The arrangements are still progressing but not finalized for the upcoming Space Elevator Games – stay tuned to this blog or the Spaceward website for the latest, accurate information about the Space Elevator Games…

In the meantime, two teams have posted updates about their activities.

First up is the McGill Space Elevator Team.  Their blog has a short article and a picture about their new motor controller power supply.

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And the LaserMotive blog has the answer to the question; “What does duct tape, security cameras, multi-kilowatt laser sytems and Harley’s have in common?”  We can all sleep a little easier tonight…

The latest post on the LaserMotive blog gives an impressive indication of how powerful the laser they will be using this year is.  From the blog:

“These images just reinforce that the level of power we’re using for power beaming is beyond “just” eye danger and well into the realm of immediate skin danger – at the peak in the center of the beam, the power density was probably greater than 300 normal solar intensity. Our lasers from 2006 were powerful but the brightness was not as high as the new laser. Dilas has done an impressive job in increasing the brightness of the laser, and as a result the beam is much better collimated, so it stays very intense over a much longer distance. That is part of what enables us to beam adequate power over a kilometer away.”

Check out the post on the LaserMotive blog.  It just reinforces the fact that this year’s competition at the Space Elevator Games is going to be truly exciting.  And, just as an aside, why do hardware engineers always like to break things?  In the software world, we liked to make things work… 🙂

(Picture from the LaserMotive blog.  Click on it for a slightly larger version or visit the LaserMotive blog post)

I guess my RSS reader (FeedDemon) has some issue with the McGill Space Elevator Team’s website – it’s not picking up the updates reliably.  Since my last update on them in October, they’ve posted a few more updates which I’ve missed and failed to pass along…

Anyway, from their three latest updates we learn that;

The composite panels have been completed for the 2 climbers we plan to make. Construction of the frame will begin shortly after we receive the proper drill bits to make the necessary holes in the composites.

and

Despite having only the smaller of the two drill bit sizes, we have drilled the necessary holes to make our first climber. The entire mechanical construction will be done in January.

and (just two days ago)

We recently discovered that our antennas aren’t synchronizing with the correct gain. Development will still progress on the communication front, but debugging will be delayed.

This year’s Photonics West Exhibition will be held in San Jose, California, from January 24th through January 29th.  The actual exhibition dates are the 27th through the 29th with seminars, courses, workshops, etc. being held on the 24th, 25th and 26th.

DILAS and TRUMPF, the laser vendors for the Climber / Power-Beaming teams in this year’s Space Elevator Games, will be exhibiting there, along with many other vendors.  From the conference website:

See the latest innovations in:

 • IR Sources and Detectors 
 • Cameras and Displays
 • Electronic Imaging Components
 • Fiber Optic Systems
 • Optics, Filters, Coatings
 • Optical Components, Detectors, Fibers, Materials
 • Optics and Photonics Manufacturing
 • Sensors and Systems

The Exhibition itself is free, but it appears from the website that you must register to attend it.

If you’re in the San Jose area at that time, this would be a great event to visit.  There’s a good chance that you’ll run into one or more members of the Climber / Power-Beaming teams attending the exhibition too.
 

On the LaserMotive blog, they have recently posted two updates.

The first is a continuation of their “Meet the team” series and introduces us to Joe Grez.

“Joe Grez has a jumble of education. It includes a BS in physics, a minor in music and art, a few years of architecture studies, half of a yacht design associates degree, coursework in various engineering disciplines, industrial design (IDEO), and manufacturing process, plus a seriously healthy dose of project management coursework, some of which stuck.“

He really does have a very interesting biography – check out the post!

The second update talks about their newest sponsor, Brion Toss Yacht Riggers.  What does a ‘Yacht Rigger’ have to offer a Space Elevator Power-Beaming / Climber team?  From the blog:

“Early on, we tried making our own continuous loop cable, but the quality was not stellar, and the cable eventually wound up fraying and breaking. After much searching, we found a local company that still practiced the old art of making long splices in steel cable. As you can see, the results are pretty nice.”

The competition racetrack in this year’s Space Elevator Games is a steel cable (as opposed to the ribbon used in previous years).  To create a cable that can run continuously on a treadmill requires that you be able to splice it into a continuous loop – something that the Brion Toss group does.  Perhaps they should also talk to DeltaX, the MIT Tether competition team, about how to splice together their tether…

Check out the posts…

(Picture of the steel cable from the LaserMotive blog – click on it for a slightly larger version)

We’ll take a short break from posting about tethers and tether strength to let everyone know the latest news from the KC Space Pirates;

We still are waiting for a venue and date for the competition. It is currently slated for Feb-March 2009 and I know that Spaceward and others are working hard to get it nailed down.

A film crew was in town this weekend to get an overview of the space elevator and catch some of our testing. This is for a show called “Space Pioneers” that is supposed to air around June 2009 on the Science Channel. The presenter was Dr. Basil Singer from “Project Earth” http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/project-earth/task-force/task-force.html.  It was nice chatting with Basil about our system without the veil of secrecy that we usually have. If the competition gets delayed past June then we might be in trouble.

Just to make it more interesting I accidentally crashed the climber while demonstrating for the team members on the day before the video shoot. It fell about 15 ft to our concrete driveway and damaged the motor among other things. We repaired the motor and bench tested it. When someone asked me if I wanted to do a climb test with it, I answered no because I did not want to crash it again that late in the day. We can add this to the long line of bad calls that I have made as captain. The next day, with the cameras rolling and a dozen or so crew members watching, the motor just grunted pathetically instead of climbing for the sky. At this point we only have various speeds and sizes of motors and not any direct spares. But in about 20 min we were able to swap out most of the drive system and get it running pretty good. We will see if they are merciful in the editing.

The exercise let us capture a lot of performance data that will help us tune the climber for the competition. Other parts of our system are progressing well enough. We have only one critical issue that is looking to be expensive to fix. It also will take time so we can’t let up now.

Brian Turner
Captain
KC Space Pirates

Thanks for the update Brian.  It’s true that Spaceward is working very hard to nail down the venue and time.  It IS getting closer to being finalized and we’re hoping for March (I think you can forget about February).  I know it’s been a real PITA (for everyone), but there has been progress…

And yes, everyone, I haven’t been posting much lately – and I’m sorry for that.  I do have several posts nearly ready to go, so the output should increase over the next several days…

In my previous post, I referred to Spaceward CEO Ben Shelef’s document (The Space Elevator Feasibility Equation) as a basis for discussing how strong a Space Elevator tether really has to be and I wrote this; “The answer to this question relates to how strong the climber power system is.  The stronger the power system is, the weaker the tether can be (and vice-versa).”

