From Brian Turner and the Kansas City Space Pirates, one of the entrants into both last year’s and this year’s Space Elevator Games;

The KC Space Pirates will be doing an “All up” demo this Friday and Saturday with the action happening from Noon to 3:30 each day. We will have a 50 ft crane rented for both days. This is for the benefit of a photographer from the New York Times Magazine, but I want to invite all of our fans and supporters out to take a look.

We will need volunteers to aim the mirrors and I need to get a count of how many will be there, So if you could please RSVP and state if you will be coming and if you want to aim a mirror that would be helpful. But feel free to stop by anyway.

We are planning a special treat at 3:00 PM on Sat. We will try the heliobeaming mirrors out as an Archimedes Death Ray. Surprisingly we have never had the chance to do this before. So it could be a historical event, or a bust. At over 500 square feet, our mirrors are bigger than the ones used on the TV show Mythbusters. We will try to set the focal distance to the “Standard” of 150 ft.

Location:
10016 NW Skyview Ave
KCMO 64154

When:
6/8 and 6/9 12:00 to 3:30 PM

Directions:
I-29 toward the airport
Exit Tiffany springs Take a right Toward Embassy Suites(East) Follow Tiffany springs parkway through 3 traffic circles heading east. (1st right then 2nd right then 3rd right.)  The former polo Club is on the NW corner of Tiffany Springs and Skyview. The driveway is right on the north edge of the 3rd traffic circle. Pull past the house and big barn to the parking lot on the right.  Park on the black part of that lot.  We have rented a crane but not a port-o-potty so take care.

Hope to see you all there.

Captain Brian Turner
brian [AT] kcspacepirates.com
Kansas City Space Pirates

This sounds very cool and is the first communication of many I hope to receive from the various teams detailing demos they’ll be doing of their equipment.

What they need to do is to focus this beam onto a lake or pond and have a model sailboat travel through the focal point.  Or, to update it to more modern times, get a model airplane and fly it through the focal point.  Seeing either do so and then spontaneously burst into flames would generate some great footage!

One note; Brian tells me the location may change.  So, be sure to check their website for the latest information if you plan to attend the demo.  Brian, you will be shooting some video and posting it on your site or on YouTube, yes?

Here’s a short piece in The Star Phoenix about how the University of Saskatchewan’s Space Design Team is part of the multimedia innovation Gallery created by the University of Saskatchewan.  This team entered the climber which finished first in the first two Space Elevator Games and has to be considered one of the favorites for this year’s competition.  A quote from team leader Clayton Ruszkowsky;

“Our research may have a huge impact on society. The space elevator could lead to space tourism, clean energy production, solar system colonization and possibly mining.”

I’m looking forward to their entry this year very much.  They were, by far, the most efficient team in last year’s competition and this was using solar power, not a laser.  This year I believe the winning climber(s) will be laser-powered and I expected USST to be one of those teams.

Kristin Ohlson wrote a short piece on the Space Elevator for Entreprenuer.com.  You can find it here.  She’s also doing a piece for an upcoming issue of the Inflight magazine for US Airways (which I, among others, have been working with her on).  When it’s published, I’ll link to it also (assuming it’s available online).

One note on this Entreprenuer.com article; she writes that this year’s Space Elevator Games will be held in October.  Others have written the same thing.  Some have written it would be in conjunction with the Space Elevator Games and still others have written that it would be held in Las Vegas.

THIS HAS NOT BEEN FINALIZED YET!!

Ben Shelef of Spaceward.org and Elevator2010.org, the organizer of these games, has been hard at work setting up the venue.  But at the moment nothing has been finalized.  Anything you read about the when and where of these games at this point is sheer speculation.  When an agreement has been reached and signed, you’ll be able to read about it on the Spaceward.org and Elevator2010.org websites, and on this blog. 

With the addition of returning veterans of the 2006 Space Elevator Games, Snowstar, the teams competing in this year’s Games has increased to twenty-three; two of them competing in the Tether event and twenty-one of them competing in the Climber/Power Beaming event.

