Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone and yes, there has been a dearth of posts lately.  Nothing’s wrong, nothing’s missing, nothing’s changed – just not a lot going on right now and everyone is busy with the holidays.

2009 was a heck of a year for the Space Elevator effort – highlighted by the fantastic success at the November Space Elevator Games (where $900,000 in NASA Prize money was won by LaserMotive) and ISEC getting it’s ‘sea legs’ and beginning to take an active role in unifying and shaping activities directed towards the development of a Space Elevator.  We also saw another carbon nanotube tether entered in the Spaceward/NASA’s Strong Tether Challenge, two sets of space elevator games run by the Japan Space Elevator Association (JSEA), conferences in the USA (by SESI & Microsoft), Europe (by EuroSpaceward) and Japan (by JSEA) and the publishing of the latest definitive word on the strength needed in a tether that could actually be used to construct a Space Elevator.

As cool as all that is/was, 2010 is shaping up to be an even more dynamic year for us.  As President of the International Space Elevator Consortium (ISEC), I’ve created a strategic plan for our organization and have submitted it to the Board of Directors for review and approval.  Once it is approved, it will be posted on the ISEC website.  We have some really exciting activities planned for this year.  If you aren’t already on the ISEC email list, I strongly encourage you to sign up.  It’s free and will guarantee that you’ll be among the first to know of our planned and happening activities.

And, I would be remiss if I were not to make another pitch for you to join ISEC.  We have lots of things that we want to do – how successful we’ll be will greatly depend on our level of funding.  You can help us help get a Space Elevator built – all of your donations will go directly towards Space Elevator development activities.

Finally, I want to re-post the very, very, very cool video (set to Carmina Burana) that Ben Shelef (CEO of the Spaceward Foundation – organizers of the Space Elevator Games) made summarizing the recently held Climber / Power-Beaming competition.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdcvX5wLYsQ[/youtube]

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Stay tuned!