As I posted several days ago, a gathering was recently held in Washington DC – a gathering of NASA people involved in the Centennial Challenges program (of which the Space Elevator Games are a part) and most/all of the recent organizers and competitors from the recent competitions.

Team LaserMotive arrived in force and a post about the trip is now on their blog.

They have good things to say about the new direction of NASA and Ben Shelef, head of the Spaceward Foundation (organizers of the Space Elevator Games), agrees.  Let’s hope everyone’s new-found optimism turns out to be correct…

(The picture is from the gathering and is of members of Team Lasermotive and several NASA personnel – visit the LaserMotive blog post to see a (slightly) larger version of this picture and several others)

This past Thursday and Friday saw a meeting at NASA HQ in Washington, DC of all parties involved in the NASA Centennial Challenges.  This is the NASA Press Release:

NASA HONORS 2009 CENTENNIAL CHALLENGES WINNERS

WASHINGTON — NASA will honor the achievements of the 2009 Centennial Challenges prize winners and competition hosts with a technical symposium Feb. 25 and a recognition ceremony Feb. 26. Centennial Challenges is NASA’s program of technology prizes for the citizen-inventor. Nine prizes totaling $3.65 million were awarded in 2009. Both events will be held at the James E. Webb Memorial Auditorium at NASA Headquarters, 300 E Street, SW, Washington.

The Centennial Challenges Technical Symposium will take place from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. EST Thursday, Feb. 25. Winners will discuss their accomplishments and future plans and answer questions from the audience. A one-hour panel discussion will be dedicated to each of the challenges, including the new Green Flight Challenge and ongoing Strong Tether and Power Beaming Challenges. The public is invited, and government, industry and media representatives interested in the technologies and incentive prize competitions are encouraged to attend.

The recognition ceremony will begin at 10 a.m. on Friday, Feb. 26. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden will participate, as will winners of the Regolith Excavation, Lunar Lander, Power Beaming and Astronaut Glove Challenges. Reporters will have an opportunity to talk with the winners during a reception in the NASA Headquarters West Lobby immediately following the one-hour ceremony.

The competitions address a range of technical challenges that support NASA’s missions in aeronautics and space with a goal of encouraging novel solutions from non-traditional sources. The partner organizations that conducted the competitions are: California Space Education and Workforce Institute (Regolith Excavation), X Prize Foundation (Lunar Lander), Spaceward Foundation (Power Beaming and Strong Tether), Volanz Aerospace Inc. (Astronaut Glove) and Comparative Aircraft Flight Efficiency Foundation (Green Flight).  NASA’s Innovative Partnerships Program manages the Centennial Challenges.

NASA Television will broadcast the events. For NASA TV downlink, schedule and streaming video information, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

For additional information about the Centennial Challenges, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/challenges

Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to have made their podcasts.

Ben Shelef of the Spaceward Foundation (organizers and hosts of the Space Elevator Games) attended as well as team members from LaserMotive and the Kansas City Space Pirates.

LaserMotive blogged about attending this event (which you can view here). There have been some articles in the press about this – one of them can be found here.

I talked with Ben about the meeting and he said that it was quite good and had exceeded his expectations.  I hope to get a more complete summary of the meeting in the near future from him and/or some the attending team members.

I received this email today from Brian Turner, captain of the Kansas City Space Pirates:

This is one of those newsletters where I mostly have bad news. It looks like the competition date of May 10th is coming unstuck. We don’t have a new date at all right now which is just as well because once you miss one date then there is a pretty good chance that you will miss another. So a little time to make sure that the new date is firm is good.

The helicopter has a hard time lifting the cable on the hot days of summer in the desert. Perhaps we can use a lighter cable now that we know how all of that works, I will have to look into that.

If not, then we have to pick a different location for the competition or wait till Sept. I don’t have the resources to keep this as a priority in my life for that long and neither do my teammates. That means that our competitors will have an opportunity to gain on us if they spend a lot more time between now and then.

Seems that Lasermotive has used the proceeds from their last win to take two team members full time. I expect a highly professional, polished system from them in the next round. I always knew that once a team won that they would be more difficult to beat the next time around.

The trip to Photonics West went well but did not yield any leads for new sponsors. That means that it will be back to my private supporters to try and raise the money for this next round. That water well is pretty low after 4 years and no wins.

