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!