2007 Space Elevator Games – (Entry 33)

A brief update for today – videos to follow:

The weather has been partly sunny, cold, but almost no wind.  Ideal conditions for the Laser and Microwave teams, but none of them have been ready to go.

E-T-C, powered by spotlights, made numerous attempts to qualify.  Unfortunately they did not succeed.  I haven’t gone to them yet to ask them for a post-mortem, but I will later on.

Both the Technology Tycoons and UBC-Snowstar DID qualify today.  Neither team was able to run to the top of the ribbon, but cloud conditions prevented all but a fraction of the sunlight reaching their mirrors.  Because this was a “weather-related handicap”, they were adjudged to have qualified. (see correction below)

The KC Space Pirates also made another run.  They used more mirrors than they had in their qualification run and generally made this a practice pass.

We’re shut down now for a few hours while the 400′ crane is moved into place.  I don’t know if anyone is going to run on it or not, but we’ll see.  I think we’ll also have the 100′ crane operational too.

I also don’t know the status of the Microwave or Laser teams.  We’ll find out in the next couple of hours.  If they don’t succeed in qualifying today, I’m afraid they’ll be out of the competition.

More later…

Correction – stupid me.  UBC DID reach the top of the ribbon, succesfully engaged with the Stop plate and made a controlled descent.  I have it on tape (and am uploading it to YouTube.  Sorry, UBC team, sorry, sorry, sorry)…