So where is the good news? I have been spending a lot more time with the family and my regular customers are keeping me as busy as ever with my day job. So I can afford to wait even if it is rather annoying. And we have a list of tests to perform to try and tuneup the performance of our current system.

I will update you if things change.

Brian Turner
Captain
KC Space Pirates

And that’s where we’re at…

I received this email today from Brian Turner, captain of the Kansas City Space Pirates…

Well I am off to Photonics West. This is the trade show where just about all of my sponsors have a presence.  I have been invited to do a poster presentation on Tuesday evening. It should be a good opportunity to talk with other people in the profession.

Kind of interesting how this all went from “game” and “hobby” to “profession”.

Anyway. We need to raise about $40,000 to cover all of the expenses for the competition. And if we want to upgrade to premium solar cells we need another $80,000. I am not holding my breath for the $80,000.

The up side is that the competition has established itself as a draw for fans and viewers with over 25,000 surfing to the online video feed. Several dozen articles on numerous web sites and coverage on FOX news as well as other TV stations.

So now we need to connect the sponsors to the audience.

Brian Turner

A few weeks ago, Brian Turner (captain of the Kansas City Space Pirates – KCSP) sent out this email to his mailing list.  This email, detailing “What Went Right”, is a follow-up to his “What Went Wrong” email I posted here.

In my last email I talked about what went wrong. In this one I will cover what went right. The glass is half full point of view. Sorry if I get a bit technical. And I must point out that all numbers are estimates.

Tracking:

Keeping all the power of the laser on target is no small task. We were the only team with a fully functional and automatic tracking system. The performance was spectacular. We were able to keep the laser on target 99.99% of the time for the first 500 meters. That performance dropped to 99.7% or so from 500 to 700 meters. At that point the .3% was driving our motor controller and power tracking nuts. This was markedly better than the manual tracking that the other teams were using. USST’s automated systems were down. Probably because of the same radio interference issues that we were suffering from. LaserMotive was using manual tracking that utilized 2 expert video game players with lots and lots of practice. Some time ago I had estimated that the cable would not be as stable as it was and that manual tracking was at the edges of human ability. So I was wrong in that the cable was really very docile. But I was right in that it is at the edge of human ability as Lasermotive was only able to keep it on target about 93% of the time from what I could see in our tracking camera. We do still have room for improvement here and I already know ways to make it better. I will be talking to National Instruments about a bigger and faster FPGA processor in our Compact Rio so we can improve the tracking even further.

Optics:

All three of the top teams did well in creating a competitive optics system. One that could handle the power while directing it quickly and accurately. This was however a major stumbling block for the teams that did not qualify. I would like to thank Thor Labs for providing the bulk of the high quality components needed to pull this off.

Weight:

Our climber was 1.2 Kg with payload vs 8.8 for USST and 5.4? for Lasermotive. We were less than 1/4 the weight of our nearest competitor. The climber was also simpler. We were the only team willing to run without added structure to save the climber from damage from landing mishaps. I suspect that we will be seeing lighter climbers from the other teams in the next round.

Power Transfer:

We had a peak power transfer of 190 watts. For our lightweight climber that is enough to do 5 m/s. In our field testing we had power conversion of more than 200 watts at the full Km distance. LaserMotive had a peak of 1000 watts in the competition. USST was boasting 1200 watts at 800 meters in their testing. This puts us at just under 1/5 the power levels of our competitors. What is impressive is that we are in the hunt with them using only 1/5th the power. The reason for this disparity is the cost of the solar panels. USST commented that their panel cost $120,000. That exceeds our entire cash budget. We do get over that number counting Sponsors like TRUMPF, but clearly our competitors are much better funded than us. LaserMotive is using experimental cells that have no price on them. I would estimate that they are around $60,000 in value because they are less exotic than USST’s cells. Our cells cost less than $4000 per climber. I think this illustrates that no team does more with a watt or a buck than we do.

Summary:

Although we can probably eek out a 5 m/s run with our current system we clearly can’t be competitive with the power levels of the other teams using our current PV(solar) panels. We also crossed the finish line running well into the red on our finances. Although I have seen a few ideas that might have potential, I have to assume that there are no silver bullets to give us $75,000 PV panel performance from $4,000 panels.

