Here is a video of E-T-C’s last run last night.  As with the previous runs, it moved very little (if at all) on the ribbon – but a noble try nonethless.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xq-8ProUgKQ[/youtube]

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I asked Akira Tsuchida, team leader of E-T-C, why he thought the climber failed to ascend.  He told me that after his team had viewed UBC’s climber shaking and losing some pieces, they added additional bracing to their climber.  This made it too heavy to ascend (the first time around).  They tried some additional climber and software modifications this time, but still no luck.

And, one thing I have to mention about Akira, this guy is the personification of dedication.  He actually sold his Mercedes to help finance the construction of his team’s climber.  The bicycle he bought to replace it was stolen, too, so he just had no luck in that regard.

Thank you coming Akira and the entire E-T-C team.  Everyone enjoyed your company and your good spirits and your willingness to talk to anyone and everyone.  Here’s hoping that your entry for next year will be a winner!

We just finished our all-hands meeting (now greatly diminished as most people have gone home).

3 teams have stayed to make a try at the Prize; Technology Tycoons, KC Space Pirates and USST.  Each team will make two runs today.  The schedule is:

11:00     USST

12:00     KC Space Pirates

1:00       Technology Tycoons

2:00       KC Space Pirates

3:00       Technology Tycoons

4:00        USST

Let’s hope for some great runs today – I will keep everyone posted…

Here is a video of USST’s attermpt to win the Prize money last night.  It didn’t succeed because of an issue they had with the climber, but it has to rank as one of the coolest videos ever.

USST uses an Infrared laser, something normally invisible to the human eye.  However, it shows up just fine on something equipped with infrared-seeing capabilities.  Most any device that has a “night vision” option can see this and, fortunately, my camcorder has it too.  So you can actually see the laser-beam itself – absolutely and monumentally cool.

There are a couple of chunks within the video when I switch my camcorder back to “normal” vision, just to see what I could see – not much as you’ll find out when you watch this.  And the climber itself is drastically overexposed with this “laser-vision”.

Nevertheless, this easily ranks as the cooliest clip this video rookie has ever shot.

Enjoy…

USST assures me that they have the problem taken care of – let’s hope they rock today.

THIS is the future…

The future is on hold…

USST ran tonight, but their system performed pretty poorly – nowhere near their expectations.  They were actually stopped before they got to the top, but a knot was found in the belay line and this prevented them from fully ascending.  Obviously this needs to be taken care of before tomorrow.  But even if the knot had not been there, the slowness of the climb would have prevented it from being considered for Prize Money.

Clayton Ruszkowski, captain of USST, told me that they have figured out what the problem is and it will be corrected by tomorrow.

The top picture is of their Climber as it’s being wheeled out to the Launch pad.  The bottom, left picture is of the laser, taken with my camera on a “Night” (infrared) setting.  I don’t know what the extra beams are – perhaps just optical artifacts from the camera.  The picture on the bottom, right, is another infrared shot of the lit-up climber as it nears the top of the ribbon.  It’s overexposed, but it’s the best my poor camcorder can do.  To be able to see the laser in infrared through the camera’s viewfinder (but not with the naked eye) is just way cool…

The Kansas City Space Pirates look like they will have reconstructed their climber by tomorrow morning and the Technology Tycoons have rented some spotlights to give their climber an extra boost.

So, hopefully we’ll have three real competitors tomorrow.  The all-hands meeting is at 9:00am and the running schedule will be set then.  The weather is supposed to be great, so let’s keep our fingers crossed.

More tomorrow…

E-T-C tried again this evening but the results were the same as last time – no (or very little) ability to climb the ribbon.

Here are some pictures taken.  I have video and I’ll be uploading that later.

USST is up next and are out there now setting up.

Here’s the video of the Kansas City Space Pirates run.  There was a “whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on, that’s for sure”.

