
 
I’d also like to thank the Spaceward Foundation from the first-time volunteers, to the “super” volunteers, to the core staff, and all the way up to Ben and Meekk Shelef, the driving forces behind the organization. As you probably know, Spaceward is administering and executing the Beam Power and Tether Challenges at no cost to NASA Centennial Challenges. For their service to NASA and to the U.S. taxpayer, I would like to thank Spaceward more than these words can possibly convey.
 
The heart of the competitions, of course, are the teams and their supporters, both volunteer and sponsors. In these competitions, you are the “talent” that are performing a great service for the U.S. space program. Your work (hokey as it may sound 50 years on) is really “for the benefit of all mankind.” You are pushing the envelope of what is currently achievable, doing it on your terms and with your own resources. Again, I can’t possible convey how important your sacrifice is, but I’m sure you are fully aware of how important it is. Please know that your efforts are visible and appreciated at all levels of the NASA organization.
 
Of course, I can’t forget to thank all our friends at the Davis County Fairpark in Farmington, Utah. It is with their enthusiastic support that Spaceward was able conduct the 2007 Spaceward Games.
 
Finally, I’d like to acknowledge and express my appreciation for all the administrative support I’ve received from my NASA colleagues, both at HQ as well as at the centers, that help make Centennial Challenges a reality in its present form.
 
Now I want to say a few words about the 2007 event that was held last month. Although I was made a liar of, once again (I was *sure* there would have been a winner in the Beam Power Challenge this year!) it is exciting to see the maturity of the teams, technologies, and the Beam Power community in general. There were operational challenges that were successfully overcome to allow the complete running of the competition. Although there was some debate about whether extending the competition an extra day was the right choice, I think it was the correct decision and is supported by the philosophy that these competitions are intended to get the best performance from all the qualified teams on an equitable basis. We ran into similar “discussions” at subsequent competition events this year and the philosophy is proving to be sound.
 
The Tether Challenge also provided an “unexpected ending” to a story I was *sure* I knew the ending to. Given the statements from DeltaX, the commitment of the Space Spiders (aka AstroArachnaeaeaeaeaeaeaea, :-P), *AND* the $900K purse, I think next year will *definitely* prove to be an exciting competition! I’m really looking forward to it!
 
In summary, I think that although I could pick apart nits about any number of issues in all sorts of areas, I think the overall competition was a great success and I am encouraged by the discussions I’ve already been hearing about for the 2008 competition…
 
Keep up the great work, and I look forward to seeing you next year!
 
Sincerely,
 
Ken Davidian
 
Program Manager, Centennial Challenges
NASA HQ

Thank you Ken, for the kind words about my blog – they are truly appreciated.

Ad Astra!

On the 20th of October, the same day the Light Racers and Tether competitions were held, the Space Elevator Games were visited by a dragonfly.  Jacob Shelef found the dragonfly, cold and wet and trying to get warm and dry, and brought it to the attention of his mother, Susan.  The Dragonfly certainly seemed to take a liking to her, riding her arm, face, hair, etc. for several hours before she finally put it down in a safe place.

I took a couple of videos of her and Jacob and the dragonfly.  According to Wikipedia, dragonflies have good reputations and bad reputations, depending on the culture you are referring to.  I’ve always liked them – they are beautiful creatures.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q93_aQfVIQI[/youtube]

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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWIdbR4co38[/youtube]

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(As always, click on the picture thumbnail for a larger version)

Brian Turner and the Kansas City Space Pirates today issued this Press Release:

Kansas City Team Misses Half Million Dollar NASA Prize by 25 Seconds.

The Kansas City Space Pirates just missed winning $500,000 from NASA in the Spaceward Games 2007. They needed to make a robot called a climber that could drag race straight up 100 Meters in 50 seconds. Oh, and it could not have any batteries or fuel. All of it’s power had to come from the ground and be “Beamed” up. The competition encourages development of wireless power transmission technologies for future applications like space elevators and moon mining. The competition also proved too much for the other 22 entrants from 5 countries and some of the most prestigious universities in the world.