What’s Next:

I had “The Talk” with my wife and she pointed out that the basement is full of this stuff, either sell it or use it. With the usual provisions about not losing any major items the house or cars. I really love how understanding she is. So now I need to talk with the team and work out details with them. Then I need to switch to fund raiser mode and raise enough to buy and build the PV panel that we need to be competitive.

So if anyone knows a company that would like to sponsor a high profile, underdog, high tech team, be sure and let me know.

Brian Turner
Captain
KC Space Pirates

Let’s hope they succeed in their funding efforts.  I expect they will and further expect to see them at the next round of competition (May, 2010) ready and loaded for bear…

Here is the latest video from Ben Shelef, CEO of the Spaceward Foundation – organizers of the Space Elevator Games.

He explains it in his latest post on the official site of the Space Elevator Games.  He says, in part:

The video clip tries to capture the scope of the project, and is dedicated to everyone who helped make it happen.

This clip was officially unveiled at the just-completed EuroSpaceward conference in Luxembourg.

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

And, rounding out the post-competition analyses (KCSP is here and USST is here) , LaserMotive’s Steve Burrows gives us his team’s take on the recently completed competition.

Money quote (which occurred after their prize-winning runs on day 1) #1: ‘Waiting just a moment, Steve Beland requested clearance from Test Operations for the Team to begin breathing again.  Test granted the request, but for “shallow breaths only”.’

Money quote #2: “LaserMotive team members are grateful for the hospitality and safe and smooth operations of our host, NASA Dryden Flight Research Center.  We hope they can invite us again to complete the NASA Power Beaming Centenial Challenge — we now have a title to defend!”

Congratulations again to LaserMotive and, indeed, all the teams for providing us with an extremely competitive and enjoyable three days.  Only 169 more days until the 2010 Games!

On the first day of the recently completed Space Elevator Games, there were several reporters and cameras (still and video) at the ISF (the conference center where Bryan and I did the first two days of live coverage of the Games over uStream).

One young lady was from ABC, another from AP and still another from Fox News.  I didn’t see a whole lot of coverage from ABC (but I’m still going through video clips) and the AP reporter somehow carried away the ‘fact’ that there was a team ‘from Alaska’ that was competing (that was funny – after that report went out, I got calls from two local reporters in Alaska wanting to know how to contact the ‘local team’).

However, Fox News did a lot of coverage of this – the reporter, Christina Gonzalez, did the interviews (including one with yours truly) and the best clip I’ve seen so far is the one below.  One reason I like it, of course, is because they actually spelled my name correctly – not something that I’m used to…

It’s so easy to sound stupid on TV.  I’m talking about using a space elevator to “colonize the moon or ‘the’ Mars”… Doh!  I wanted to say ‘the moon or the rest of the solar system’ but tried to change it on the fly to “Mars” and wound up with ‘the Mars’.  Oh well – I think I got the main point across.  A Space Elevator should be built to haul large amounts of stuff into space on an ongoing basis.  It’s a ‘carbon railway’ to outer space and that’s what we need to think of it as…

Or, so that’s what it says over at the official site of the Space Elevator Games.

The Climber / Power-Beaming competition has already been tentatively scheduled for next year, for the week of May 10th.

This is double-plus cool.  LaserMotive has already proved that they’re the real deal.  The Kansas City Space Pirates have built a kick-ass tracking system and now just need to upgrade their climber to complement it.  And, who knows what the USST team is thinking?  They’ve been the best performers for the first three games, the last two just barely missing out on the prize-money.  It must rankle a bit for them to see LaserMotive walk away with a cool $900K…  I’m sure they’re now on a mission to reclaim their glory days…

It’s on! (again)…

And, by the way, if you visit the official site of the Games, you’ll note that the picture gallery (upper left) and movie/video gallery (upper right) have been enhanced and added to.  Lots of new stuff from the just-completed games – check it out!

In yesterday’s post, I wrote about the contributions and leadership provided by Ben Shelef, Andy Petro and John Kelly.  Today I’d like to thank the three people who actually made the whole space elevator raceway work.  Readers may remember the problems that previous incarnations of the raceway incurred.  Much of this was caused by the previous helicopter pilot’s inability to maintain position; i.e. keep his helicopter in the ‘safe zone’, away from the people below.  With the finding of pilot Doug Uttecht, this last hurdle was solved and the raceway became a safe, predictable, stable thing of beauty.