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

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Here are a couple of pictures of the “Solar Cell Salvage Operation” currently in process.  On the left is one of the array supports.  You can clearly see the damaged individual cells.  On the right is a pile if broken and to-be-discarded solar cells.

The captain of the Space Pirates, Brian Turner, has truly earned the title of “Master of Disaster.”  But then Pirates are supposed to break things, aren’t they?

We’ve had no further runs since the Pirates went.  We’re in a wind delay, but are hoping to get things started again at 7:00pm local time.  Both laser teams, LaserMotive and USST are scheduled to run.  E-T-C may run also with their spotlights.

I’ll keep you all posted…

Well that was exciting.  The KC Space Pirates made all the way to the top, and they did it in about one minute and eighteen seconds.  Not enough to win the Prize money, but certainly close enough (especially considering that they didn’t have full sunlight AND some of their Climber’s cells flew off partway up) to make them feel optimistic about their next run (assuming the weather lets them, of course).

The thumbnail (click on it for a larger version) shows their climber once it returned to earth.  You can see tha some of the solar panels are missing.  Hopefully they are undamaged and re-usable.

So, I think we have some downtime now – I was able to record the entire climb and will be uploading that to YouTube now.  As soon as it’s ready, I’ll post it.

Technology Tycoons nearly made to the top, but not quite.  It appeared they were just a few feet short.  I don’t have an official time, but it was well short of 1 m/s (let alone the 2 m/s that they would need.

The Kansas City Space Pirates are up next.

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UBC just finished their attempt.  They were running very slowly (it appeared to be well under 2 m/s, but I’ll get the official word later) and they didn’t make it to the top (they ran out of time).

But it was an elegant try.

The picture is of the underside of their climber being reflected from their massive mirrors.  Click on the thumbnail for a larger version.

Technology Tycoons are up next.

The Space Elevator Games have been extended to tomorrow.  We finally have some decent weather and the decision was made, not without some controversy in this morning’s all-hands meeting, to extend the competition one day.  It’s unfair to the teams that have to leave (right now only UBC) at this point, but we’re in a situation now where there are no perfect solutions.

Climbs start today at 11:00am, local time.

The schedule is:

11:00   UBC

12:00   Technology Tycoons

1:00    KC Space Pirates

2:00   KC Space Pirates

3:00    LaserMotive

4:00    Tech Tycoons

5:00    E-T-C

6:00    USST

7:00    USST

Tomorrow’s schedule will be decided tomorrow.

I’ll post the results as the occur…

Touching the future.

That’s what I was able to do tonight, actually touch the future.  Even though the tether brought by MIT’s Delta-X team was not the winner in tonight’s Tether competition, it represents, IMHO, the future.  We get excited when reading articles about how carbon nanotubes are now “1 cm long” or “2 cm long”, etc., but Delta-X brought a tether, made purely out of carbon nanotubes, that was 2 METERS long.  Stephen Steiner, head of the Delta-X team gave it to me to study and to handle.

I had a feeling of awe while doing so, truly I did.  This is the future.  Yes, carbon nanotubes are not yet equal to other technology.  And yes, it will take some time.  And yes, it represents the future.

I’ll post some good close-up shots of the Delta-X carbon nanotube tether tomorrow.  I can’t wait to see what they bring next year.

Well that was anticlimactic…

Astroaraneae and Delta-X both mounted their tethers on the machine (this was after the judges determined that both tethers met the weight and length requirement).  Pressure was applied and almost immediately the Delta-X tether parted – the knot slipped.  Delta X had a second tether they mounted, but this was just for show.  It only weighed 1.3 grams (as opposed to the Astroaraneae tether of 2 grams) and all were sure it would not stand a chance.  Pressure was applied and the Delta-X tether parted almost immediately.