The $500,000 will roll over to next year making the 2008 prize money $900,000.

This marks the second year for the KC Space Pirates. Last year they startled everyone with the bold use of common mirrors to concentrate sunshine, using ancient methods to tackle modern problems. That earned them the “Most Innovative Climber” award. This year they again shocked everyone with the fastest peak speed ever seen in competition of nearly 8-mph. A number of factors combined to prevent them from maintaining that speed to the top of the competition ribbon, ranging from weather, and electronics to plain bad luck. They finished second overall behind a team from the University of Saskatchewan that managed a better average speed using high power invisible lasers. Next year the goal will be raised higher and faster than this year. And the KC Space Pirates have already started the fund raising process to compete in this and future technical competitions.

Their captain Brian Turner said “We may not have won this year, but I hope we made Kansas City proud.”

For more information
http://www.kcspacepirates.com
http://www.elevator2010.org http://centennialchallenges.nasa.gov/

Looks like Brian and company are already planning to come back next year – good news indeed.

I received the following “post-Games thoughts”, as well as the three photos in this post, from Akira Tsuchida, captain of Team E-T-C, Earth-Track-Controllers.  In addition to building a prototype of a Space Elevator which they entered in this year’s Games, they also have a pretty cool day job, tracking the International Space Station (ISS).  I imagine with the problems on board the ISS recently (chronicled here), things have been a bit hectic with their employment lately too.  The topmost photo is an E-T-C Team photo.  The one in the middle is a cool night shot of the spotlights they used to power their climber.  And the photo on the bottom is a very good image of their illuminated climber at night as it attempted to climb.

“Subject: E-T-C recovered and started investigation why our Climber did not climb
 
We drove back to Houston for 3 days to return Xenon light, then some members flew back to Japan on last weekend.  It took long time to recover and finally E-T-C had a first meeting on Nov 3 after finish competition this year.  We re-assembled our climber again to investigate real reason what is happening in SLC.  As all participants knows, E-T-C climber could not climb at all.

Some people mentioned, even team member,E-T-C Climber seems too heavy.  But I still do not think it is TOO heavy.  Of course, comparing with other 7 team which participated games in Salt Lake City. Probably our wheel and mechanism is the heaviest.
 
E-T-C designed this climber as our first challenge to win this competition using the following concept.
(1) Try to have highest efficiency motor and energy transformation mechanism
     (Use high performance motor and high efficiency gear)
(2) Minimize weight of solar panels (modules)
     (Laminated thin mono crystal silicon PV array helped a lot to minimize support structure and damage from wind.)
(3) Low cost (because no sponsor)
 
Although we wanted to use laser, microwave or other advanced technology to this competition, but we decided use white light because we have limited human resources and money.  So we could focus to develop climber for this year.
 
According to our calculation and ground test (not using ribbon but using actual xenon light and solar panels, we proved that we could get enough power to climb at the starting point. (ex. 10m)
 
That means something happening in Electric circuit between solar panels and electronics/motor driver circuits.  Still we need to study and experiment more to know this cause.
 
Anyway, we are proud to compete with other experienced teams.  And we hopefully can compete at next years game in US again.
 
To do that, we need to have good sponsor to understand about SE.
 
Our big concern about all Climber teams is for three years, no team won at all.  If continuously criteria is becoming difficult, number of team will be decreased and can not do good competition.
 
So E-T-C’s idea as a member of Japan Space Elevator Association (JSEA) is as follows. 
(1) Divide roles or goals to two or three by Spaceward, Euro Spaceward amd also JSEA. 
(2) Each fundation will focus to hold competition for individual part od Space Elevator system. 
    Ex: US Spaceward focus to Power beam challenge
         Japanese foundation (JSEA) focus to climber, etc…
(3) And at each competition’s winnner’s system can be used at other competition. 
     Ex. If USST won power beam challenge, their system can be used at Japanese Climber challenge, etc.
 
