{"id":1172,"date":"2009-04-01T12:05:33","date_gmt":"2009-04-01T17:05:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/?p=1172"},"modified":"2009-04-01T12:05:35","modified_gmt":"2009-04-01T17:05:35","slug":"space-elevator-blog-celebrates-its-3-year-anniversary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/?p=1172","title":{"rendered":"Space Elevator Blog celebrates its 3 Year Anniversary"},"content":{"rendered":"

Once again, all together now;<\/p>\n

\n

Happy birthday to you!
\nHappy birthday to you!
\nHappy birthday dear Space Elevator Blog!
\nHappy birthday to you! <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Yes, I know it\u2019s April Fools day, but again this is no joke – three years ago today, I started this blog. It\u2019s been yet\u00a0another exciting year. In keeping with my tradition of writing an ‘anniversary post’ (first year summary<\/a>\u00a0and second year summary<\/a>), the following is a list of, IMHO, the more significant happenings in the\u00a0past 12 months\u00a0that I was privileged to cover:<\/p>\n

The highlights for this past year include:<\/p>\n

The creation of the International Space Elevator Consortium (ISEC)<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0This is the culmination of efforts by\u00a0most of the ‘leading luminaries’ in the Space Elevator community to create an\u00a0organization dedicated to actually getting a Space Elevator built.\u00a0 All of the existing Space Elevator organizations that I know about\u00a0are part of this effort; the Spaceward Foundation<\/a>, EuroSpaceward<\/a>, the Japan Space Elevator Association<\/a>, the Space Elevator Reference<\/a>, the Space Elevator Wiki<\/a> and my own\u00a0Space Elevator Blog<\/a>.\u00a0 In addition,\u00a0other\u00a0individuals who have had a long history within the Space Elevator effort have also\u00a0joined in this effort.\u00a0\u00a0 I am very honored to be the President of this organization and pledge to do whatever I can to make a Space Elevator happen within my lifetime.<\/p>\n

Attending and blogging on the Space Elevator Conference<\/a> in Redmond, Washington.\u00a0 The Space Engineering and Science Institute<\/a> did an outstanding job in organizing this conference.\u00a0 The arrangements, facilities and speakers were first-rate.\u00a0 I truly enjoyed all of the presentations I heard and also presented\u00a0my own\u00a0paper on who, IMHO, might be the first entity to actually create a Space Elevator.<\/p>\n

Watching the traffic at this site continue to grow.\u00a0 This post is number 1,172 for this blog so I’m averaging nearly 400 posts per year.\u00a0 In it’s first year, the Space Elevator blog had approximately 28,000 hits.\u00a0 In it’s second year, this blog had about 68,000 hits.\u00a0 In this third year, we’ve had nearly 80,000 hits.\u00a0 While the growth rate looks like it has slowed, this is actually not the case – the average daily traffic has\u00a0increased significantly.\u00a0 In the blog’s first and second years, traffic spiked\u00a0during my coverage of the Space Elevator Games.\u00a0 I\u00a0put up many posts during the Games and nearly 40% of the\u00a0website\u00a0hits in year 1 and year 2 were generated during\u00a0that 10-12 day period.\u00a0 Even though there were no Space Elevator Games in this past 12 months, traffic at this site still increased\u00a0over 15%.\u00a0 I fully expect our traffic numbers to double in the coming year with a) coverage of the Space Elevator games and b) coverage of the activity\u00a0by the International Space Elevator Consortium (ISEC).<\/p>\n