Of the twenty-one teams competing in the Climber/Power Beaming event, eighteen are in the “main” event, the one where prize money will be handed out, while the other three will be competing in the “Limited” event.

A firm date and venue have not yet been announced, but this should be happening soon.  In the meantime, we observers can just peruse the team websites (a list of them is on this blog’s sidebar as well as the Elevator2010 team page) and impatiently wait.  If you look, you’ll note that several of the team entries have been removed; the list has been pared down to those who have fully paid their entrance fees.  Many of the teams have their own web sites set up and they are great fun to poke around in.  You can access their websites from either their link on the sidebar of this blog or from the Elevator2010 team page.

Arthur Shay, from Team Zero G (the latest qualified entrant into the 2007 Space Elevator Games), forwarded a VERY interesting email to me yesterday.  It seems that the Germans are now going to have their own version of the Space Elevator Games in February of 2008.  These games are being organized by the Max Born Project, the people behind the German Turbo-Crawler entry into the Spaceward 2006 Space Elevator Games.

The length of the racetrack is 50 meters and the (undetermined) prize(s) will be awarded to the top 3 finishers.  If I’m reading the rules correctly (I’m reading the not-so-good English translation, but I’m sure the German version is fine), teams only get three days to put their climbers together, with the sponsors providing the light beam energy source.  So, this version of the Space Elevator games is not as ambitious (yet) as the ones being put on by the Spaceward Foundation.

But these are the Germans.  Their entrant into the 2006 Space Elevator games was one of only four that made it all the way to the top (along with MClimber, Litewon and USST).  They have another entry (not Turbo-Crawler) into this year’s competition.  If this idea catches on in Germany, it could be fun…

A .jpg version of the email can be found here and a .pdf version of the rulebook can be found here.

Yet one more team has passed the financial and paperwork hurdles and is now officially registered for the 2007 Space Elevator Games.  Two teams are in the tether competition (we need more!!!), three teams are in the Limited Lifter/Power Beaming competition and fully seventeen teams are now signed up for the $$$ Lifter/Power Beaming competition.

In perusing the team web sites, I came across the attached picture – I’m not sure if this is a nose acting as a tie point for two tethers or what, but it’s cool nonetheless…

Click on the picture for a (slightly) larger version…

On February 1st, I posted that seventeen teams were now fully registered (i.e., they’ve done the paperwork and have paid the entrance fee) for the 2007 Space Elevator Games.  That number has now increased to twenty-one.  At this rate, we’ll have seventy-seven and a half teams registered by the times the Games start… 🙂

Two of these teams are registered in the Tether competition (Astroaraneae, last year’s winner, and a team from MIT) while the other nineteen are in the Climber/Power Beaming event.

Of these nineteen, three are in this year’s new event, the “Limited Competition”.  Entrants in this competition are essentially playing by the rules of the 2006 Space Elevator Games; 50 meters of travel at an average speed of at least 1m/s.  There is no money to be awarded for the Limited competition, but it’s a great way to get some experience in this event while working towards the 2008 Space Elevator games.  The three teams in the Limited event are from Japan, Iran and Spain.  The Spanish team, Recens, was the victim of a shipping snafu with UPS and their climber never made it to the 2006 Space Elevator Games.  I’m glad to see that they haven’t been so put off by this that they gave up.  One has to like their chances this year as they had a climber ready and working for last year (they’ll probably charter an Iberia Air plane direct to wherever the competition is going to be held this year).  You can see pictures of it by clicking on the “Photos” link at the top of the blog.

One also has to have respect for whatever the Japanese are going to attempt to do – they are not exactly technological neophytes.

The mystery team, for me, is the one from Iran.  I await their arrival and entry with great anticipation.  The Islamic world has been a technological backwater for centuries.  I lived and worked in Saudi Arabia for eight years in the 1980’s and saw little native technological advancement in my time there.  There’s nothing inherent about it, it’s just the way it’s been.  But it’s only a matter of time before this changes and perhaps the Iranian entry is a manifestation of that.

