{"id":1414,"date":"2010-08-12T00:09:17","date_gmt":"2010-08-12T06:09:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/?p=1414"},"modified":"2010-08-12T00:10:08","modified_gmt":"2010-08-12T06:10:08","slug":"latest-updates-on-the-strong-tether-challenge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/?p=1414","title":{"rendered":"Latest updates on the Strong Tether Challenge"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ben Shelef, CEO of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.spaceward.org\" target=\"_blank\">Spaceward Foundation<\/a>, organizers of the Space Elevator Games, arrived in Seattle \/ Redmond today.\u00a0 He tells me that there will be at least two contestants, and possibly a third, in this year&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/offices\/ipp\/innovation_incubator\/centennial_challenges\/tether\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\">Strong Tether Challenge<\/a>.\u00a0 All of the contestants are bringing entries made out of carbon nanotubes.<\/p>\n<p>This is \u00fcber-mega-cool.\u00a0 In 2007, there was a single carbon nanotube entry from team <a href=\"http:\/\/www.teamdeltax.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">DeltaX<\/a>, a collaboration between MIT and Nanocomp.\u00a0 In 2009, there was another single carbon nanotube entry from <a href=\"http:\/\/www-en.shizuoka.ac.jp\/\" target=\"_blank\">Shizuoka University<\/a> in Japan.\u00a0 Neither one performed very well.\u00a0 The Delta-X entry slipped at the knot tied in the loop (very high tech ) while the Shizuoka entry, a &#8216;tape&#8217; formed from nanotubes held solely by Van der Walls forces, broke at a very low level.<\/p>\n<p>But that was the past and this is now the future.\u00a0 With two, maybe three entries, we could see some very good performances.\u00a0 The lack of a material strong enough is the single biggest obstacle in the way of building a Space Elevator.\u00a0 Having some sort of breakthrough demonstrated at this year&#8217;s Space Elevator Games &#8211; Strong Tether Challenge would be nothing short of monumental.<\/p>\n<p>Plus, if there are any winners, there is a cool $2 Million dollar prize purse, courtesy of NASA, to be awarded.<\/p>\n<p>So, stay tuned.\u00a0 Despite a last-minute glitch, we&#8217;re still hopeful of broadcasting the competition live on uStream.\u00a0 Details will be posted here (and on <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/segames\">Twitter<\/a>) as soon as they are available.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ben Shelef, CEO of the Spaceward Foundation, organizers of the Space Elevator Games, arrived in Seattle \/ Redmond today.\u00a0 He tells me that there will be at least two contestants, and possibly a third, in this year&#8217;s Strong Tether Challenge.\u00a0 All of the contestants are bringing entries made out of carbon nanotubes. This is \u00fcber-mega-cool.\u00a0 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-announcements","category-spaceelevatorcompetitions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1414","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=1414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1414\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}