Of course, JSEA needs to talk Japanese government or big company like Toyota, Honda, in Japan to have prize money for competition in Japan.  But it maybe good idea.  I felt not only our team but also other teams are almost ‘Broke’.  And it makes more difficult to keep each team’s physical strength and motivation.  This kind of effort should be done by European and Japanese (or Asian) group too.
 
I also have a strong confidence that one of us (all teams) can prove that ‘Our Generation Will Go To Space’!!.

Do not give up and work together,

Akira Tsuchida
Team Lead, Earth-Track-Controllers
e-t-c(at)earth-track-controllers.com”

(As always, click on the photo thumbnails for a larger version of the picture)

There were several children at the Spaceward Games this year and I’m finally getting around to posting some pictures and videos that I have taken of them.  I’ve already posted the video of Jeffrey Leafblad entertaining us with his juggling here.

Here are two extremely cute little girls we were fortunate enough to have at the Games.

The first is Corin Turner, age 7, daughter of Brian Turner (captain of the Kansas City Space Pirates) and his wife Cindy.  She is standing in front of one of the posters in Building 1 (the office building).  Look at that smile!  She is wearing several of the very popular Kansas City Space Pirates tattoos – Brian tells me she didn’t take them off for a week!

And the second is Dorothy Nugent, age 3&1/2, daughter of Tom Nugent Jr. (Project manager of the LaserMotive team and well known to everyone from his LiftPort days) and his wife Elizabeth.  Dorothy is the source of the famous line; “Daddy, I have to make Poopies.” chronicled here.

I think they’re both going to be heart-breakers when they get older 🙂

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

As you all know, there were a total of eight teams which competed in this year’s Climber /Power-Beaming competition.  Two other teams, however, almost made it and they brought their climbers to display to the crowds and to the other competitors.

One was from Arthur Shay’s Team Zero-G.  This is a Stirling-engine powered climber, the third attempt, I think, at doing such an entry at the Games.  None of them have been able to compete, however, so either the technology is flawed or it just hasn’t been executed as well (or as soon) as it should.  Incidentally, Arthur was/is trying to make this climber an open / cooperative effort (ala Michael Laine and Liftport).  If you’re interested in participating with this team at next year’s Games, give Arthur a shout at zero.g.tec [AT] gmail [DOT] com – he’d love to hear from you.

The other was Michael Harvey’s entry; the Andromeda Connection.  This device was to be powered by MOLPSol, their “Solar Laser”.  From his website: “A solar laser. Of course any device producing white light cannot be considered a laser in the strictest sense of the word, but, it’s similar to a laser in that it produces a collimated beam of light with a relatively narrow bandwidth.”  It would have been very interesting to see this Climber in action.  And, I’m not trying to be snarky or anything, but this Climber looks for all the world like something out of “Lost in Space”. 🙂

I was able to talk with both competitors briefly, certainly not as much as I would have liked to – but other events / blogging kept me pretty busy.  Let’s hope that we see both of these competitors at next year’s Games.  The Prize Money is now a cool $900,000 – enough to get anyone’s pecuniary juices flowing, for sure.

Click on the thumbnails for larger versions of the Climbers.

One of the things which was hoped to have happened this year was cameras mounted on the climbers (or at the top of the tether) to show a different perspective of a Climb.

For whatever reason, it didn’t happen with the exception of one climb from the KC Space Pirates which had a camera mounted on the Climber.  It’s very reminiscent of those cameras that are put on the Shuttle when it launches (though not to the same scale, of course).  Brian Turner from the Space Pirates put this video on YouTube – it’s mega-cool…

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEvmd4esiaA[/youtube]

A few days ago, Brian Turner, captain of the Kansas City Space Pirates, sent out his version of the 2007 Spaceward Games wrap-up.  I’d like to emphasize that this is HIS viewpoint, not necessarily mine nor Spaceward’s.  But I think he’s pretty accurate and it makes for very interesting reading.

“The good news is that we finished 2nd the bad news is that we did not finish fast enough to win the money. Our best time was 1:15. The first place team managed :54 seconds. They pulled this off in the last minutes of the last hour of the last day.