I’m disappointed that we’ve seen nothing from India, China or Australia – maybe I’ll write their Presidents and ask them why they’re chicken 🙂

Remember, Ken Davidian, the man behind NASA’s Centennial Challenges (including the Space Elevator Games) is scheduled to appear on The Space Show this coming Sunday, February 11th, from 12:00 noon to 1:30pm (Pacific Time).  For more details, check my previous post on this subject.

I’m very interested to hear what Ken has to say about the number of teams already registered for this years competition and NASA’s stance on funding these Centennial Challenges in general.

Tune in – I think you’ll enjoy the show.

My all time favorite Sci-fi author is Sir Arthur C. Clarke.  I do believe I’ve read every story he has written and am eagerly awaiting the completion and release of his “last novel” (The Last Theorem).  His Fountains of Paradise was what introduced me (and countless others) to the concept of a Space Elevator.

A couple of weeks ago, he wrote a tribute to Star Trek and, as part of that, a general greeting to all of his fans.  You can find both of them here, at the American Antigravity blog.  It has a great opening line;

“Friends, Earthlings, ETs – lend me your sensory organs!”

Sir Arthur Clarke discusses the Space Elevator and the Space Elevator Games at the XPrize Cup.  We also learn that as the inventor of the satellite telecommunication industry, he received the “astronomical sum of 15 pounds sterling” for his efforts.  He needed a better attorney…

A fine read from a real visionary.  Sir Arthur Clarke turns 90 this year, on December 16th.  We should be marking this event with nearly the same enthusiasm as Yuri’s night is…

(Click on the thumbnails to view larger versions)

(07OCT07 – Update – I stand corrected.  Sir Clarke’s birthday is on December 16th, not the 17th as I had originally posted.  I apologize for the error)

There are now seventeen teams who have finalized their entry for this year’s Space Elevator games, with more, hopefully, to come.

A complete list of the teams, including both the ones fully registered and ones who’s registration is still pending, can be found here.

Of these seventeen teams, only one is entered in the tether competition; the other sixteen are entered in the Climber/Power Beaming event.  Of these sixteen teams, eleven are from the USA, three are from Canada, one is from Germany and one (the only one in the Limited event) is from Japan.

Six teams are returning veterans; USST, MClimber, LiteWon, Kansas City Space Pirates, Centaurus and Astroaraneae (I always have to double-check the spelling on that one).  The other eleven teams will be first-time competitors.

Over at The Space Elevator Journal, Patrick Boake gives us an introduction to one of the new contestants in this year’s Space Elevator Games, The McGill Space Elevator Team.

It’s only February 1st – there are at least eight months to go before the games and already I’m starting to feel pumped.

I just received this from Ben Shelef regarding payment information for competing in this year’s Space Elevator Games;

Hello Folks

As the Early Bird registration deadline period nears, some of you have run into last minute delays cutting checks at institutions, processing corporate credit cards, etc.

If you have a per-transaction limit on your CC, you’ll see two new buttons on the web site – $2000 and $500. You can use one of each, or 5×500, and you should be ok.

We will send receipts on checks after tomorrow.

You know your payment has been processed when the “[preliminary]” or “[pending]” label is removed from your team name on the team list.

Under special circumstances, we will allow late payment, as long as:

– The signed team agreement has been faxed in (650-887-2332) by midnight PST today.
– You have asked for and we have given you explicit permission to pay late.

In such a case, we will charge a $100 late fee.

Payments received through Google by 2/1, or received by mail with a postmark of 2/1 or earlier will not incur the fee.

Ben

——————————————–
Ben Shelef
The Spaceward Foundation
ben [AT] spaceward.org
650-969-2010
http://www.spaceward.org/
http://www.elevator2010.org/

I just received this from Spaceward’s Ben Shelef:

Hello Folks

Most of you probably caught the NOVA segment on the Space Elevator – it was broadcast a while back, but is available online at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3401/02.html.  It is a real nice segment (12 minutes).