There were a trio of people involved with operating the raceway.  First, of course, was the pilot, Doug Uttecht (pictured in the center).  Doug was the guy responsible for picking up the raceway cable, keeping it on station and at correct tension and then bringing it back down when the run was completed.  This guy was amazing.  His control of his MD530FF helicopter was remarkable and brought about the best line I heard at the Games; “If this guy was any better, we almost wouldn’t need a tracking system”.  Truly he could make that helicopter dance.  During the pre-ops briefing held on the final day, Doug actually received a round of applause from everyone else there (50+ people) for the outstanding job he was doing. The guy is money…

The second part of this trio was Keith Mackey (pictured on the right).  He is an aviation safety consultant that Ben Shelef, CEO of Spaceward, found on the Internet!  His list of credentials and long experience is just amazing.  Ben thinks he might be the most credentialed pilot in the world today.  He is licensed to fly just about everything, commercial jets, private aircraft, helicopters, even blimps!  Keith was the person who came up with the GPS system which allowed the helicopter to station-keep with such amazing accuracy.  How this device works is described over at the official site of the Space Elevator Games.  Keith’s ‘job title’ at the Games was ‘helo ground control’.  He interfaced with Doug via the radio, telling him when to ascend and descend and how fast.  As Keith is a helicopter pilot too, he knew exactly what Doug needed to know and just the words to say it in.  The conversations between the two were succinct, with not a word wasted or out of place.  Between Doug and Keith, that raceway was kept a tame beast, waiting to do the competitor’s bidding…

And finally we have Tetherman (aka Michael Keating – pictured on the left).  Michael was the guy who was responsible for the safe ascent and descent of the Climbers themselves.  Before ascent, he would hold the Climber and cable (with his special ‘ring tool’), waiting for Doug to pick up the cable and bring the Climber to it’s starting position.  In descent, he would have to track the cable and Climber down and guide the Climber to a gentle landing.  This was a huge responsibility – these Climbers represent tens of thousands of dollars and tens of thousands of man-hours of work – keeping them from plummeting to the desert floor was a good thing.  Tetherman has developed a cult following and I fully expect him to arrive in a cape and special helmet for the next Games.

Spaceward CEO Ben Shelef has created a special video to honor this threesome (I think this is your best effort yet Ben – really well done!).  You only see Tetherman in this picture (until the very end and then Keith makes a brief appearance) but rest assured that Doug and Keith are doing their jobs, too.  All three had to work together as a coordinated team to make this thing work and they did so flawlessly.  Thanks guys – this wouldn’t have worked without you!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo-MoVpDyOQ

(Graphic of the Three Caballeros from here – and truly, if you haven’t seen this Disney classic, you’re missing a treat – the music alone is worth a view.  Click on the picture thumbnail of Michael, Doug and Keith to see a larger version of the picture)

Time to start giving thanks where thanks are due.  There were many, many people and organizations who’s help was crucial to the success of the recently completed Space Elevator Games.

Pictured are, from left-to-right, Andy Petro, John Kelly and Ben Shelef.  Andy is from the NASA Centennial Challenges ‘office’ and he was the guy there ensuring that the Challenge was successfully and legally met and also had the happy task of handing the $900,000 check to Team LaserMotive.  Andy was the guy who had to fill the very large shoes of previous Program Manager Ken Davidian, but the shoes certainly seem to be a comfortable fit.  When Andy first took the position, I asked him to say a few words about himself for we in the Space Elevator Games “community” – his response can be found here. Finally, how many people have a “look-a-like” contest named after them?  Andy is such a lucky guy…

The guy in the center is John Kelly.  He was the NASA point man at the Dryden Flight Research Center (DFRC) and there’s only one word to describe him; awesome.  When Ben first approached Dryden about hosting the Games, it was John Kelly who grabbed this ball and ran with it.  He marshaled more and more forces at DFRC until, it seemed, that he had the entire organization working with us.  Whenever we needed something, he came through for us.  He took very large chunks of the organization process off of Spaceward’s shoulders, allowing Ben Shelef to concentrate on the few critical issues that only he could handle.  He was the middle-man who successfully interfaced the rigid structure of the NASA organization to the loose amalgamation of Spaceward and was absolutely key to making it all work.  On top of it all, he’s just great guy, with a wonderful sense of humor and a real joy to work with.  Plus, and also very important, he knew all of the good restaurants in the area.