Why is this so?  Well, let’s look at an example.

Say you have a tether which is rated at 30 tons.  What this means is that you can have up to 30 tons of Climber/Payload weight on the tether at any one time.  Does this mean that you can only have one 30-ton Climber (or three 10-ton Climbers or six 5-ton Climbers) on the tether at one time?

The answer is no – you can have more than 30 tons of mass on the Climber at one time and the reason for this is the Climber, as it ascends, weighs less and less (though its mass, of course, never changes).  This is due to the force of gravity weakening as you get farther and farther away from earth.  So, a Climber which weighs 30 tons at ground zero will only weigh only half as much (15 tons) when it gets to 2,624 kilometers in height (where the force of gravity is one-half that at ground level).  When the Climber ascends to 6,400 kilometers, the Climber will weigh only one quarter as much (7.5 tons) and so on.  So this means that when a 30 ton Climber ascends to 6,400 kilometers (and weighs only 7.5 tons), you can then launch another Climber weighing 22.5 tons.  When that Climber gets to 6,400 kilometers (and the first one launched is now at 12,800 kilometers), the total Climber weight on the tether is now 10.8 tons (1/4 of 30 tons plus 1/9 of 30 tons) which means you can launch another 19.2 ton Climber (note that the Climbers will weigh even less than I’ve indicated as they ascend due to centrifugal force, but that factor doesn’t become significant until you get close to GEO and so I’ve ignored it here).

As you can see, one can play with these numbers in several different ways to get different launch schedules, but the bottom line is this; you can launch any number of Climbers you want to on this 30-ton rated tether as long as the total weight of these Climbers (as opposed to the total mass of these Climbers) does not exceed 30 tons.

From this, it should be pretty clear that it is advantageous to have the Climbers ascend as rapidly as possible.  The higher they ascend and the quicker they do so, the sooner you can launch another significant Climber.  And this brings us back to the statement; “The stronger the power system is, the weaker the tether can be”.

The stronger your power system is (with all other things being equal), the faster your climbers can ascend (up to a limit, of course).  So, if your goal is to get 20 tons to GEO every day, you need, say, a 30 ton rated tether with a power system strong enough to propel a 20 ton Climber at least 2,624 kilometers per day, or, you can have, say, a 60 ton rated tether with a weaker power system just able to propel a 20 ton Climber at least 1,312 kilometers per day.  Both tethers will do the job, but it’s certainly going to be easier (and faster) to build a 30-ton rated tether than a 60-ton rated one.  And what if a 60-ton rated tether is just not possible?

“The stronger the power system is, the weaker the tether can be”.

Not only would we LIKE to lift the maximum amount possible on any specific tether, it is also going to be NECESSARY to lift the maximum amount possible on any specific tether.  This is because there are ‘housekeeping chores’ which will consume a very significant fraction of a Space Elevator’s capabilities, housekeeping chores which, if not done, will mean a Space Elevator will simply not be viable.  I will talk about these housekeeping chores in my next post.

(Picture of Stone-Wales defect from here – click on it for a slightly larger version)

If you wander over to the Spaceward website, you’ll see that its proud owner, Ben Shelef, has been very, very busy…

Spaceward, for those of you who don’t know, is the organization which partners with NASA to host the Space Elevator Games.  While NASA provides the $4 Million in prize money, Spaceward is the organization that has to do all the work.  They have to find a venue (different and more difficult each year because of the increasingly complexity of the competition), recruit and support the teams, write the rules, actually put on the event, judge the results, publicize what they’re doing, etc., etc., etc….  The amount of publicity this event garners though is huge and worldwide and there can be little doubt that the Spaceward Space Elevator Games are one of the premier events in the Space Elevator world.

Anyway, back to their website.  To help support Japan’s first Space Elevator conference, Spaceward has had much of its web content translated into Japanese, this to help the Japanese public in their understanding of this revolutionary technology.  If you visit their website, note the tiny American and Japanese flags at the top-left and the arrow in between.  Pointing to that graphic and then clicking on the flag that pops up will send you to the ‘other language’ website.  Ben hasn’t had everything translated into Japanese yet, but much of it is.  This should help ‘spread the word’ in the land of the rising sun…

A visit to this website is highly recommended, for both English and Japanese speakers.  It is one of the very places on the web where you can trust what you read about the Space Elevator.

 Next week, I’ll highlight some of the other updates Ben has made to the Spaceward website.

(Click on the concept picture of the Space Elevator for a larger version or, better yet, visit the Spaceward website to see all of its content)

On the LaserMotive blog, Tom Nugent opines on how relatively ‘easy’ the Lunar Landing challenge looked and how hard it was in retrospect.  He also comments on how this applies to the Climber / Power-Beaming competition in the Space Elevator Games; something which looks easy but turns out not to be…

‘Tis true, tis true…  Systems of this complexity (and make no doubt about it – these Climber/Power-Beaming systems ARE complex) take lots of engineering and even more debugging to get right.  Integration testing is even more fun 🙂  You can have sub-system “A” which works just fine and sub-system “B” which works just fine and sub-system “C” which works just fine too, but when you put them together, well, the interactions between the various components can make things act in a very odd (and undesirable) manner.

Along the way, we’ve had more teams than not drop out because they underestimated the complexity of the task in front of them (and/or they couldn’t get funding – always a big deal, too).  This year alone we had 14 teams sign up, but we’ll be happy if we get 5-6 competitors who actually have something at the Games which has a shot at the prize money (even with all the delays we’ve had in scheduling it).

Read Tom’s post – he’s so young to be so wise 🙂

Over the past several days, I’ve put up posts relating to both the KC Space Pirates and the National Space Society (NSS) Power-Beaming / Climber teams and their ongoing tests.  Both teams (along with 3 others) are recipients of an extraordinarily generous offer from TRUMPF – an offer to provide an 8kW laser (with crew!) for their entries in the upcoming Space Elevator Games.

