Station Keeping at 1km+ high…

In the previous Climber / Power-Beaming competition portion of the Space Elevator Games, the ‘raceway’ tether was held aloft by a crane.  Each year this tether distance became higher, culminating in a 400 foot tether in the most recent competition.

For this year’s competition, the raceway is a full kilometer long –  and a crane just isn’t going to cut it.  Several ideas were looked at including using a balloon, holding it up inside a (very tall) building, holding it up along side a (very tall) building, but in the end, the idea of using a helicopter to hold the raceway aloft turned out to be the best option.

Though this solved the problem of how do you hold up such a long tether, it presented another problem – namely how does the helicopter pilot keep the aircraft in a relatively stable position?  At such a height and in such a featureless location, this caused some concern.

At the official website of the Space Elevator Games, Ben Shelef tells us how this problem was addressed.   The solution is very ingenious…

(The first picture thumbnail is of the crane used in the 2007 competition.  The second picture thumbnail is of the helicopter which is going to be used in this year’s Games.   Click on either thumbnail for a larger version fo the picture)