On the same topic, Discovery channel will broadcast tomorrow (1/28, 8pm) a 3-hour special presentation about futuristic concepts. The Space Elevator is featured in the 3rd segment:  http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/2057/2057.html

As for next year’s competition, the first team registration deadline is approaching, and the list of teams is growing fast:  http://www.elevator2010.org/teams.html

Finally, To those of you asking about dates and location – we’re still working on it, maybe we’ll have some news on the next update.

Sincerely,

 The Spaceward Crew.

Over this past weekend, Clayton Ruszkowski and the USST team demonstrated their climber at Spectrum 2007; “Robots, handmade cars and an elevator to space are all part of Spectrum 2007 being put on by the University of Saskatchewan’s college of engineering.  The four-day show gives both engineering students and local companies a chance to display innovative ideas and designs.”

This climber is, of course, the one that turned in the best times at both the 2005 and 2006 Space Elevator Games and just missed being awarded the NASA prize money last year.

Clayton kindly emailed me tonight to let me know that a couple of videos taken at the event demonstrating their lifter are now posted on YouTube.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjaZFq7raaQ[/youtube]
.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Q4nseq9W1s[/youtube]
.
January 19th article in the Star Phoenix.

January 16th article in Saskatoon Home Page.

At the Elevator2010 team page, one can see that nineteen teams have filed to compete in this year’s Space Elevator Games.   Most fascinating, to me anyway, are the entries from Iran, the Ukraine and Japan as this is the first year teams from these countries intend to compete.  There are also three teams from Germany who have filed; the rest are from Canada and the USA.

Seventeen of the teams have filed for the Climber competition with the other two filing intent to participate in the Tether competition.

All of this filing is, of course, before the February 1st deadline – the date when money is due.  When that date arrives, we’ll probably start losing some of these teams; separating the “ascenders from the pretenders” as it were…

Nevertheless, even if some of these teams drop out, I think it is encouraging to see how widely the idea of a Space Elevator and the interest in the Space Elevator Games has spread – it is truly becoming international.  My only disappointment is that we’ve seen nothing yet from “down under” – where are the teams from Perth who want to eventually build one of these in their ocean front property?

Here’s a link to a story on SpaceRef.com about the new head of the X Prize Foundation.  Though the story does not deal explicitly with the Space Elevator, Elevator2010 did partner with the X Prize Foundation for the 2006 Space Elevator Games and may again do so this year.

Ben Shelef sent me these comments on NOVA show.  I wondered why this had happened…

As some of you may have noticed, out of two televised moments of fame I was awarded by NOVA, I spent one hitting Dr. Edwards. That’s 50% of my public face time spent on violence directed at celebrities.

For the record then: I remember the moment very vividly. Brad just showed me the stopwatch stopped on “57? and within about a third of a second, I roller-coasted between “hell yeah they made it” (thinking the ribbon was 60 m long) to “oh no they’re a hair too slow” (remembering we shortened the ribbon because of oscillations) to “oh boy we need to figure out ribbon stretch (as reality settled in), and so the semi-confused body language you all got to see started out as a pat on the back and deteriorated into a concatenation of hell-yeah-oh-no-oh-boy.  So There.

Also, Brad hit me first, but they didn’t show that.:)

May we receive a lot more coverage like this, and congratulations to all the teams that really shone in this piece. The competition is nothing more than the sum total of the teams, and with statements like “you’re definitely going to see things go wrong today!” we can’t really go wrong.

Thanks to Joe McMaster and the rest of the NOVA crew for making such a neat segment. Extra credit for the spinning Yo-Yo shot.

Ben

First, the good news.  It appears that a show which regularly airs on the Science Channel, Discoveries this Week, had a segment on Space Elevators and the recent Space Elevator Games.  The bad news – there was no heads-up to this and all of us (with the exception of Brian Turner of the Kansas City Space Pirates) missed it.  Brian says he cannot find this on the web at all, and, after some looking on my own, neither can I.  But I have faith that someone will find it.