22 teams entered

8 teams showed

4 teams qualified

2 teams made credible runs for the money.

We qualified on the very first hour of the very first day with a climb that was a factor of 5 stronger than the next nearest competitor. The other three qualifiers squeaked in with weather adjusted climbs in the closing hours of Thursday. Our qualifying climb had a top speed of 3.47 Meters per second (7.75MPH). Things went down hill from there. The weather got bad and kept us from having any good climbs to find the problems that would eventually make the difference between $0 and $500,000.

We were confronted by numerous problems through the week, none of which were critical by themselves, but collectively too much. We did a practice climb on Thursday with cloud cover. Team ETC was kind enough to lend us their spotlight power so we could test our top switch and brake.

Friday was too windy. Saturday was rainy and cloudy all day. The light racer competition was on Saturday. Because we had down time we decided to build a racer at the last minute. In about 45 minutes we built a racer that was able to win the adult class and a $2500 prize. We used spare parts, borrowed parts, scraps and trash.

Sunday was looking good. With the weather predicted to be cloudy and windy in the morning getting somewhat clear and calm right around the peak sun. I decided we should run at that time. The big detail I missed was that the clouds were already gone and the wind was dead calm when I picked our time slot.

The other 2 solar teams had excellent conditions similar to the conditions we had on monday. both of them failed to make even the 1 Meter per second qualifying speed. When our time rolled around the clouds and wind were picking up. The first attempt the climber sucked the safety rope into it’s top roller and came to a stop. We backed down, removed the slack from the safety rope and tried again. On the second attempt the climber stalled out twice on the way up. The ribbon was twisting and bucking more than during any other climb during both this years and last years competition. Through all of this we still managed to put up the best climb seen up to that point.

After hitting the top the wind picked up even more and the bucking was enough to cause our brake to seize up and not let the climber descend. The climber was stuck close to the top and was getting beat to death by the ribbon. Pieces of high dollar solar cells and entire modules were falling off like a mixture of silver confetti and oak leaves. I was at the bottom frantically messing with the throttle and brake controls trying to break it loose. We finally hauled it down with the safety line.

The climber was seriously wounded with over half of it’s solar modules seriously damaged. We had to stop climbing for the day and missed our second slot in the next hour. We had to work like bandits to get the climber put back together for the next day. We had to quit from Midnight to 7:00 AM while the fairground buildings were closed. We managed to get it all back together by 1:00 on Monday only to have missed the nice calm morning conditions and be facing the same conditions at the same time of day as Sunday. As we approached the ribbon with the clock on our time slot already ticking away the ribbon snapped in two and went sailing in the wind. If it had done that while I was attaching the climber it could have taken off a finger. As it was, conditions were getting worse and the broken meant more delays. I had a moment of faith realizing that all of this was well outside the averages of randomness and thinking I should get to church more often.

We used the delay to test the newly reassembled climber in the beautiful sunshine. We found that the motor just shuts off after about 30 seconds for no real reason. It starts back up fine but costs us from 5 to 10 seconds each time it does this. With the ribbon fixed and the procedures changed to keep my fingers out of harms way as we mounted the ribbon.

Then, we…. waited. The clouds would build and dissipate as fast as they moved, making it impossible to predict even a 60 second spot of sunshine. The wind was a little higher than the day before. We could pull off and try again in about an hour. But the sun was decending and there were some high thin clouds moving our way. The bottom safety rope was broken and if we got caught at the top again there would be nothing to save the climber. It was time to bet all in or go home. I glanced at my team mates, made the call and we went for it.

The climb was spectacular by any standard but our own, and at 1:25 with several motor stalls it fell short of the mark needed to win the money.

Well, we have a number of ideas abut the various problems and hope to do the testing needed to find out everything that went wrong. The motor controller was just stopping. The solar panel was only putting out 1/3 of power estimations. Thursday was the last time the brake performed well. I found an adjustment screw had come loose on the brake on Monday. I now suspect that this is what caused the bulk of the problems on Sunday.

