Updates from the National Space Society (NSS) Space Elevator team

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.

3 thoughts on “Updates from the National Space Society (NSS) Space Elevator team”

  1. Andy

    The space elevator part starts 14 minutes in and is nearly seven minutes long. It’s mostly positive for James May (who likes to make a joke of everything)

  2. Mark Bates

    It just occurred to me that such an endeavor as building a space elevator could infinitesimally alter the earth’s center of gravity, and thus infinitesimally alter it’s orbit around the sun.
    However, a similar argument could be made, perhaps, in regard to the melting of the polar ice caps, so I’m really not too concerned that this is a big deal.
    If the washer shuts off on the spin cycle though, don’t say I didn’t warn you. I wrote the safety sticker. 8)

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