Weltraumaufzug – this is how you say/write “Space Elevator” in German. In the most recent episode of the German TV series ‘Quarks‘, the concept of the Space Elevator is explored.
I don’t speak German, so I can’t give you a word by word description of what the show was about, but for anyone who is at all familiar with the concept of a Space Elevator, most of the show will be very understandable. IMHO, it’s really well done – the graphics and animations, some of which I’ve not seen before, are first-rate.
It’s not on YouTube (at least not yet 🙂 ), so I can’t link to it that way. However, you can view the show here. Maximize the screen size. You can watch the entire show (which covers many subjects besides a Space Elevator), or you can just click on the ‘Weltraumaufzug’ link on the left-hand side to go directly to the Space Elevator episode.
The show spends some time talking about a Climber vehicle being created by some German University students. I don’t recognize the Climber – it wasn’t the TurboCrawler entry into the 2006 Games and there is no German entry into this year’s Games (at least not yet). I’ve emailed the show’s producer to ask her about it – when I find out, I’ll either post an update here or else will put it on a separate post.
And by the way, the videos of the 2007 Space Elevator Games at the beginning of the TV episode were all taken by yours truly. Many of the teams and their climbers are shown.
Watch the show. Even if you don’t speak German, I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.
(The picture is a screen capture from the show – click on it for a larger version (or watch the show 🙂 )
Hi,
The narration says it’s a team from the TU Munich.
This
seems to be their webpage.
It also says they hope to attend the 2009 space elevator games.
Dear Ted
Thanks for blogging about this show! They have been in touch with us to prepare the Space Elevator part.
The team you didn’t recognize is team Tesla from the University of Munich that cancelled their participation last year about 1 month before the games due to the insufficient performance of their MW rectenna. They had achieved 0,85 W per element but considered this as not enough in order to compete seriously. Team Tesla is doing currently further improvement work and tests on their MW climber. The goal now: to participate in 2009. Would be great if they make it finally, though we can expect perhaps a 10km track that would additionally raise the bar and the necessity to significantly scale up the size of their MW power system! May be they will be rethinking the whole issue and applying the famous German lasers 🙂
Kind regards
Markus Klettner
EuroSpaceward A.s.b.l.
L-8085 Luxembourg-Bertrange
Pingback: News from Germany… - The Space Elevator Blog