Watching the preparations for the next Space Elevator Games<\/a>.\u00a0 Even though the Games were not held at the hoped for time, it still has been an absolutely fascinating experience watching Spaceward and the competition teams get ready for the next Games.\u00a0 I don’t think the scope of the next\u00a0Games has been really appreciated by most people.\u00a0 To win this competition, teams will now have to use a laser to power a climber that will\u00a0ascend\/descend a 1 kilometer-long tether.\u00a0 This is freaking awesome!\u00a0 Spaceward, the organization that hosts these games, now has to deal with entities like the Laser Clearing House <\/a>to ensure that there are no satellites passing overhead which might be temporarily ‘blinded’ by a competitors laser beam.\u00a0 A full\u00a0two million US Dollars\u00a0is on the line, available to a team that can do this climb at an average of 5 meters\/second.\u00a0 It really is magnificent and I can’t wait for it to happen.<\/p>\n

The release of\u00a0a paper by Ben Shelef, CEO of the Spaceward Foundation<\/a> entitled “The Space Elevator Feasability Condition<\/a><\/em>“.\u00a0 This paper represents, IMHO,\u00a0the first serious review of what it will take to build a Space Elevator since the\u00a0Edwards-Westling Space Elevator book<\/a>.\u00a0 In his paper, Ben argues that a tether as weak as 25-30 MYuris may<\/strong> be strong enough to build a useful Space Elevator tether.\u00a0 He discusses the various parameters which make up his calculations and shows how they relate to each other.\u00a0\u00a0Reading and understanding this document should be a requirement for anyone who is interested in Space Elevators.<\/p>\n

And finally, getting a professional-looking masthead for this blog.\u00a0 I\u00a0want to thank\u00a0Susan Seichrist<\/a> once again\u00a0for doing an outstanding job\u00a0with this.<\/p>\n

Other highlights occuring the past year\u00a0the announcement of\u00a0the first Japan Space Elevator Games<\/a>, attending ISDC2008 and seeing Ben Shelef’s\u00a0absolutely awesome model<\/a> of a hypothetical Space Elevator Games held at Meteor Crater in Arizona, the captain of the Kansas City Space Pirates, Brian Turner, appearing on the Conan O’Brien show<\/a>, the release of the Iron Man comic book<\/a> where the chief protagonist, Tony Stark, successfully manages the construction of a Space Elevator, Dr. Who <\/a>and his cohorts using a Space Elevator to help thwart the bad\u00a0guys, acknowledging\u00a0NASA’s 50th Anniversary<\/a>, the release of Ropewalk<\/a><\/em>,\u00a0installing DSL<\/a> for my Mother, and beer-pouring robots<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Downers for the year include my inability to attend either the EuroSpaceward conference<\/a> or the Japan Space Elevator Association conference <\/a>due to reasons which are beyond bizarre and\u00a0the disappointment of Arthur C. Clarke’s last book, The Last Theorem<\/a>\u00a0(released posthumously).<\/p>\n

So, what’s coming up this year?\u00a0 Well, first and foremost should be the Space Elevator Games<\/a>.\u00a0 As you are reading this, I should be returning home from a trip to an ‘undisclosed location’ with Ben Shelef of the Spaceward Foundation<\/a> (hosts of the Space Elevator Games), trying to finalize arrangements for the Games.\u00a0 Let’s hope we were successful.\u00a0 Also upcoming is the next Space Elevator Conference<\/a>, scheduled for August 13-16 of this year.\u00a0 The inaugural Japan Space Elevator Games <\/a>are scheduled for early August and I would expect either\/both the Europeans and Japanese to have another Space Elevator Conference this year (which I really do want to attend?).<\/p>\n

The International Space Elevator Consortium (ISEC) should become a serious force for pushing the idea of someone (anyone) building a Space Elevator.\u00a0 We have a lot riding on this organization and I encourage you to visit our website<\/a> and JOIN us in helping make this game-changing idea a reality.<\/p>\n

Stay tuned and, thanks again for reading!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Once again, all together now; Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday dear Space Elevator Blog! Happy birthday to you! Yes, I know it\u2019s April Fools day, but again this is no joke – three years ago today, I started this blog. It\u2019s been yet\u00a0another exciting year. In keeping with my tradition […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-entries","category-news-announcements"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1172\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}