I thought it would be interesting to see the ‘other side’ of the tests; i.e. what TRUMPF had to say about them.  I asked Dave Marcotte, TRUMPF’s point man in this project, what he could tell me.  Here is what he had to say:

TRUMPF recently completed three days of testing with two of our Space Elevator teams, the Space Pirates and NSS.  Two days of testing were held outdoors and one day indoors.
 
The three days of testing were somewhat high pressure for the TRUMPF crew.  The schedule of the “road show” would not allow for any equipment malfunctions. Three days, three startups, and three decommissions were required to meet the needs of the teams.  It was unusual for us to move a pre-assembled laser system across the state on a soft sided flat bed truck and startup the 8kW laser system outside, in cold weather, powered from a portable generator. 

For the three days of testing, TRUMPF supplied both teams with clean dry compressed air, chilled re-circulating water, 8kW of laser power through a 30 meter long fiber optic cable, an EStop Button and a “laser on/off” switch.
 
The first day of testing was with the Space Pirates. After accommodating a few forgotten items we were underway.   Outside testing was very controlled to ensure absolute safety.  The Space Pirates tested on the first day until after dark.
 
On day two of testing we woke to a bit of a surprise. At 7 a.m. we came out of the motel and found Ice, not frost, Ice on the trucks.  With the cooling water left in the laser from the first day of testing, we had visions of a frozen laser, burst laser pumping chambers and expensive repairs. With high hopes, we returned to the outdoor test site and connected the generator.  Tension was high while we waited for the laser to come up to operating temperature.  Everyone was relieved when over 8kW laser power was generated without issue. 

Day two of testing was with the NSS team which continued until dusk.  That evening when decommissioning TRUMPF removed every drop of water from the laser and chiller – just to be safe.
 
Day three was the easiest and most exciting of the three.  The truck driver left the outdoor site at about 4 a.m.  Just prior to 8 a.m. he pulled the tractor trailer into the interior of a large building near Detroit.  The Space Pirates team pulled inside next to the flatbed.  The cold temperatures of the early morning trip from the outdoor test site to the indoor test site resulted in a slight delay in laser start up because the Freon in the chillers was too cold to circulate.  Once up and running, the equipment performance was again “per specification”.  Using a block and tackle and a couple of steel tri-pods anchored to the floor, we suspended a 3/16″ diameter cable horizontally for the length of the building.  The suspended cable provided an additional testing resource for the team.
 
We decommissioned our road show at about 7 p.m. and went to our homes, very tired, and very happy.  Both the Space Pirates and NSS are great teams.  TRUMPF looks forward to the start of the Space Elevator competition.

In an update, Dave informed me that “…all testing was in Michigan.  Equipment assembly was in Plymouth Michigan. We traveled about 4 hours to the Northern Michigan site, then south to the Detroit site and then back to Plymouth.”

Thank you to Dave and his team (Sheila LaMoth and Rolf Biekert) for this update and special thanks for what you and TRUMPF are contributing!  It’s due, in part, to efforts like this that I feel our chances of awarding prize money this year are better than ever.

Thanks to the miracle of YouTube, the BBC Video with the National Space Society (NSS) Space Elevator Team is now available (I blogged about this earlier, here).

The theme is that the Space Elevator would make a wonderful vehicle for lifting Solar Power Satellites into space.  The video is in two parts;

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OKbeb2Rank&feature=related[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVM31dvngmE&feature=related[/youtube]

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It’s nice to see Matt Abrahms (from the old StarClimber team) again – Hi Matt!

Enjoy…

Oh, and the quote in the title of this post?  That comes from the narrator of these videos, James May.  He also has that wonderful pronunciation of our state of Maryland (“Mare-eee-land”).

The most recent entry in the LaserMotive blog discusses how they are constructing their travelling laser road-show; specifically the box/trailer that they will be bringing their laser-setup in for the next Space Elevator Games.  They needed to modify their trailer by (among other things) cutting a hole in the ceiling for their laser-beam to be aimed through.

From their blog entry:

“Since the power beaming competition rules specify that teams must bring their power beaming source in some form of ‘big box’ (a trailer or cargo container) from which they aim their beam roughly vertically, once we bought a trailer, we needed to modify it.”

Last year, LaserMotive suffered from having to construct their power source on the launch pad (which I blogged about here).  This year, even if the rules hadn’t required it, I’m sure LaserMotive would be planning on bringing an already-put-together-rig…

Click on the picture for a larger view – and visit the LaserMotive blog for more pictures and more details…

I’ve received two updates from Bert Murray, captain of the NSS Space Elevator team.

The first is about a BBC TV show that their climber was featured on.  The show series is “James May Big Idea: Power to the People“.  I had blogged about the making of this show, before, in April – and it’s finally made it to the small screen.  Unfortunately, you can only see it if you are a UK resident.  If you are, drop me a line / comment to let me know what it looked like (or send me the YouTube link 🙂 ).

From the show notes:

Continuing his journey to the US, James encounters a group of dedicated aerospace engineers who are planning to make a lift that will reach 20,000 miles into the skies. Their idea is to build a power station in space. James watches enthralled as they take their first tentative steps towards their goal – and a crack at a $2million [£1million] prize.

Their second item concerns recent laser testing they have done.  Hot on the heels of the KC Space Pirates announcing that they were successfully able to beam useful power for a full kilometer, NSS announces that they, too, can do this:

“The NSS Team has completed four Laser tests with Trumpf. The last test was long range and outside shooting over 1Km. Attached is an IR photo of powering a “test array” from 1000 meters.”

You can view the picture online or click on the thumbnail for the full-size version.

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

“We just completed another round of testing with the TRUMPF laser.  Although not without problems the important tests were successful.

The most important test was the full range 1km power beam. This test was successful and even exceeded expectations.  Beaming useful amounts of power 1km is something that few have done. I can’t say yet exactly how much power we beamed, but enough to make our 5 meters per second goal.

A scientific milestone has been passed.

Brian Turner
Captain
KC Space Pirates”

5 m/s over a full kilometer would make for some GREAT footage…

I use an RSS reader (FeedDemon) to try and keep up with all of the websites I follow.  Occasionally I have a problem with it and it causes me to miss some postings from some sites.  Evidently, this is what happened with the feed from the McGill Space Elevator Team site because they’ve been posting fairly frequently and I haven’t been paying attention.  If I hadn’t seen an entry about this team on Ray’s Space Prizes blog, I might have neglected them for a while longer…

Sorry guys…

Anyway, they have several progress entries up on their blog, from making the decision to switch from Microwave power to Laser power to a redesign of their climber to the testing that they are doing.  Their latest post reads:

“We will start climber testing around mid October on a 20m wire suspended from a staircase.  Instead of using the laser outside, we plan on using 1 to 3 theatre spotlights to do some smaller climbs and more debugging.”