Here’s the link to the Discoveries this Week URL.  If anyone can track down a web version of this show, please, please, please let me know.

Thanks, Brian…

As blogged about earlier (here, here and here), NOVA Science Now recently aired a segment on the development of a Space Elevator.  That clip can be viewed here.

I’ve just finished watching the NOVA Science Now show featuring, among other topics, the Space Elevator.  It was nice to see a science show that had the technical facts straight (I didn’t catch any errors – if anyone did, please correct me).  They also did a good job, in the few minutes they alloted to it, of covering the Climber competition at this year’s Space Elevator Games.  Again, they had their facts right; the University of Michigan’s Climber was first to the top, Lite-Won and TurboCrawler also made it to the top, and the USST team made it to the top in nearly prize-awarding time.

It would have been nice, however, if they had mentioned how much prize money was at stake, especially now since NASA has increased the prize money significantly – I think that would have been quite newsworthy.  Also worth mentioning, I think, would have been the Tether competition and the fact that the Space Elevator Games are an annual competition – with the third one coming up this year.

Brian Turner and the Kansas City Space Pirates must be happy with the show as they were prominently mentioned in it – there is no doubt that the “Death Ray” they attempted to ride to the top was quite unique.

As soon as the show is available online, I’ll post a link to it.  Also, on January 16th, we’re supposed to be able to see answers from Dr. Brad Edwards to questions posted to him/NOVA.  I’ll link to that when available, too.

All in all, good, free, publicity from a recognized source – and one can’t complain about that.

I received this email earlier today from Ben Shelef, CEO of The Spaceward Foundation.

Hello Folks.

A short email this time.

First and foremost, Joe McMaster and Anna Lee Strachan from Nova wanted us to remind you to tune in to their Space Elevator segment today (Tuesday, January 9) at 8pm on PBS – check your local listing.

Joe and Anna came down to watch and film the competition at Las Cruces last October, so there may footage there we’ve never seen before.

The show URL is http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3401/02.html
Another item that was on our back burner for way too long is a comprehensive FAQ section, which you can now browse at http://www.elevator2010.org/faq.html

Thanks to Vern McGeorge for getting this project going so many months ago.

We have a lot more questions and answers on file – we’ll be updating the FAQ on a regular basis.  If you have a question you want answered, go ahead and email us.  If you have a question and an answer and maybe a nice illustration to go with – email them too and we may add them to the FAQ, with credits.
Finally, team registration is in progress towards the early-bird registration deadline at the end of this month.  More details will follow in February, when we have an official headcount.
Cheers,

  Ben, Meekk and the Spaceward Crew

Don’t forget – tomorrow is the date when the NOVA Science Now episode featuring the efforts to develop a Space Elevator airs.

You’ll need to check your local listings of course.  Here in the Chicago area, it is supposed to air on the local PBS station, WTTW, at 8:00pm Central Time.

The official website for the episode is here (you can also find local airing times from this website).  If you go here, you can see a brief preview of the show.  According to the website, the show will be archived and available for viewing online beginning January 10th.

Update – Blogcritics.com opines about the show here.

I’ve just received an email from Ben Shelef, CEO of the Spaceward Foundation, clarifying / expanding some subjects in some earlier posts I’ve made today.  Ben’s email is as follows;

1: dates (Note – he’s referring to the dates of the 2007 Space Elevator Games)

We don’t know yet how long the competition will run.  We want to run for 3-4 days, and have each team run at least once per day.  X-Prize Cup are not sure about their plans yet, and so neither are we.  The tentative date they have on the web site is 10/20 – 10/21, but that’s suspiciously similar to this year’s show, even though the days of the week are Sat-Sun rather then Fri-Sat.

If they do partner up with the airshow at Holloman AFB, well, the 2005 show was only a 1-day affair, and we’d make sure we have extra days for ourselves.

In short – don’t book tickets yet.

2: qualification video

In the qualification video, you need to show a zero-payload, 1 m/s ascent (2.4.d), and a full-cycle of operation within the allowed timeframe of 30 minutes.