Then Ken Davidian, the NASA rep for the Centennial Challenges, announced that the Astroaraneae tether would now be competing against the house tether for the Prize money ($500K).  However, at that point, Michael Remington, team leader of Astroaraneae, took the microphone and announced they would NOT be competing against the house tether – they forfeited their chance to win the prize.  They said their goal in coming here to was to prove they still had the strongest tether in the world (but not 50% stronger than a COTS tether – the house tether) and that they were “still champions” of all the teams.  Obviously they felt like they had no chance to win, but it was a major disappointment to me (and I’m sure other) to not be able to see how far the state of the art has advanced.

So, no winner in the Tether challenge this year and I think I can speak for everyone in the audience in saying that the out come was very disappointing, both in what it was and in the way it happened.

The $500K prize money rolls over to next year – next year’s Tether Challenge purse will now be $900K (the $200K rolling over from 2006 plus the $300K rolling over from this year and the $400K allocated to $2008). 

Let’s hope for a better competition and better results next year…

Latest news:

The weather looks like it will clear up tomorrow.  The crane operator is scheduled to arrive at noon and, hopefully, we’ll start having climbs shortly after that.  Whether or not this will constitute the entire climbing competition will depend on how many runs we can get in.

The Light Racers competition just finished.  The only team to traverse the entire race course in an “official run” was the Kansas City Space Pirates and for this, they won a prize purse of $2,500.00.  The McGill team also travelled the entire course (and in the best time), but it wasn’t an official run.

The tether pull is getting to start in the next several minutes.  As soon as the results are in, I’ll post them.

The Spaceward Light Racers competition is now happening.  This is lots of fun and has been generating great crowd enthusiasm.  I’ll be posting several videos of this over the rest of the day.

Here is a practice run by the Technology Tycoons Light Racer.  It did pretty well.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TL1ZvzWftrQ[/youtube]

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And here is a last-minute entry from McGill University.

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

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Yes, both of these teams also entered the Climber / Power-Beaming competition.  There are several other entries too, and will be posted soon.

There will be no climbs today.  The weather is , unfortunately, as forecast; extremely windy, not to mention cold and rainy.  Let’s hope that tomorrow is better.

The Light Racers competition is scheduled to start at 10:00am.  Several of the teams are here, and the competition is indoors, so this should occur on time.

The other tether team (Delta-X out of MIT) has arrived, so we WILL have a tether team competition today, Delta-X vs. Astroaraneaea, with the winner to face the house tether, starting at 5:00pm (also indoors so also not weather-dependent).

So that’s the scoop – Stay tuned and I’ll keep you up-t0-date…

This is a cool video.

The Kansas City Space Pirates put a downward-looking camera on their climber.  This is its view on the way up during their qualification run.

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

There will be no climbs today.

The operator of the 400′ crane that we will be using for our competition climbs told us that the anemometer at the top of the crane was registering a wind speed of 10 meters per second.  That translates to about 22.4 miles per hour.  The crane is not supposed to operate in speeds about 6 meters per second, but the load we’re putting on it is so small, the crane operator felt confident in leaving it up.  But the climber teams don’t want to run in this wind.

And the wind has picked up since that reading was made.  See the video below for a demonstration of this.  It’s a shame, really.  The weather is really nice today; about 75 degrees and a mostly sunny sky, a real relief from the last two days (complete with cold rain, hail and a bit of snow).

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LW5dL28FRQ[/youtube]

No one ran at 11:00.  The KC Space Pirates were out there and ready to go, but the wind picked up to about 24 mph, more than the Space Pirates were willing to risk.  As their captain, Brian Turner, told me, “I’m a brave man, but 24mph is more than I’m willing to chance.”

Let’s hope for a climb at 12:00.

In the meantime, here are a few shots of the venue today.

One of the “almost-made-its” was the Michael Harvey’s Andromeda Connection.  He brought his climber to the show to demonstrate the technology he was using to build his competition entrant.  This is a thumbnail of his entrant.

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Here is a thumbnail of Dr. Brad Edwards using a meter to accurately measure the length of the competition ribbon.

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Posters and signs are on display throughout the venue.  Here’s a closeup of one of them.