The last posting I put up about their team was last March, here.  Their site’s home page is here and their blog home is here.  Check them out – it looks like they’re moving right along…

I received the following update from Brian Turner, captain of the Kansas City Space Pirates:

“Lots going on. We are quite busy around here. All of our scheduled testing is happening.

We recently returned from Detroit and had an eventful and ultimately successful round of testing. The troubles ranged from minor stuff like flood related detours stealing our sleep and poison ivy oil on the steering wheel, to a tracking system that was overwhelmed by the brightness of the very laser it was meant to direct, and… a fire.

OK, I will start with the fire. A dust cover adjacent to the laser path was overheated by reflected laser light. This led to a cascading failure resulting an impressive amount of black smoke and a tiny little fire. It is a rookie mistake made by us rookies. That ended day 1 of testing but the team pulled it together while the frustrated and exhausted captain went to sleep, They cleaned all the soot off of the high power optics and had us up and running only a little bit into day 2. Yes, another all-nighter for the cause. Good thing too, as on day 2 we found a solution to the overwhelmed tracking system and finished off our scheduled testing.

These are exactly the kind of problems that this type of controlled testing is meant to reveal, it’s just that having them does not exactly make me happy. The final result is that all of the other critical performance metrics were square on the numbers. We beamed power a short distance with a laser and ran our climber’s motor with it.

The competition has been delayed. Yes, this is the third time. But the facility that Spaceward is working on looks to be an excellent place for the competition. And we had hit crash schedule to keep with former date of Nov. 7th. So I have to welcome the delay. The new date has not been set but Dec. and Jan. both look to be out.

We leave this week for long range testing with the real laser.  We have a rather hairy to do list in the next couple of days to get all the systems together.  This test should reveal any last/hidden weaknesses in our systems.  We are still wrestling with some other issues, so we are not done by any means but I will feel much better when we have hard data on power conversion at the full KM range.

On a personal note my oldest and second largest customer’s owner died unexpectedly of a heart attack.  Alan was the guy that got me started in the career that I have today.  I will be quite busy filling in for some of his duties and training his son to be the new general manager.  Again, I have to welcome the competition delay. And if you ever find yourself wondering if you should call 911 when you’re having chest pains, I hope you risk saying yes rather than no.  I will miss him.

Most research projects would consider this upcoming test the end result.  But in the Space Elevator Games it is just one step along the way and is a big part of what differentiates this challenge from a “Lab” experiment.

Brian Turner
Captain
KC Space Pirates”

So, it sounds like they’re making good progress (and from this team, I would expect nothing less).  As I’ve said before, I think they have to be considered one of the favorites for this competition.

I am very sorry to hear about Alan’s passing and I can only agree with Brian’s recommendation of calling 911 if there is any question of an emergency.

In the latest posting on the LaserMotive blog, a series of pictures are displayed, showing distances of 200m, 400m, 600m, 800m and 1,000m (1km) and gives a very good idea of how far the Climbers will have to travel, a full kilometer, in this year’s Space Elevator Games in order to have a chance at the prize.

Keep in mind that last year, the distance to be travelled was only half the distance shown in the first picture, only 100m.

Great post, LaserMotive – thanks!

On the subject of the upcoming games, readers may have noticed that the timing for these has been changed yet again.  As noted on this blog’s list of Upcoming Events, the Games are now scheduled for some time in November.  We’re still not sure where they’re going to be yet, either.  I know, I know, we all want to know (especially the teams).

We’re all waiting as fast as we can…

In the latest update from the LaserMotive blog, we are given a video glimpse of their tracking mirror, one which is ‘musically inclined’ (pun intended).

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEuqrUen404[/youtube]

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Kind of gives a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘tuning the mirrors’, doesn’t it? 

This is the second post LaserMotive has given us like this – I blogged about the last one here.

I identify with the last line in the current post; “If we get the time, maybe we’ll program the mirror to play a song…”  If you’re an old hand in the data processing / IT field like I am (and I’m talking the 60’s and 70’s here), you might remember how some of us (who had too much time on our hands) programmed the various computer peripherals to play songs.  There were no speakers or music software involved, these were tunes which were ‘played’ on line printers, with the different series of print keys striking the paper and producing different notes.  Card readers provided snare effects while the access arms on the disk drives provided percussion.  Some of this stuff got pretty exotic – I remember hearing “She”ll be coming ’round the mountain” in two-part harmony (two different printers) while a half-dozen other peripherals provided the background beat.  Oddly enough, IBM was a big provider of this kind of stuff – they used it for computer demos.  I wish I could find a video of one on YouTube or something – it really was cool.

I love geeky stuff…

10September, 2008 – Update.  I’ve been able to locate some tunes, on the Computer History Museum website, being played on an IBM 1403 Printer.  There is no video (pity), but there are mp3 files of several songs (no ‘She’ll be coming ’round the mountain, though).  I’ve copied one here (“Born Free”) which you can play by clicking on the arrow, below.

[audio:/media/1403_BornFree.mp3]

According to the website, these songs were a gift from Ron Mak.  Thanks Ron – it brings back great memories.

We have some news from some of our friends up north, the University of Saskatchewan Space Design Team (USST):

“Hungry spies have infiltrated USST Headquarters and have managed to capture these few rare pictures from the otherwise secretive team.”

The picture shown is ‘possibly a (crunchy) cupcake’…  Check out the link to see the rest of the pictures posted.

Oh, and if you go to their Home page, you’ll see that they’ve added a fundraising meter (as the KC Space Pirates did last year).  Looks like they’re doing pretty well.

On the LaserMotive blog, I found this reference to a recent article about their own Jordin Kare.

Even though the article is in the online Seattle Times, I think the author of the article is English.  From the article; “They require a lot of juice and move around through too many dodgy areas to support a reliable wireless power source.” – no one else uses the term “dodgy” 🙂

A few days ago, I received this news from Brian Turner, captain of the Kansas City Space Pirates:

More good news.

