The latest ISEC eNewsletter is hot off the presses and can be found here.  It’s a shorter eNewsletter than usual as ISEC efforts are now focused on the upcoming Space Elevator Conference (less than two months away – you ARE coming, aren’t you?).

And, about the upcoming conference, there have been a record number of papers/presentations submitted so I think it’s safe to say that interest is running very high.

This is also a good time to remind everyone that the Early Bird Registration prices for the conference end on Monday, June 30th, so don’t delay.

See you there!

In my previous post, I had written about a new Space Elevator competition in Israel and that the originator of the modern-day concept of the space elevator, Russian Engineer Yuri Artsutanov, would be there as a judge.  While I can’t find any results posted as of yet, I did hear from Eugene Schlusser, Yuri’s friend (and unofficial translator), who accompanied Yuri to the 2010 ISEC Space Elevator conference.  Eugene lets me know that Yuri did indeed make it to the competition and did act as a judge.  And, better yet, there was coverage of this in Russia and a YouTube video has been made of it (hint: it helps if you speak Russian and/or Hebrew :).

Yuri appears at two different times in the video; around the 53 second mark and again at the 1:05 mark.

I’m still hopeful of getting some pictures from the competition which I will, of course, post here.

This competition reminds me so much of the early days of the NASA/Spaceward Space Elevator Games; Climbers climbing a racetrack held aloft by a crane, students frantically working on their equipment, etc.  It brings back some great memories.

Thank you Eugene!

This is cool.  The father of the modern-day concept of the space elevator (and a guest at the 2010 ISEC Space Elevator Conference) Yuri Artsutanov, will be one of the judges at a Space Elevator contest being held next Wednesday, June 18th, in Israel.

“This year’s challenge at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology’s 12th annual Technobrain competition is to build a “space elevator” — a device capable of climbing in a nearly vertical manner (at an 80 degree angle to the ground), to a height of 25 meters.”

More details can be found here and here and there is also a posting on the Technion Facebook page.  The official posting from the Technion website can be found here.

I’ve reached out to both Yuri and the Technion institute for more details.

(Photo thumbnail is from Yuri at the 2010 ISEC Space Elevator conference – click on it for a full size picture)