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There is also also a small “forest” of signs which explain about the technology, applications, etc.  Here’s a shot of the “forest” and one of the “trees”.

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

It’s October 19th, 2007 – the first day of the 2007 Space Elevator Games.

In this morning’s all-hands meeting, the official Qualification results were announced.  As I posted last night, the KC Space Pirates, the Technology Tycoons, UBC-Snowstar and USST are the only teams to have qualified.

Climbs are scheduled to take place every hour, on the hour, while the fairgrounds are open to the public.  That is from 11-6 today and 10-6 tomorrow and Sunday.  All of this is weather-permitting, of course.

The four non-qualifying teams will also get a chance to climb the 400′ tether if slots are available.  But preference will be given to the teams competing for Prize money of course.

The first of the two teams competing in the Tether competition have arrived – Astroaranaea attended the all-hands meeting this morning.  It’s good they are here – now we are just waiting for MIT and their tether.

The following video was taken shortly after I arrived at the fairgrounds this morning.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ggcx3LMAHdw[/youtube]

The final LaserMotive attempt tonight failed, so qualifications are now closed.

In for the Prize Money:

KC Space Pirates

UBC-Snowstar

Technology Tycoons

USST

Not qualifying (but may do some demo runs during the competition)

LaserMotive

McGill

Centaurus

E-T-C

See you all tomorrow!

Centaurus failed to qualify.  They were unsure of the reason, but the climber only moved a few inches, not enough to consider this a qualification.

There may be one more run tonight.  LaserMotive may get one more shot at this.  I don’t know at the moment, but will put up at least one more post tonight, letting all of you know what is happening and summarizing the evening’s results.

It’s starting to rain pretty hard here…

USST has qualified!!

They took two shots at it.  The first failed for reasons I will find out.  In the second attempt, their climber moved upward several feet very rapidly, but then began to slip.  It had just started raining out and the belt was beginning to be slippery.

So, the judges determined that weather related conditions prevented a full climb (as they had determined with Technology Tycoons).  Weather conditions are not allowed to disqualify a climb.  USST’s climber clearly moved up under power.

So, finally a success tonight.  I have no pictures – my new Sony HDR-CX7 just doesn’t do this well.  Marc Boucher, from the Space Elevator Reference DID get good pictures and I will link to them as soon as they are up.

Congratulations USST!!

Next (and last) up tonight is Centaurus with their second attempt of the evening.

Update – I posted earlier on this blog that USST’s climber had been slipping on the ribbon (due to the rain) and this is why it had stopped.  I had heard this comment from someone in the crowd who I thought was a USST member.  It turns out this person is NOT from USST, and was just speculating.  Clayton Ruszkowski, team captain, told me that USST had deliberately shut the laser down.

Also, in listening to a conversation between Clayton and Dr. Brad Edwards, Dr. Edwards said that USST’s climb represented the FIRST laser-powered climb of this type outside of a lab.  So, double-congratulations are due to USST!

And, no luck for the McGill Space Elevator Team either.

Next up USST.

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(Click on the thumbnail for a larger version of the picture)

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Centaurus was unable to run.  Something about a power problem.  They have another slot coming up later.

McGill Space Elevator Team up next…

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(Click on the thumbnail for a larger version of the picture)

LaserMotive did not succeed in this qualification run.  They had many problems, but at the end, they had a problem with the motor arming in the climber – they couldn’t get it to happen.

This system was massively complex.  They took their alloted half hour, plus the next (which was open), but still couldn’t get it going.

What a shame.

Click on the thumbnail for a larger version of the picture.

We have a qualification schedule for the rest of the evening:

8:30     LaserMotive

9:00     No takers (as of yet)

9:30      Centaurus

10:00    McGill

10:30     USST

11:00     LaserMotive

11:30     Centaurus

I’ll keep everyone posted.

I’ve not written a lot about the laser-powered teams until now.  Most of the attention has been focused on the solar teams and making sure that they could find conditions that they could run in.  And, in truth, it’s just neater to video something which is climbing on the ribbon rather than on a workbench.

