The 2009 Space Elevator Games make history!

I’m sorry for the lack of posts today, but this is literally the first free moment I’ve had to blog…

The 2009 Space Elevator Games – Climber / Power-Beaming competition is over and it was a roaring success.

This competition saw several firsts, the most important being:

  • The first laser-powered climb to a kilometer (accomplished by Team LaserMotive 4 times)
  • The first laser-powered climb to exceed 2 meters/second (again, accomplished by Team LaserMotive 4 times)

Team LaserMotive was the only team to climb the full length of the tether.  The Kansas City Space Pirates climbed an appreciable fraction of the tether (> 50%) several times while the USST team frankly struggled a bit.  They were still able to power the climber over short distances with a laser, though.

For their accomplishment, Team LaserMotive won the $900,000 prize for performing a beam-powered climb to a full kilometer at an average speed of 2 meters / second or greater.  Their best showing was nearly 4 meters per second and, for good measure, they accomplished these prize-winning climbs 4 times.  Their system was very, very impressive.

I’ll have much more to blog about this competition over the next several days – and lots of pictures and video to share with you.

The picture thumbnail is of the winning LaserMotive team holding the winning check given to them by Andy Petro, the NASA Centennial Challenges honcho.  LaserMotive team members shown (from left to right) are: Steve Beland, Bill Boyde, Carsten Erickson, Tom Nugent, Nick Burrows, Jordin Kare, Mary Kay Kare, Dave Bashford and Steve Burrows.  Not present were Brent Davis, Don Moore, Jeff Alexander, Joe Grez, Dave Truax and Nick Bratt.

There are so many people to thank and I want to do separate posts on each of them.  But for now, I want to say that the ‘tether trio’ of Doug Uttecht (Helicopter Pilot), Michael Keating (Tetherman) and Keith Mackey (Helicopter ground control) performed magnificently.  Also, we owe enormous thanks to John Kelly and all of the other people at the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center where the competition was held.  Their backing was amazing and inspiring – we kept throwing curve balls at them and they kept hitting them out of the park.

Congratulations LaserMotive and all the other competitors at the 2009 Climber / Power-Beaming competition!

2 thoughts on “The 2009 Space Elevator Games make history!

  1. Markus Klettner

    On behalf of EuroSpaceward congrats to Spaceward / NASA Dryden on exciting games! Kudos to the winning team Lasermotive demonstrating a persistent impressive performance of their climber system!
    Markus Klettner
    EuroSpaceward Asbl
    Luxembourg

  2. richie

    YES!

    That is so cool – someone actually won – Welldone LaserMotive

    Looking forward to your thoughts on the games sir as always…..

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