We added another major sponsor. We are happy to announce that Barr Associates will be coating mirrors for us. The steering mirror is a critical part of our system and regular mirrors just can’t cut it at 8 Kilowatts of power. Barr Associates has many years experience in high performance coatings. They will be delivering a mirror that is telescope quality and 99.99+% reflective. This mirror would have been the single biggest expense for us without their support. So we send them a hearty THANK YOU! and you will be seeing their logo proudly displayed on our materials.

http://barrassociates.com/

Less than good news.

We still are not making fast enough headway in the programming dept. And as usual we are starved for cash.

Other good news.

We have climbers buzzing along cables strung up in the garage, we have the optics system ready for another round of testing as we narrow it into the final configuration. Our tracking system keeps passing our tests with flying colors.

News about the competition.

The balloon concept has proven non pratical so the organiser has switched to a helicopter. The safety issues of the manned helicopter are being worked out now. Turns out helicopters have been used similar to this in the past.

I am happy about this as I consider the helicopter more predictable than the balloon. I think the safety issues will be answered. Although the lasers are powerful enough to be dangerous to a helicopter, practical power beaming configurations use the laser in a manner that is somewhat less potent.

The target venue is still meteor crater but we will be moving to the edge of the crater instead of the bottom. I think that would be an excellent spot.

Brian Turner

In this year’s Space Elevator Games, a round, steel cable is replacing the belt/tether ‘racetrack’ which proved so problematic last year. 

In the latest post on the LaserMotive blog, we see a video of the LaserMotive drive system zipping through a bunch of cable like that in this year’s competition.  The ‘interesting bits’ are blocked out, so we can’t see the mechanism that is actually traversing the cable, but it’s an impressive bit of footage nonetheless…

The YouTube video is below; check out the LaserMotive Blog post for the full story.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukXa4NvV-VE[/youtube]

At KansasCity.com, author Jonathan Bender wrote an article discussing robotics, Space Elevator climber, the Spaceward Games and, among others, Brian Turner, captain of the Kansas City Space Pirates…

From the article:

“This year Turner and his team are headed back to the desert with one goal — to capture the $2 million prize. They have a new power source, a laser, but the climber must now scale a kilometer-long ribbon, a distance 10 times greater than the 2007 threshold.”

It’s a fun article – that Brian sure does get in the news, doesn’t he?

In the current (Summer, 2008) issue of Ad Astra, the quarterly publication produced by the National Space Society, there is an interview with Bert Murray, captain of the NSS Space Elevator Team.  The interview, entitled ‘Going Up’, covers such topics as Bert’s background, team progess, advantages of a Space Elevator, etc.

It’s a worthy read contained in a worthy publication.  I never have enough time to read all of the magazines I’ve subscribed to, but I always read As Astra from cover to cover – it’s very well put together and always has interesting and timely articles.  If you’re not already a member of NSS, I urge you to consider joining.

On a related note, at the recently completed ISDC 2008 conference, the NSS team had a booth.  I had posted about this before along with some photographs.  One thing I neglected to mention is that NSS has created a brochure about their Space Elevator team.  The three thumbnails in this post are of the brochure – click on the thumbnails to get a larger, readable version of them.

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

The climber climbed!
Just from the floor to the ceiling of the shop. But it has proven that our drive system works with the climb cable. This is all new stuff this year and we are happy with the design we have so far.

Beam steering 101
We have now steered a beam with full XYZ control. We have assembled the parts from ThorLabs and National Instruments and things are progressing nicely.

Solar panel
The solar panel is finished and should be mounted on the climber by the end of next week.

The International Space Development Conference (ISDC) in Washington DC was something of a let down as we only uncovered 2 leads for funding and one of those has already turned us down. I suspect that I would have done better if I had made it in on the Wednesday business plan presentations. It was a good networking opportunity. For example, I met a person that showed me where to get a part we were having trouble finding.

Money.
Here we are back at the money issue. At this stage of the project we are spending money as fast as we raise it. I have been forced to delay purchases while trying to get the money for the items. This could bite us later. Fund raising is now directly competing with building time. I hate it when that happens.

Some aspects of the project are falling behind, but others are right on time thanks to the progress made this week. I will be focusing on the stragglers this week. The competition organisers have not finalised the actual competition yet either. So a delay is possible.  Normally I would want to keep the pressure on our competitors, but at this point an extra month would be welcome. We are supposed to hear about this soon.

Brian Turner
Captain
KC Space Pirates
816-746-5937

It’s now the second day of the ISDC2008 conference.  As I blogged yesterday, Stephen Steiner of team DeltaX was at the conference and at the Spaceward exhibit; demonstrating and talking about carbon nanotubes.

Today, we have the team captains from three of the Climber / Power-Beaming teams in attendance, Bert Murray (of the NSS team), David Nemir (of the TXL Group team) and Brian Turner (of the Kansas City Space Pirates).  I’ve taken several photos and shot a few videos.  I’m posting some now and more later.

Here is a picture of Ben Shelef of the Spaceward Foundation and David Nemir, captain of the TXL Group team.  Ben is the guy with pointer.

David tells me that there will be some ‘very interesting’ news about their Climber system that they will be releasing soon.

This is a picture of Ben with Bert Murray, team captain for the National Space Society (NSS) team.

Bert’s team also has an booth in the Exhibition Hall and he will be giving a presentation at the conference tomorrow.

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And here is a picture of Brian Turner, captain of the Kansas City Space Pirates, and recent guest on the Conan O’Brien show…

Why is Brian always in a hard hat and always trying to fix a problem? 🙂

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Also in attendance from the Kansas City Space Pirates was Ravi.  He’s a main character in the “Fix the Balloon” video which I’ll be posting later.

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This is a picture of the three team captains.  I’m not sure what they’re discussing, but I’m sure it’s being done without revealing a lot of information…

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Finally, an old friend, Ken Davidian, the previous Centennial Challenges guy from NASA, is here.  This photo show him talking with Brian Turner.

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More later…

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

Last month, I put up a post about a speaking engagement with Michael Remington (of Team Astroaraneae) and a new documentary film (submitted to the Seattle Film Festival) which is described by its producers as:

“It distills, and elicits the very essence of technological innovation as seen through the eyes of those toiling at the Space Elevator.”

Today I receved an email from one of the Producers, Kane Wilke, informing me that:

“The Producers of the Mighty Tether (Jeremy Dinovo, Kane Wilke) would like to annouce we have a website Mightytether.tv and a trailer of the movie available. The movie’s tentative released day is June 16th for DVD.