USST is one of the two laser-powered teams in this year’s Games.  Their laser operates at 808 nanometer wavelength.

The thumbnail is a picture of their climber.  Click on it for a larger version. 

The video is a copy of one they kindly gave me.  It shows a test of their laser.  It’s shining on a welding cloth at a distance of 59 feet.  You can the laser being turned on and then being focused in the video.  It’s quite impressive.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKL2-RKDmRc[/youtube]

Here is a video of UBC-Snowstar’s successful qualifying run this morning.  You’ll note that they DID reach the top of the ribbon, successfully engage the stop mechanism and return under power.

This was their fourth attempt, the source of my comment “Maybe four’s a charm?” at the very beginning of the video.

Though their Climber didn’t travel as fast as people would have liked, the weather was quite cloudy and they did very well under the circumstances.

Congratulations UBC-Snowstar!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bLdFBMzozc[/youtube]

Here are couple of videos of E-T-C’s attempts to qualify this morning.  They went first, followed by UBC-Snowstar, Technology Tycoons, KC Space Pirates (for a practice run as they are already qualified) and then went again.  The first video is one of the climbs in their first set of attempts while the second video is one of the climbs in their second set of attempts.

They used a combination of smaller spotlights placed directly underneath the climber and two larger spotlights placed off to the side and angled toward the underside of the climber.  I have to remark about the smaller spotlights.  They wanted to be able to simulate a simultaneous “On” switch for these 8 spotlights.  What they did is cover them with some aluminum covers (looking remarkably like pie plates, though I don’t know what they are).  They had strings attached to them and, on signal, four people would each pull the strings to take their “pie plates” off the spotlights, letting them beam up to the climber.  Pretty cool 🙂

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9FpkuLXyTU[/youtube]

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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24ynCBnlL28[/youtube]

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It’s truly a shame they didn’t qualify.  I went looking for some of their team members a little while ago to ask what happened, but I think they’ve gone home.  I’ll catch up with them tomorrow or Saturday.

Here’s a video of the scene this morning as we waited for the first qualification run.

I’m from Chicago – we don’t have mountains in Chicago.  I have travelled extensively and been to lots of places with mountains, but it still gets to me when I see them.  These, especially, are so picturesque…

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvLeTdn4P0E[/youtube]

A brief update for today – videos to follow:

The weather has been partly sunny, cold, but almost no wind.  Ideal conditions for the Laser and Microwave teams, but none of them have been ready to go.

E-T-C, powered by spotlights, made numerous attempts to qualify.  Unfortunately they did not succeed.  I haven’t gone to them yet to ask them for a post-mortem, but I will later on.

Both the Technology Tycoons and UBC-Snowstar DID qualify today.  Neither team was able to run to the top of the ribbon, but cloud conditions prevented all but a fraction of the sunlight reaching their mirrors.  Because this was a “weather-related handicap”, they were adjudged to have qualified. (see correction below)

The KC Space Pirates also made another run.  They used more mirrors than they had in their qualification run and generally made this a practice pass.

We’re shut down now for a few hours while the 400′ crane is moved into place.  I don’t know if anyone is going to run on it or not, but we’ll see.  I think we’ll also have the 100′ crane operational too.

I also don’t know the status of the Microwave or Laser teams.  We’ll find out in the next couple of hours.  If they don’t succeed in qualifying today, I’m afraid they’ll be out of the competition.

More later…

Correction – stupid me.  UBC DID reach the top of the ribbon, succesfully engaged with the Stop plate and made a controlled descent.  I have it on tape (and am uploading it to YouTube.  Sorry, UBC team, sorry, sorry, sorry)…

Here’s the story on yesterday’s “provisional” qualification runs.  Today is the last day that teams are allowed to qualify to run in the Prize Money competition.  If the weather on Thursday (today) had been as bad as it has earlier in the week, then yesterday’s runs were the qualification ones (and everyone “qualified”).  However, it’s looking today like the weather may give us a bit of a break.  It’s overcast (bad for the solar teams), but the wind has died down (good for all teams).