The $500,000 was not awarded and will likely roll into next year. That will make the prize money a staggering $900,000.

Of the other competitors only the 2 laser teams appear to have enough power to compete with us. One did not qualify for the same kind of simple problems that plagued us. The microwave teams seemed better this year but still could not get it together and qualify. 3 of 4 solar teams qualified, however there was a clear difference in “bang” between them and us once on the ribbon. So that, in my estimation, leaves only 3 favorites for next year. Us and the 2 laser teams. It has not yet been decided how high and how fast next years competition will be. We will not be able to estimate expenses to go next year until after that. Most of the team members have expressed interest in competing again next year. I personally have to talk that over with my wife. Again we have to stare down the fundraising dragon. The KC Space Pirates as an organization is starting to take on a life of it’s own that I do not have to be the constant center of. So clearly, there will be more competitions in the future.”

The Kansas City Space Pirates used a series of mirror arrays to redirect the sunlight onto the solar cells on the bottom of their climber.  Each of these arrays had several (8?) mirror panels.  These mirror panels were “focus-able” as they were mounted to the array panel by supports that could be adjusted in and out.  They adjusted the support screws to bend the mirror slightly inward, allowing them to focus the mirror beam.  I think the length of each mirror panel was about four feet.  The mirror panels were made of glass and obviously couldn’t be bent too much or they would crack and/or shatter (a fairly common occurence I was told).

This video shows how they would “tune” the mirror arrays.  They would reflect a light onto the side of a building – the pattern would show how focused their mirrors were.

This video was taken on the night of October 15th.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6s3ZqeDHB0[/youtube]

I’ve finally been able to upload the videos of the five runs that USST did on the last day of competition (Monday, October 22nd.)  The first video shows a climb in the daylight.  Therefore, you can’t actually see the laser-beam as my camcorder shot it in “normal” (i.e. not night) mode.  But there is a nice sunset in the background to compensate 🙂

Runs 2 through 5 were all run after nightfall and were shot in night-mode.  The laser beam clearly shows and is incredibly futuristic looking.

Runs 1 through 4 were done under competition conditions and any one of them could have won the prize if it had been fast enough.  The fifth and last run was done after the time limit had expired.  USST ran it anyway, just to see if they could meet the required 2 meters/second condition.  You’ll note that in this run, the climber sat motionless for several seconds after the laser beam was applied.  It then shot up the ribbon in about 50 seconds.  IF this run had been in the required time limit and IF the climber hadn’t sat there for several seconds before moving, this run may have been a winner.  I gave a copy of these videos to USST before I left Monday night and I’m sure they’ve been hard at work at analyzing them.

I apologize for the overexposure of the climber in runs 2 through 5 – it’s the best my camcorder can do.  The overexposure (and the darkness) prevents one from seeing when the climber actually hits the top of the ribbon.  But you can tell when their climber hits the top of the ribbon by the (very) audible noise of two wooden “stops” banging into each other.  Because of the earlier ribbon breakage, Spaceward was not able to mount the normal climber “stop” on the ribbon, but actually I liked this jury-rigged one better.  The noise made when the climber hits it is quite audible and clearly signals the end of the run.

The videos are shown in the order the runs were made.  The first one (the top one in this posting) was Run 1 and the last one (the bottom one in this posting) was Run 5.  The fourth climb resulted in their best time, approximately 54 seconds.  You’ll hear me in some of the videos saying things like “Mark one-ten” or “You have to finish at two minutes.”  The times I’m referring to are the times on the clock on the camcorder – it helped me do some rapid seat-of-the-pants calculations as to how long the actual climb itself was.

I was not the official time-keeper of these runs; that job fell to Ken Davidian, the official NASA representative.  When we compared times, however, we were very close.

Enjoy…

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

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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPgMNCFFu-E[/youtube]

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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecj8mewR3AI[/youtube]

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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFx_mWCpa9o[/youtube]

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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cuLm1ripyU[/youtube]

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…

USST’s first attempt (which successfully climbed all the way to the top) ran in about 96 seconds.  They are going to try it one more time.