At the beginning of the long road to space exploration, NASA pushes to build a real elevator between Earth and outer space. A team of aerospace scientists and technologists responded by creating the strongest rope in the world. Stretching between the balance of their personal and work lives, this team still must push forward beyond rockets and hold the world of space travel on a string.”

The trailer is available at their website (shown above) and also on YouTube:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3t4uMTsbyM[/youtube]

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There are scene snippets from both the 2006 and 2007 Space Elevator Games in this trailer.  Visit the MightyTether.tv website for more information about this documentary including how to purchase it.

On the Queen’s Space Engineering Team website, Progress and Updates tab, we learn that:

“Parts have been ordered and we expect to be starting on the construction as they arrive.

We will keep you posted on developments and news and contacting you as construction begins so we can build our climber!”

Always nice to see progress.

And, a nice article about the team appeared in one of their local press outlets (the Kingston-Whig Standard).  It says, in part:

“NASA underwrites the international competition, which will be held this fall under the auspices of the Spaceward Foundation, in hopes that competitors will be able to solve these problems, said Anna Wu, one of the members of the Queen’s Space Engineering Team.

‘We’re really excited to be taking part in this,’ she said, noting the team of engineering and other science students – which bills itself as the most advanced competitive engineering team at Queen’s – has been working on its prototype for two years.”

The entire article is a worthwhile read…

In his latest missive, we learn from Brian Turner, Captain of the KC Space Pirates that:

The Conan Show was a big hit.  I managed not to choke and remained rather articulate through the 5 min interview.  We did not however get to cover the competition, the team or the sponsors.  They were on the list but I had no idea how fast time would fly.  I felt that I was on for only 30 seconds.  We clearly managed to inform thousands of viewers about the space elevator and raise awareness.  I saw a big jump in web site visitors but only received 1 small donation.  The show will be re-run at least once so even more may come of it.  I will keep you posted.  You can go watch the video on the NBC site if you missed it.

We mechanically steered a beam!  It was just a laser pointer and only in 1 dimension.  Still it is a small but significant step in our mission.

We are planning to go to the ISDC (International Space Development Conference) in Washington DC at the end of this month.  I plan on meeting with potential supporters there and hopefully securing the funds needed for the rest of this year.

Brian Turner

As has been mentioned in this blog (and elsewhere, I’m sure), DILAS supplied the laser the USST team used in their near-prize-winning run at the 2007 Space Elevator Games.

In this article in the online publication Laser Focus World, DILAS (Tucson) General Manager & Vice-President Dr. Georg Treusch discusses this application from the vendor’s viewpoint.  It’s a somewhat technical and very interesting article.  We learn, for example, that DILAS “…supplied the best performer in 2007 with a power-beaming source on very short notice (three weeks), using a new modular diode-laser-based power beamer that is applicable for both terrestrial as well as spaceborne applications.”  The ‘best performer’ referred to was USST.

Dr. Treusch also discusses what is planned for 2008:

The new design for the power beamer considers various approaches from different teams using low-cost Si- or highly advanced GaAs-based photovoltaic (PV) cells. Material choices, PV cell, and beam characteristics are up to the competing teams; the challenge simply sets the distance and minimum average rate of climb. Each team is likely to have its own approach with power-beaming systems ranging from 2.5 kW to values above 10 kW.

The wavelength for the power-beaming sources will likely be between 800 and 980 nm. High-power diode lasers have efficiencies greater than 60% and power levels greater than 100 W per 10 mm bar. It is a happy coincidence that Si and GaAs photocells are more efficient at this spectral range compared to wavelengths above 1 µm, which is the spectral domain of fiber and disk lasers.

A very interesting article – highly recommended.

Also, while searching through this publication’s archives, I found this article.  While it focuses on delivering power to photovoltaic cells via fiber-optics, it also discusses delivering power to photovoltaics via ‘free space’; i.e. using light (or lasers).  It also briefly mentions the 2005 Space Elevator competition.

I guess I’ll have to keep watch on this publication, too.  So many articles, so little time…

We have a new competitor into this year’s Climber/Power-Beaming event, Team Nippon, from Japan.  It’s Captain and Fearless Leader, William Rieken, kindly consented to answer some questions I sent to him via Email:

[Space Elevator Blog – SEB] – Please tell us a bit about yourself.  Are you a permanent resident or citizen of Japan or are you there in a work-related or study-related capacity?
[Team Nippon – TN]– I have lived in Japan for about 26 years or so. I am still a U.S. citizen. I enjoy the peaceful life of Japan. I have worked in several universities and government labs in Japan over the years. I am doing my Ph.D. at the Nara Institute of Science and Technology in Nara Japan. I have been working on the development of technology related to search and rescue for my Ph.D. studies.

[SEB] – When did you first get introduced to / interested in the concept of a Space Elevator?
[TN] – I have been following the Space Elevator development and competition since they first became known. As a person with considerable interests in technology and science and the progress and the sustain ability of mankind I track and become involved in technological developments and the policy all over the world.

[SEB] – How did you hear about the Space Elevator competition?
[TN]– As I said, I have been watching the competition from afar from the beginning. I got interested in doing this competition at this time, because right now I am waiting for my acceptance letter from a journal. My final requirement for graduation. Looking for a new challenge, I did some design work on a pre concept vehicle and thought this would be something important to participate in, that could contribute towards the future.  My team and I and my sponsors all believe that by doing work such as this benefits everyone in the world in the long run.

[SEB] – Please tell us a bit about your team and your teammates.
[TN]– Dr. Kawashima, a consultant, handles the laser segment at his laboratory. Dr. Kawashima has much experience in “power beaming” technologies over a kilometer range, so is perfect for my team. We have another physicist consultant, who advises in laser and optical cell coupling technologies. Nijo, an Indian from india helps in the Cad work and is very good at it. I work on everything else, system design, engineering and integration as well as logistics. Most of the big stuff is handled by my sponsors and their employees. The design, construction and engineering of the climber is done by myself.  The team is small by design. I have built and managed many teams over the years and have found small teams to be the most effective. Teams need to be functional systems which can carry out the necessary steps to complete the work. When teams get large, you get into a lot of problems and then they become difficult to control. So a team only needs as many operators as required to accomplish the goal and no more. So I have a small, but very focused and experienced team. I am expecting to expand the team by three more people over the course of the project as their need arises.