The 100′ crane is here and they’re beginning to hook up the equipment to it.  With any luck, we’ll be getting in some “real” qualification runs today.

In the meantime, here are the videos of the “contingency qualification runs”.  I’ll post them in the order they provisionally qualified…

First of all is UBC-Snowstar.  They made two runs.  I missed the first couple of seconds of the first run, but I have the rest of it plus all of the second one.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLFwrVnruG8[/youtube]

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Next was the Technology Tycoons.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhd7BFHPFCY[/youtube]

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They were followed by the McGill Space Elevator team.  I was particulary glad to see their climber perform well considering the very nasty accident it (and they) experienced on the way here.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDDcuq8s8NU[/youtube]

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Next ran E-T-C, the joint Japanese-American team.  You’ll note that they were the only ones who ran with their solar panels.  Teams had an option to do this or not for this provisional qualification run.  E-T-C was the only one who elected to do so.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYLD74bhlbg[/youtube]

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E-T-C was followed by USST.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTEafTEML6s[/youtube]

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LaserMotive was next up.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bycYYM1fl14[/youtube]

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Finally Centaurus made their run.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zN_QLZk2LxI[/youtube]

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(18OCT07 – update.  Oops, I inadvertently posted the E-T-C video twice (once where the USST video went).  This has been fixed.  Thanks to the readers who pointed it out.)

Both LaserMotive and Centaurus passed the “qualification” tests that were run today.  This means that all 8 teams which have showed up “qualified”.

I put “qualified” in quotes because now I’m not quite sure what that means.  It was my understanding that the teams which passed todays tests were considered qualified.  Now it’s my understanding that this is only provisional.  If the weather tomorrow does not permit additional qualification runs, then the tests today will be considered qualification ones.  However, if the weather tomorrow does permit runs to be made, then the teams have to go through the same qualification tests which the Kansas City Space Pirates successfully did on Monday.

At least that’s my understanding now.  I’m sure it will be clarified in tomorrow morning’s team meeting.

I am uploading the “qualification” videos now to YouTube.  They will take some time and then I will include them in the next post.

In the meantime, I’d like to salute the hard-work and inventiveness shown by the three people who were largely responsible for putting together the indoor “qualification” rig.  From left to right, they are Michael Fischer, Bryan Laubscher and Vern McGeorge.  Some people may recognize Michael as being one of the entrants into last year’s Games.  He tells me that he is also an honorary member of the E-T-C team.  Bryan is the safety officer and is also a major booster of the Space Elevator concept (and a partner with Dr. Brad Edwards in Black Line Ascension).  Vern is a long time Spaceward volunteer and is one of the crew who works in the background making things happen.

Thanks, guys.  Without your work today, these runs would have never happened.

(Click on the thumbnail for a larger version of the picture)

A couple of videos that you might be interested in…

The first shows the hail and snow that we experienced a while ago.  As I write this, (about 9:15pm – Utah time), we’re having cold, rainy conditions.  But it is supposed to improve tomorrow – we should have one of the cranes here and get some good practice runs in.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBaPTm8d3-Q[/youtube]

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This second video is of Jeffrey, a 13 year-old member of the Kansas City Space Pirates showing off one of his unique talents.  He’s pretty good…

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySWudv44gaA[/youtube]

The Space Elevator Games now have webcams!! Marc Boucher of the Space Elevator Reference has hooked up two of them. One is currently in Building 1 (the office building) and one is in Building 2 (where the teams are setting up).

The pictures refresh every minute.

You can link to them here.

I will also be putting up a link to this on my blog’s sidebar.

Thanks Marc!!

Finally some good news.  With the revised qualification setup, five additional teams were able to qualify today.  They include UBC-Snowstar, Technology Tycoons, McGill Space Elevator Team, E-T-C and USST.  Including the Kansas City Space Pirates, who qualified on Monday, there are now six teams eligible for the Prize money competition.