3: my cell number below was wrong in the last email – please note. (Note – I’d already fixed this for the web posting, but the original email sent out had the wrong phone number)

Ben

——————————————–
Ben Shelef
The Spaceward Foundation
ben AT Spaceward.org
650-793-4987
http://www.spaceward.org/
http://www.elevator2010.org/

Wirefly X Prize Cup was the partner for the 2006 Space Elevator Games.  While no decision has yet been made as to whether or not this partnership will continue in 2007, it certainly is a strong possibility.

In this article dated December 17, 2006, Wirefly X Prize Cup expansion plans for 2007 are discussed.

And, on the X Prize Cup website, the dates of October 20-21, 2007 are given for the 2007 X Prize Cup games.  So, if the partnership between X Prize Cup and the Space Elevator Games continues this year, these are the dates you should be reserving…

Version 1.00 (the hopefully final version) of the Rulebooks for this year Space Elevator games have now been published.  You can find the Tether competition rulebook here and the Climber competition rulebook here.

Elevator2010 has sent an email to all interested parties (reproduced below, with the permission of Elevator 2010’s CEO, Ben Shelef), strongly encouraging them to register by the end of this month.

Hello Folks – Happy New Year!

You’re getting this email because you’ve either submitted an NOI, expressed informal interest, asked us enough questions about the rules, or are otherwise affiliated with the 2007 competition.  If you’re not playing this year, let me know and I will remove you from the list.

We have just received from NASA the official approved team agreements for both Beam Power and Tether competitions. This was the last missing piece of paperwork, so we are now good and ready to proceed.  We hope you are too.

At the bottom of each of the two competition pages (http://www.elevator2010.org/competitionClimber2007.html and
http://www.elevator2010.org/competitionTether2007.html) you will now find:

1:  Rulebook version 1.00  (Yes – this is the baseline official version. We do not intend to make any more changes, though the usual caveat holds.)

2:  Team agreement, with official language regarding participation of non-US teams. (life is a bit easier this year)

3:  NOI questionnaire, which we’d like you to fill out and submit along with the NOI.  (those that have done so obviously do not have to re-submit)

So:
If you’ve submitted an NOI, please make sure you submit the questionnaire. Download, print, read, *understand* and fill out the team agreement. Fax us a copy to 650-965-2907, and send in the signed agreement, with registration fees, to: The Spaceward Foundation 725 N. Shoreline Blvd Mountain View, CA 94043

Please try to complete the process by Jan 31st.

The registration deadline is for the faxed registration forms, on 1/31/07, midnight PST. We’ll expect the registration papers to follow by mail no later than 2/15/07.

We’re looking forward to an even faster competition this year. We plan to make 2007 bigger than 2006 in much the same amount that 2006 was bigger than 2005.  In other words, we plan to rock the world.

We hope to see you on board soon,

Cheers,

  Ben

——————————————–
Ben Shelef
The Spaceward Foundation
ben AT spaceward.org
650-793-4987
http://www.spaceward.org
http://www.elevator2010.org

Posting a link to this newsletter a bit late…

Version 0.94 of this rulebook is now up and available for review.  Here you can find the changes from version 0.93 to 0.94 discussed.  Of course everything can be accessed from the Elevator2010 website.  As always, submit comments and recommendations to Ben Shelef at Ben AT Spaceward.org.

Ben also has the following comment on the remarks (here and here) by Professor Mark Welland.

“It’s a known fact that popular journalism, both technical and mainstream, tends to exaggerate claims. There is no argument that the SE CNT tether does not exist yet, and is much stronger than anything we produce today – nothing to the contrary was ever claimed. Still, it is not laughable to predict that totally new technology will result in large improvements, especially when the mechanism of this technology is understood. CNTs are strong enough, and composites and ropes exhibit tensile strengths very close to that of their native fibers. There’s enough evidence that the CNT tether is feasible – saying we can’t get there because we’re not already there is dead-end thinking. Just my 2c.”