[SEB] – I’m sure you’re fully aware of the demands of this year’s competition (1 KM high – 2m/sec).  What type of power-source does your team intend on using to power your Climber?
[TN]– We are using KW range lasers like most everyone else. It has been the most difficult portion of the project because of the very high power requirements, weight of components and special logistical requirements.  In my opinion, NASA should have provided the laser system because its requirements greatly limits the ability of teams to compete. Laser systems in these power ranges and multi-million dollar price range takes a lot of expertise and a high level of knowledge to operate safely. This creates a kind of “haves and have nots” syndrome.  Eventually we will have to move our these lasers to the U.S. for the competition. Moving the climber system is a piece of cake, but when you throw in KW lasers, that is a lot of work, that we are looking forward too.

Thank you William – and a hearty welcome to you and your team to the competition!

The more competition, the better of course (though the other teams may not feel that way 🙂 ).  And, having another non-North-American competitor is a big plus.  I just wish we could get some European team (or two) to join the fun – maybe next year…

I received the following very exciting email from Brian Turner, Captain and Fearless Leader of the Kansas City Space Pirates:

Big news. We have landed National Instruments as a sponsor. For those of you who don’t know them, they make the coolest automation software out there (LabView) and all the hardware to go with it. Having high quality software and hardware will make this task far easier than it would have been otherwise and National Instruments is second to none.

Drum roll please ….

I am going to be interviewed about the Space Elevator on NBC’s Late Night with Conan O’Brien.

Date Friday May 2nd

Time: Very late. After the Tonight Show – Around 11:30 in Kansas City

I have read repots estimating 2 million viewers. Needless to say I am excited and nervous. I am not sure how much the space elevator has been discussed on national network TV but this is clearly a big opportunity. Hope I don’t blow it.

Brian Turner
Captain
KC Space Pirates

I’m sure you won’t blow it Brian, and this is tremendous news, both for you and your team and for the Space Elevator concept in general.

I’m putting out a call to everyone to please record this show.  I have a TIVO, but it’s over 5 years old and is starting to act up – I’m not 100% sure of it anymore.

Conan O’Brien – way cool…

(Picture of Conan from here.  My favorite Conan O’Brien website here.)

I received this email update from Brian Turner, Captain and Fearless Leader of the Kansas City Space Pirates:

“In the spring-time a pirate’s fancy turns to thoughts of… packages, showing up via UPS. That’s right, It’s build season and while I wait impatiently for said packages I thought I would fire off a long overdue update.

As I mentioned we are receiving and assembling parts. I am not sure that we are still ahead of schedule but father time is not breathing down our necks just yet. We have been a little distracted by various things including a national television engagement that is coming up (more on that later).

Our testing in Detroit went quite well and our photo cell vendor is working on our order. If we can get the cells to match projections in the competition we should be able to make good on the 5 m/s goal I set out a few months back.

We have a major new sponsor to announce. Thorlabs. They will be providing most if not all of our optical needs. This covers one of the major expenses we were facing so I am exceptionally excited about this one. We also have a major automation vendor in the works for sponsorship, but it is not quite in the bag yet, so I will leave that announcement for later.

We also have added an expert machinist to the team. This in an important step for the precision machining needed to make the optical actuators needed to aim the laser.

Brian Turner
Captain,
KC Space Pirates”

As this team has well-proven in the past two competitions, they are a serious threat to win it all – I’m going to be very interested to see how their foray into laser-power turns out.

The Queen’s Space Engineering Team today announced more team position fulfillments:

“Congratulations to Justin Charbonneau, Jason Saldanha, Max Miller-Blanchaer, and Cameron Hurst, who will be filling in the positions of President, VP Mechanical Design, VP Electrical Design, and VP Power Beaming.”

Read the full post here.  Also of note is their new web layout.

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

Hi Ted,

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

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

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

Kind regards,

Andreas Hein

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

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

Jonathan Boulanger, President of the Queen’s Space Engineering Team, has graciously consented to answer some questions I emailed him:

[Space Elevator Blog – SEB] – What got you and your team interested in the idea of a Space Elevator and the competition itself?
[Jonathan Boulanger – JB] – I first became interested in the idea of a Space Elevator through a project in my second year applied physics class.  I personally took a unique interest as carbon nanotubes fascinated me (and they still do). Just over a year ago I stumbled upon the Elevator2010 website.  After telling a few people about the competition support for creating a team was huge and before you knew it, here we are. Moral of the story, cutting edge ideas sell.

[SEB] – Is your team comprised of all University students or do you plan on partnering with anyone outside of the University (outside of TRUMPF)?
[JB] – The Queen’s Space Engineering Team (QSET) is primarily composed of university students; however, we are no stranger to outside consultation.  Several Queen’s Alumni have contributed time, experience, and funding to our project. Presently, QSET has begun a partnership with TRUMPF. Our partnership with TRUMPF will go a long way towards bridging the gap between our relatively new team and more founded teams, such as USST or LaserMotive.  We hope to give everyone a run for their (or rather, NASA’s) money.

[SEB] – How many members – what kind of skill sets do you have on your team?
[JB] – QSET consists of almost 25 members.  These members belong to seven different engineering disciplines, commerce, as well as arts and science programs.  I’m sure you can imagine the bulk of our members belong in the first group.  The skill sets that these people bring to the team are quiet diverse.  We have people specializing in robotics, mechanical design, physics, etc.

[SEB] – What are your team’s goals for this year?
[JB] – Our team’s primary goal for this year is to make a run for top spot and make it an enjoyable and educational experience for everyone involved.

Thank you Jonathan.  Also of note is their spiffy new logo – shown at the top of this post. 

A couple of weeks ago, I alerted my readers to an episode of Quarks which was recently shown on German TV.  This show had a segment about the concept of Space Elevators and also a segment about a team of German students who were in the process of designing an entry into the Space Elevator Games.  Thanks to Markus Klettner, head of EuroSpaceward, I was put in touch with Andreas Hein, former team leader of the WARR elevator team (which, before that was known as Team Telsa and before THAT was known as Team Ramco I).

She has kindly emailed me what she says is a translation of an article about Space Elevators which appeared on the Quarks TV site.  In her email she also said: “Regarding our future plans, we will decide this issue on our next meeting end of April. We hope that we are able to answer all questions about our planning by this time.”

