{"id":1498,"date":"2011-08-13T15:16:41","date_gmt":"2011-08-13T21:16:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/?p=1498"},"modified":"2011-08-13T15:16:41","modified_gmt":"2011-08-13T21:16:41","slug":"the-2011-strong-tether-competition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/?p=1498","title":{"rendered":"The 2011 Strong Tether Competition"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 2011 Space Elevator Games – Strong Tether Challenge was held yesterday, August 12th, at the 2011 Space Elevator Conference<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This competition is part of the NASA Centennial Challenges program<\/a>, a program funded by Congress and run by NASA, with the purpose of fostering new technologies.\u00a0 Successful competitors are awarded prize money.\u00a0 For the Strong Tether Challenge, there is a prize pool of $2Million for any entry that meets all the benchmarks.<\/p>\n

<\/a>NASA doesn’t run the competitions themselves.\u00a0 Instead, they partner with organizations who run the actual Games.\u00a0 These organizations set the rules<\/a> (with NASA’s review and approval), they arrange the venue, they find the teams, etc.\u00a0 For the Strong Tether Challenge and the Power Beaming Challenge, the Spaceward Foundation<\/a> is the organizing partner.\u00a0 These two competitions are packaged together by the Spaceward Foundation and labeled “The Space Elevator Games” as Power-Beaming and Strong Tethers are crucial components of building a Space Elevator.<\/p>\n

When the competitions are held, NASA sends a representative to judge the results and to make the final determination as to whether or not a prize will be awarded.<\/p>\n

This year’s strong Tether competition was held, as mentioned earlier, at the annual Space Elevator Conference.\u00a0 This is the third year that the competition has been held here and it seems to be a perfect venue.\u00a0 The facilities are absolutely first rate and there is already a gathering of space elevator enthusiasts and, this year, carbon nanotube (CNT) scientists and researchers.<\/p>\n

<\/a>To actually test the tethers, you need a machine that stretches the tether to failure and records the value at which the tether broke.\u00a0 Spaceward built the machine that does this testing.\u00a0 A tether is mounted on the test rack.\u00a0 A hydraulic pump is then manually pumped, putting strain on the tether.\u00a0 When that tether breaks, the readout device shows the measurement of the level that the tether actually broke at.\u00a0 This measurement is then entered into a formula which also contains the length and weight values for that tether and final score is computed.\u00a0 If the score exceeds one of the prize benchmarks, then that tether is a prize-winner.<\/p>\n

Two teams competed this year.\u00a0 One was an individual and first-time competitor in the Strong Tether Competition, Flint Hamblin.\u00a0 If that name sounds familiar to you, it’s probably because he was part of team which competed in the Power-Beaming competition some years back.\u00a0 Flint has decided to go after the tougher nut to crack, making a strong tether.\u00a0 The second team was Odysseus Technologies, Inc – a team which also competed last year.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Flint brought three tethers to the competition.\u00a0 Each tether was measured (weight and length), put on the test rack, and then stressed until they failed.\u00a0 His first tether needed a score of 898 pounds, but broke at 153 pounds.\u00a0 The second tether needed a score of 948 pounds but broke at 264 pounds.\u00a0 The third tether needed a score of 452 pounds but broke at 154 pounds.\u00a0 The reason for the different metrics was that the tethers themselves were of different weights and length.\u00a0 The prize competition formula normalizes these measurements so that all tethers have an equal shot of winning.\u00a0 Flint’s tethers were made with off-the-shelf components plus some “secret sauce”.\u00a0 As a newbie in the competition, Flint stated he didn’t expect to win this year, but wanted some baseline measurements he can use to help judge future year’s results.<\/p>\n

<\/a>The second competitor, Odysseus Technologies (headed by Dr. Bryan Laubscher), brought only one tether, but it was made out of carbon nanotubes.\u00a0 This tether however, broke at a very low level.\u00a0 It’s target score was 2,000 pounds, but it broke at just 11 pounds.\u00a0 This tether did not perform as well as the CNT tether that Odysseus brought last year, so obviously something adverse happened.\u00a0 Whatever it was, this means that we concluded another year of Strong Tether competition without awarding any prize money.<\/p>\n

<\/a>However, hope springs eternal.\u00a0 Attending the conference this year were Dr. Vesselin Shanov and graduate student Mark Haase of the University of Cincinnati and Dr. Boris Yacobson and Dr. Vasilii Artyukhov of Rice University.\u00a0 They were very enthusiastic about what they saw and expressed a strong interest in having their departments work on competition entry.\u00a0 With the resources they have behind them, this should provide a quantitative leap in the entries for next year.<\/p>\n

So, until 2012…<\/p>\n

(Picture thumbnails:\u00a0 Topmost is Sam Ortega, one of the NASA representatives attending the competition.\u00a0 Next is Ben Shelef, principal of the Spaceward Foundation.\u00a0 As part of his introductory speech, he is showing a piece of a cable we obtained from the Puget Sound Rope Company.\u00a0 Next is Flint Hamblin, showing one of his tethers.\u00a0 Fourth is the carbon nanotube tether from Odysseus Techologies.\u00a0 And last is a picture of the two competitors.\u00a0 Dr. Bryan Laubscher from Odysseus Technologies is on the left while Flint Hamblin is on the right.\u00a0 As always, clicking on any of the thumbnails will give you a full-size picture). <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The 2011 Space Elevator Games – Strong Tether Challenge was held yesterday, August 12th, at the 2011 Space Elevator Conference. This competition is part of the NASA Centennial Challenges program, a program funded by Congress and run by NASA, with the purpose of fostering new technologies.\u00a0 Successful competitors are awarded prize money.\u00a0 For the Strong […]<\/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-1498","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\/1498","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=1498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1498\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}