Both LaserMotive and Centaurus (who, I’m told, should be here “any time now”) will be attempting to qualify later this evening.

With luck, all eight teams that made it this far will be eligible for the Prize money competition – this would be the best outcome possible.

Congratulations to all the qualifiers !!!

I have videos of all of the qualification runs.  I will be posting those over the next few hours.

The revised qualification setup is being installed in Building 3.  It’s proving to be more difficult than first expected (what new?), but is making progress.  Once it’s up, then it will be an “all-weather” setup.  So we can stay late and start early.

The thumbnail is a close-up of the top of the rig.  Click on it for a larger version.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzUPCHGGJA0[/youtube]

Clayton Ruszkowski from team USST has informed me that their team WILL be able to stay past Sunday if necessary.  I either mis-heard them this morning or just made a mistake.  Sorry Clayton and USST and it’s good to know that the KC Space Pirates will have competition on Monday, should it become necessary…

Here’s a short video I took of the mountains just outside the venue.  Yes, folks, that’s snow up there, and it wasn’t there yesterday.  Some of the forecasts for the area say that we might get some too.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQ5h9_Ymppk[/youtube]

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Here are thumbnails of some photos I just took of the various team areas.  As always, click on the thumbnails for larger versions of the pictures.

Technology Tycoons sitting around a table and either a) working on last minute details of their qualification run or b) doing their homework (not)…

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USST setting up in the official Climber Row building.  They, too, are probably working on details for their qualification run.

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The McGill Space Elevator Team, also getting ready for their qualification run.  You may note that they posted on a comment on my previous post about their equipment.  The gash in the antenna is actually deliberate – it allows the “horn” and the waveguide to be mounted through the antenna.  Sorry guys…

The Kansas City Space Pirates Climber, mounted inside a tent.  These guys look pretty relaxed – they’re already qualified…

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E-T-C, working on fortifying their climber.  After they saw what the wind did to the UBC climber and mirrors during their attempt yesterday, they decided that some additional bracing would be a good thing…

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The LaserMotive area work area.  They have the entire area surrounded with curtains as they are aligning their laser – and the surrounding area must be protected.  I have some video and photos of some the aligning and will be posting those later.

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The UBC mirrors – repaired and ready to go.

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Some additional broadcast capabilities are coming to these Games.  Marc Boucher, the co-founder of SpaceRef.com, CEO of the Mars Institute, and CEO of a new venture, Hyperix, is setting up a webcam for the event.  This will be focusing on the competition climbs when they are happening and, in between (and before and after) will be taking a snapshot every minute of various places at the venue.

This will all be accessible via the Internet.  When he’s got it up and running, I’ll post a link to it here.  It should be a very good way to get an up-to-the-minute snapshot of various activities.

Just a note about Marc.  He’s also the guy who handles the Space Elevator Reference.  I’ve conversed with him a bit via email and phone over the past year, but this is the first time I’ve had a chance to meet him.  He’s a great guy and I’m really happy that we’re working together to cover this.  He’s even more of a gadget-geek than I am.  He’s just shown me his iPod Touch – he told me he bought it so he could read his newspaper while sitting on his sofa 🙂

Incidently, Marc has some good stories and photos up about the Games so far at the Space Elevator Reference – check them out here.

I’ve posted before about the really interesting stuff I’ve found on his daily digest from SpaceRef.com.  If you haven’t subscribed to it, I highly recommend you do.  He’s also starting up a new service called “On Orbit” – kind of a digg for Space news.  You can read more about it at his site. 

 Nice to make your acquaintance Marc.

(The photo thumbnail is the webcam – click on it for a larger version of the picture)

One other development of note.  In this morning’s all-hands meeting, Spaceward and NASA quizzed the teams, asking who could stay if the Games had to be extended a day or two because of the weather (I posted about this yesterday).  Now that the teams have had a day to digest this and check schedules, etc., it appears that almost no one can.