The article (shown immediately following) says that they are planning on having Microwave-driven climber, using an antenna which is 30 meters in diameter!

“With the elevator through the galaxy

Will we travel into space with a space elevator in the future?

The idea to build a space elevator was made popular through the science fiction novel “Fountains of Paradise” by Arthur C Clarke. In the meantime former NASA members, different scientists and amateur space enthusiasts actually work on this idea. And that’s the vision: The space elevator consists of an anchored platform in the sea, a counterweight in space and a ribbon, which connects both. Due to the rotation of the earth, the ribbon is hold tight through the centrifugal force. Along it, elevator climbers climb up. In an approximate height of 36.000km, in the geostationary orbit, a space station is erected. From there, it is possible to reach even further into space. The elevator itself is fed with energy through a gigantic laser from the ground. It transports goods and also passengers much cheaper and safer than is done till now with the Space Shuttle.

A competition for space elevators

To promote the idea of a space elevator to the public and to get as many people as possible involved, a competition was founded in 2005: the Space Elevator Games. The American space agency NASA donated the prize money. Since then, every year hobbyists and student groups from all over the world meet in New Mexico or Utah and let their mini space elevators climb up and down for the bet. The so called “climbers” have to go up along a ribbon and have to be fed only by energy from the ground – for example, through a laser or reflected sunlight. In 2007 there were 20 teams participating. In order to win the prize money of 500.000 dollars, the climbers should have climbed 100 meters within 50 seconds. However, this wasn’t accomplished by anyone yet. For the next games in autumn 2008, the conditions were even raised further: A distance of one kilometre has to be handled.

A group of German students has also set the goal to participate in this competition. 25 engineering and physics students from the Technical University of Munich have started to construct an own space elevator a year ago. For the energy transmission, they count on microwaves. Lasers were not effective enough for them. But to send the climber a kilometre high into the air, they need an emitter with a diameter of 30 meters. They are not able to finance this at the moment. If they actually participate in the competition one day depends also on possible sponsors.

Carbon atoms as the hope

The space elevator is already thought through by the planners into detail. For the many technical details, the visionaries have already found solutions. So the development of the machine which climbs along the ribbon into space should, with all the difficulties involved, only be a matter of time. The biggest problem is the proper material for the ribbon. It has to be enormously stable and insensitive against outer influences. Such a material doesn’t exist so far. Steel would be destroyed through its own weight. The hope lies on carbon atoms. It is known since a long time that they form strong connections among each others. In this way diamonds, graphite and Fullerene are formed. Ten years ago it was moreover discovered that carbon atoms also form to tiny tubes. These carbon tubes have an enormous resistance, are much more stable and lighter than steel. They even exceed the resistance of steel about a hundred times. For the planners of the space elevator, this is the optimal material for the elevator ribbon. However, these tubes only have a diameter of a millionth millimetre and a length of a thousandth millimetre. So far, there are no tools in the nano world to produce long ribbons out of them. Least of all, if these ribbons should be thousands of kilometres long. If they have the wished properties then at all is also uncertain.

From dream to reality

At the moment, nobody knows if there will ever be a space elevator. Optimists, like the former NASA advisor Brad Edwards, who has committed himself to this idea, believe that they will experience it themselves. They dream of a chain of interconnected space stations and of the conquest of the near planets. Yet everything seems unbelievable but there were other visions which made their way. The author Arthur C Clarke had an idea in his novel about the space elevator, which also many thought was incredible: communication with the help of satellites. This was in 1945.”

I hope they are successful in competing for several reasons:

• We need and want input from the Europeans – they and their ESA could play a vital role in constructing a future elevator
• We’ve never had a successful microwave-powered climb in the Games – it would be nice to see one that actually worked
• A 30 meter antenna?  That would be uber-cool.

Let’s hope that their planning and search for a sponsor is successful.  Incidentally, if you haven’t watched that Quarks TV show yet, treat yourself and do it.  Even if you don’t speak German, what they are doing is very clear and understandable.  The show is well put together and they use many graphics/animations which I think are new.

The Queen’s Space Engineering Team welcomes three new people to help fill out their team;

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I’d like to congradulate our newest executive members:

VP Finance – Katie Sokalsky
VP Marketing – Anna Wu
VP Sponsorship – Monica Wang

I’d also like to thank everyone who applied for these positions.  There were many great applicants and we had to make several tough choices.

I’m particularly happy to see the VP Marketing spot filled – someone is now there that I can officially ping for news about their team’s activitivies this year…

The University of Michigan’s Space Elevator team became the latest to announce that they, too, have reached an agreement with TRUMPF to use their lasers in the Climber/Power-Beaming event of the upcoming Spaceward Games.  From team captain Andrew Lyjak:

Hi Ted,

We are extremely happy to be working with TRUMPF. We plan on making the most of this opportunity and are currently developing a wireless power beaming system around the TRUMPF TruDisk 8kW laser. In order to compete most effectively, we have decided to use the September 2008 competition window purely as a test for our system design. This means that our competition worthy run(s) will happen in 2009. We are also tremendously grateful to the guys at TRUMPF for their professional attitude, hospitality, and excitement about this competition.

Thanks,
—
Andrew Lyjak

This makes five teams which have now reached agreement with TRUMPF to use their lasers in the upcoming competition (and that will be all).  I emailed Dave Marcotte, TRUMPF’s man for this competition about this and this was his reply;

Hi Ted:
 
The TRUMPF interview process is complete.
 
Listed, not in any order of preference…
 
University of Michigan- Contact: Andrew Lyjak
TXL Group- Contact: David Nemir
Kansas City Space Pirates- Contact: Brian Turner
Queens University- Contact: Jonathan Boulanger
NSS Team- Contact: Bert Murray
 
We look forward to all our teams “racing” to the top.
 
Thanks,
Dave

So, out of the ten teams which have signed up for this year’s games, all but two (E-T-C and the University of Alberta’s Space Elevator Research Team) have now indicated that they will be powering their climbers via laser.

Think of how quickly all this has matured.  Just three years ago, in the inagural games, every team was powered by Spaceward-provided spotlights.  Now every climber (or nearly every climber) is going to be powered by laser.  In the inagural games, the climb was only several meters and now, this year, the goal is a full kilometer.  Teams are going to have to provide sophisticated tracking mechanisms to keep the beam focused on their climber – hand held mirrors just aren’t going to cut it anymore.

Only 187 days to go…