Andy and John – we owe you huge thanks – THANK YOU!!!

Finally, the guy on the right is Ben Shelef, the CEO of the Spaceward Foundation.  It was Ben who dreamed up the idea of the Space Elevator Games, creatively and succesfully piggy-backing onto the NASA need for power-beaming and strong-tethers.  This competition has been Ben’s baby since Day 1.  I’ve had the pleasure to work with Ben over the past 3+ years and I know that a) he always finds a way to get something done, even when things look bleak and b) he’s persistent, persistent and persistent.  I know Ben has taken some heat because of previous Games not producing any winners, but he has kept his focus; forcing competitors to continually improve their capabilities and thus advancing the state of the art (which is what NASA wants).  He richly deserves the congratulations that he is now receiving.  Finally, I’ve had some brief chats with him about his future plans and, all I can say is ‘You ain’t seen nothin’ yet…’.

So there you have it – these three guys are the key organizers of all the efforts to have a successful Space Elevator Games and they all deserve our thanks and our gratitude.  THANKS GUYS!!

(Graphic of the Three Caballeros from here – and truly, if you haven’t seen this Disney classic, you’re missing a treat – the music alone is worth a view.  Click on the picture thumbnail of Andy, John and Ben to see a larger version of the picture) 

Mark Boots, one of the captains of the USST team, sent out this wrap-up of their team’s performance at the just-completed Space Elevator Games:

The X-15 rocket plane is one of the most famous test aircraft ever flown at the Dryden Flight Research Center. Flying higher and faster than anything before, it explored boundaries that made possible the design of winged spacecraft like the Shuttle. The project manager and chief test pilot once said: “The purpose of test is to separate the imagined problems from the real, and to seek out the unimagined or unexpected problems.”

That statement sums up this past week for the U of S Space Design Team. We left Saskatoon with a world-class design, and our strongest effort to be prepared. From the time we arrived, we faced a set of unexpected problems that we’d never seen in our testing at home. Despite an all-out problem-solving effort by everyone on the team, we didn’t get past all of those problems in time. The final results: Our congratulations go to LaserMotive, a corporate team that succeeded in beating the 2m/s prize criteria and winning $900,000. Neither us nor the Kansas City Space Pirates (Yarr….) were able to make it all the way to the top, and no one took the 5m/s prize.

“What happened?” is the big question that everyone is asking. There were two major problems that we faced: During testing the day of the competition dry-runs, we broke the shaft connecting our main drive motor. Our backup motor had unexpected problems with its controller, and Shea spent an epically stressful day and night trying to get that motor running, while Matt and the mechanical team worked with the machinists in the NASA Dryden fabrication shop to repair the shaft on the original motor. (These guys were awesome, and we owe them huge thanks.) Unfortunately the motor problems caused us to miss the first two of our three 45-minute competition windows.

The other critical issue was with our GPS-based tracking system: We had tested it as much as we could in Saskatoon on cranes, and even chased motorbikes at 1km. This week, we watched it track our climber flawlessly as the helicopter pulled it up from the ground to the starting position at 100m. However, every time we reached the starting position, a strange source of interference hit the receiver on the climber and caused it to continuously lose its lock on the GPS satellites. We had never seen this before in all of our testing, and we’re still mystified by what could have been causing this. We put our manual tracking system into use, and although Ariq did an amazing job at the controls, we didn’t have enough time in our final 45-minute competition window to perfect the switch-over between manual and GPS tracking, or adjust the climber programming to let it be more tolerant of losing the beam.

We’re all hugely disappointed, especially because we know how close we came. The fact that no team took the 1st place prize reminds us that this is a really difficult challenge, and when you’re pushing the boundaries of what’s technologically possible, things can go wrong.

We really want to thank all of our families, wives, girlfriends and boyfriends, and everyone from the University that has supported us so much, sacrificed for us, and enabled this crazy opportunity. We’re really sorry we couldn’t bring back the prize, and we tried so hard to represent Saskatchewan as world-leading innovators and respectful professionals.