The Kansas City Space Pirates can stay, but they’ll be a bit short-handed.  E-T-C MIGHT be able to stay one day.  USST, McGill, Technology Tycoons, LaserMotive and UBC all either cannot stay or will be so short-handed that they won’t be able to run.  And Centaurus still hasn’t shown up, so no one knows the situation with them…

This could change of course, but that’s the situation at the moment.

It’s the morning of the 17th.  The weather is truly crappy, awful, pissy, sucky, rotten, nasty, etc., etc., etc.  It looks like it’s lightening up a bit to the North-northwest, but nothing I would count on.

In order to try and get the qualifications in, the rules have been relaxed.  Spaceward personnel and volunteers are going to try to rig up a forklift unit to qualify on.  This forklift unit can extend to about 30′ feet high.  The trolley mechanism, normally hanging from the top of the crane, will now be hanging from the top of the forklift unit.

For qualification, it will now no longer be necessary to beam power the climber; batteries or AC power are acceptable.  Spaceward wants to verify that a team can mount the climber on a ribbon in a timely manner, have it ascend upwards to hit the cutoff switch on the trolley, descend properly, and then be dismounted from the ribbon in a timely manner.  There will also be no speed requirements because of the very short run.  If a team can do this, it will be deemed “Qualified”.  Of course for the real race, the original rules stay in effect; ascending about 100 meters at an average speed of 2 meters / second, carrying payload, etc.  These revised rules are for qualifying only.

All of the teams here which have not yet qualified (E-T-C, UBC-Snowstar, USST, LaserMotive, McGill and Technology Tycoons) have said that they are ready to qualify today under the modified rules.  Spaceward personnel / volunteers are now busy modifying the trolley and supporting mechanisms to be suspended from the forklift rather than the crane.  Assuming they can make this work, these revised qualifications will start at noon today.  Of course I will be there, recording all…

The video is one I took when I arrived this morning.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l27fb_6Z-Vc[/youtube]

This post contains a couple of videos about the McGill Space Elevator team and their entries in this year’s Space Elevator Games.

Yes, entries, plural.  McGill is ready to compete with both a solar powered and microwave powered climber.

The following two videos, narrated by various McGill Space Elevator team members, describe their solar and rectenna arrays.

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

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSvkzwV3He0[/youtube]

The Kansas City Space Pirates have come up with “Commemorative payload weights” as both a way of increasing their chances to win (by adding to their Climber’s payload) and raising a little money.

These are etched mirrors which will be the ones actually used as payload weights.  If the KC Space Pirates win this competition, these should certainly be worth a few bucks.  In the video, Brian explains all…

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhPEiQoJqy8[/youtube]

Once again, weather is playing havoc with the Space Elevator Games.  The wind (and now rain) conditions today have limited qualification attempts to just one, the failed attempt by UBC-Snowstar.  Both E-T-C and the Technology Tycoons were also ready to attempt to qualify, but weather prevented it.

The forecast is now looking pretty gloomy for the Salt Lake City area for the next few days.  Because of that, there is now a contingency plan in place to extend the Games by up to two days (through Tuesday, October 23rd, IF NECESSARY.  A Team Captain meeting was just held to inform the teams of this possible change of plans.

Of course this will play havoc with travel schedules, school schedules (for our High School and University students), work schedules, etc.  The Davis County Fairgrounds has kindly made their facility available for the extra two days if necessary.

This sucks, but we really can’t control the weather.  Hopefully things will clear up, at least enough to qualify the Climbers for their runs before the weekend.

The Light Racers and the Tether Pull competitions, as they’re being held indoors, will still be held on Saturday, October 20th.

Again, these are contingency plans, hopefully not necessary.  But we want to be ready if weather does not cooperate.

(The picture is of the deserted competition “ring”.  As always, click on it for a larger version of the picture.)