Several weeks ago, I had posted a link to TopSpacer’s article at hobbyspace.com, an article discussing “funding for the Centennial Challenges program will be zeroed out for 2007” and wondering what that meant.  Then a few days ago, the Space Frontier Foundation issues a press release saying essentially the same thing that TopSpacer’s article did.  I contacted Jeff Krukin, the Executive Director of the Space Frontier Foundation, and asked him if the current games are in jeopardy.  He replied that they are not;

“The prized that have already been announced are funded with money appropriated in previous years.  Future (not yet announced) prized are dependent on new funding provided in FY2007 or later, so there is no funding for new prizes.”

Yesterday, over at Alan Boyle’s Cosmic Log, he said essentially the same thing; funding for the existing prizes (including the Space Elevator challenge) is there, but funding for NEW prizes is not.

It looks like that Brian Turner’s Kansas City Space Pirates team was not discouraged by the problems they ran into in this year’s Space Elevator Games and hope they’ll be back next year.  He’s looking for sponsors to help make it happen…

At The Space Review, Alex Howerton offers an upbeat assessment of the recently XPrize Cup (and Space Elevator Games).

Version 0.93 of this rulebook is now up and available for review.  As always, submit comments and recommendations to Ben Shelef at Ben AT Spaceward.org.

The initial Rulebooks for next year’s Climber (Power Beaming) and Tether competitions have been posted by Elevator2010.  To quote Ben Shelef, Elevator2010 CEO; “We’re taking public comments on the rulebooks, [and] will post 1.0 rulebooks by the end of the month.”

The Climber (Power Beaming) rulebook can be found here and the Tether rulebook can be found here.  Of course, both are available on the Elevator2010 website.

One new item noted on the Elevator2010 website is a Climber competition for newbies; “If you are a new team, and only want to try your hand at it, we have the “limited” games, in which no money is on the line (as of yet…), the metric is 1 m/s, and the height is comparable to this year’s games. We will publish a separate rulebook for the limited competition shortly.”

So, for all you future competitors, now’s the time to get started!!  Holidays?  Who cares about the holidays?

An article from MarketWire.com discussing the Solar Cell sponsor for this year’s (and next year’s?) UBC Climber.

Over at the Elevator2010 website, the official results for this year’s Space Elevator games have been posted.

Over at the Space Elevator Reference, Dr. Brad Edwards gives his wrapup and thoughts on this year’s just completed Space Elevator Games.  He reiterates that no one won any of NASA’s prize money and talks a bit about why.  Also, he has some thoughts on next year’s games.

Over at the Space Elevator Reference, they are reporting that USST did not win the climber prize this year, so I guess the problems they had on the descent were enough to disqualify them (when I have or find a more complete explanation of exactly what the problem was, I’ll either report it or point readers to it).  Nevertheless, their climb was quite impressive.

Even more impressive is that they used their second choice of power supply to power their Climber.  They had originally planned to launch via laser power, but couldn’t get their laser to work properly at the Games, so they used spot lights instead.  Even that was enough to drive them up to the top of the tether in prize-winning time.  I’m sure they’ll be putting in more effort into having a ready laser for next year.  And, as it’s envisioned that a “real” space elevator will be laser-powered, this can’t but help move the effort along.

A side note on the USST effort; as I noted on an earlier posting, they made a deal with the Spanish Team, Recens (and perhaps TurboCrawler – I’m trying to verify that) to use their spotlights to power their climb.  Recens, as readers know, were the victim of a major UPS snafu – UPS lost their climber, which they had shipped from Spain, somewhere in Kentucky. 

Recens had promised to donate their climber to a local Spanish museum when the games were over, but as the climber was lost, they were in danger of being unable to fulfill that promise.  It was announced during the Games that USST sold their climber to Recens (rumoured to be for the princely sum of 1 (one) US Dollar) and that Recens was going to take that climber back to Spain to donate to the museum.  So, all-in-all, a good deal for everyone involved.