They will need to beat 50-55 seconds (exact time dependant on remaining ribbon length) to win the Prize.

Updates soon…

F L A S H   U P D A T E ! ! !

There will be one more attempt tonight – USST is setting up again right now.

Safety is now a concern.  People know that this ribbon might break.  USST knows that if this happens, it may damage their climber, perhaps irrepairibly.  Nevertheless, they’ve decided to go for it – and who can blame them.  They’ve been working for this prize for, literally, years, and it would be a shame to have to turn back now.

Special procedures are being put into place to minimize the amount of personnel near the ribbon while setting up for this run.

There is obviously something wrong with this ribbon or the conditions here have been too much for it.  It’s too early to know what happened – obviously Spaceward will be sending the ribbon back to Siegling for a failure analysis.  You’ll note that, in addition to the break, there is fraying along the edges.  Perhaps this indicates where maximum stress was being applied (during the ribbons constant twisting in the wind) and is the cause of the break.  But that’s for the engineers to decipher.

So, no promises for a successful climb, or even a climb at all, but another attempt is being made.

I’ll keep everyone posted.

Snakebit,

Snakebit, snakebit, snakebit…

USST had mounted their Climber on the ribbon.  They were getting ready to start their run when the ribbon snapped AGAIN, this time from the top (the last time was from the bottom).

The picture shows the USST climber with the snapped ribbon draped over it.  Fortunately no one was hurt.

We don’t know what happened.  This Siegling ribbon is rated at 4,500 lbs.  The maximum pressure put on it was 500-1,000 pounds.  Maybe the ribbon is old or defective.  Maybe the constant twisting, twisting, twisting it underwent over this last 9 days proved too much.  Maybe its something else entirely (sabotage from Skronk & Greezle?)

Whatever it is, it looks the competition is over for now.  Spaceward is going to get together with the NASA representative and probably the USST team captain and decide what to do.

Major, major bummer…

As new information appears, I’ll keep you all posted.

Two more unsuccessful attempts.

The Technology Tycoons Climber did not make it to the top this time.  The wind caught it and flipped it on it’s side when it was most of the way up – you can clearly see this in the picture.

The Kansas City Space Pirates DID make it all the way, but they did so in an unofficial time of 1 minute, 25 seconds.  They needed to be less than a minute to have a chance.

So we’re down to one attempt left – that of USST.  We’ll have to see if they have fixed their climber and can really take a run at this.

Here’s hoping…

The Kansas City Space Pirates just made their attempt, but did not meet with success.  Their climber got about half-way up (perhaps a bit more) but then it stalled.  After they took it down, I overhead their captain, Brian Turner, comment “we had something wired wrong” and they were working to fix it.

The picture is of their climber once back on the ground.

Spaceward personnel have also pulled the trolley (the mechanism at the top holding the ribbon, anti-rotation wire and belay line) down to examine it and will be putting it back up shortly.

The Technology Tycoons are up next.

0-2 today – let’s hope for better luck soon…

Sometimes I think we’re snakebit.

The ClimberRibbon snapped just as the Kansas City Space Pirates were getting ready to mount their climber.

One picture shows the cable wafting in the breeze while the other shows the snapped end of it.

The stop plate came rattling down the cable and fell to the ground – no one was underneath it, but it made it abundantly clear why the inner circle of the launch area is Hard hat only.

More soon…

Another disappointment…

USST’s climber failed to move on the ribbon.  Laser power was applied, but nothing happened.  I talked (very briefly) with one of the USST team members who told me the initial, preliminary read is an issue with their solar cells.

I don’t know what it is, but they only have one shot left.

KC Space Pirates are up next and are now moving their equipment into position.

More soon…

Here are the weather conditions we have today, practically ideal.  Crystal clear skies (though we’re supposed to get a few clouds later) and nearly dead calm.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiZXlK1o8jg[/youtube]