To our list of thank-you’s, we need to add a special shout-out to the machine shop staff: both Keith and the guys in the UofS Engineering Shops, and the NASA Dryden people, for the outstanding work they did for us. We’re also hugely grateful to the Dryden team: John Kelly (for running the show, kindness, and wisdom), Mike Kapitzke (for running very smooth, tight operations and keeping everyone safe), Elizabeth (for getting us where we needed to go, and being our cheerleader, even at 5 in the morning — you’re awesome!), Freddy (the coolest van driver ever), and John Piatt (who handled the challenge of laser safety on the lakebed in a keenly responsible, always critical, yet flexible and understanding way.)

Last but first, we thank all of our donors and sponsors; the critical link that made this opportunity possible. We especially want to thank the TRUMPF team: Dave Marcotte for having the business guts and the “more power — let’s do it!” race-car driver attitude to make this project possible, and the one-and-only Ivan, who kept an 8kW laser system running in the middle of the desert, without a single issue! We’re sorry we couldn’t do the same on our end.

Another huge shout-out goes to the helicopter team that supported the vertical cable: “Foxtrot” (Doug, the excellent heli pilot — If he was any better, we almost wouldn’t even need a tracking system!), “HeloGround” Keith Mackey (for keeping Foxtrot on target despite our very confusing directions, and his helpful advice), and “Tetherman” Michael Keating (for his hustle and tireless dedication to running around the desert floor catching climbers all day). We should also probably thank Ben Shelef, the competition organizer and head of the Spaceward Foundation (even if you did make us pay for the whole thing ; ) We recognize how hard it is to single-handedly organize all of this, and seriously: nice work.

Even in this huge disappointment, we’re really proud of our team. Ben refers to us as the “many-headed hydra”, and we take this as a huge compliment. It recognizes that everyone on the team had a crucial part — everyone individually has something that they are the best at. Every day we saw new problems, and every night someone came up with a creative solution. Unfortunately, we just never got to the end of all those problems in time.

It’s hard to imagine the level of dedication that causes someone to stay up for three nights in a row, and still be coming up with solutions on the last one, until they fall asleep standing up during a NASA tour on the last day. (John M., you’re a hero.) This level of dedication is there for everyone on the team, and we really gave it our all. After doing this for a year and a half, it’s so disappointing to end up here.

We are looking for the positives. This was a learning experience for everyone that surpassed anything in our official curriculum — both technically, and in what we learned about leadership, teamwork, and project planning. We, as undergraduate students and recent graduates, developed technologies and a core design that were (and still are) superior to anything in the world. This is shown from the reactions of people such as Lawrence Davis, head of NASA Test Pilot School; NASA personnel; and even our competitors. On the way back, we had a chance to tour the SpaceX facility in Los Angeles, where they are designing and assembling the Falcon 9 spacecraft which will replace the Shuttle for trips to the International Space Station in 2011. It was reassuring that we could pick out similarities in almost all aspects of their work and what we have done on this project. Some of the team members are already talking about what’s next: there’s still a $1.1 million prize out there for 5m/s, and we have a design that’s easily capable of achieving that — we just need to get it all working at once. It is great to see that the team is not discouraged by the outcome, but sees it more as a challenge and lesson to move on and and keep going.

From here on, it’s about talking about lessons learned, catching up on schoolwork, deciding what comes next, and figuring out other ways on how we can give back to the University community, even if we don’t have that $2 million prize money.

All of us were surprised, frankly, that USST didn’t run more successfully.  In every previous competition, they have had the best performance.  But no one who knows anything about this team doubts their ability and their desire to win. I’m very sure there will be another competition next year (after all, there is still more than a million US Dollars in the prize pool waiting to be claimed) and USST will be back, even more determined to show that they are a force to be reckoned with…

The photo, of course, is of the USST team.  Those pictured are, starting from the front and going left to right; Ben Shelef (Spaceward Foundation), John Steeves, Andrew Williams, Ariq Chowdhury, Dave Williams and Shea Pederson. Back row: Nathan Windels, Jordan Gareau, Clayton Ruszkowski, Mark Boots, Dawson James, Matt Evans, John McClean, Rylan Grant, Patrick Allen, Justin Equina, Doug Grant, Kevin Krieger and Bethany Murray.

Finally, if you were listening to the uStream.tv broadcast (and you should have been) on Friday during the USST run, team member Nathan Windle was providing commentary about their team efforts.  Thanks again Nathan – you did a great job!