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Only 10 more days until the start of the Space Elevator Games.\u00a0 I\u2019m not associated with any of the Climber or Tether teams, but I can imagine the frantic pace\u00a0they\u2019re working at now to finalize their entries.\u00a0<\/p>\nOnly 10 more days until the start of the Space Elevator Games.\u00a0 I\u2019m not associated with any of the Climber or Tether teams, but I can imagine the frantic pace\u00a0they\u2019re working at now to finalize their entries.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Climber competition seems to get most of the attention and there\u2019s no doubt\u00a0that it will be visually very appealing \u2013 watching each team\u2019s entry as it attempts to climb faster and with more weight than their competitors.\u00a0 But I think the tether competition is going to be very interesting, too.\u00a0 As Michael Remington of Team Astroaraneae puts it \u201cThe tether competition will be head-to-head, while the lifter competition is essentially a time-trial.\u201d\u00a0 As of now, there are three tether competitors who definitely will be there and two more who may or may not make it.<\/p>\n
In the tether competition, two tethers will be mounted on a pulling mechanism.\u00a0 The pulling mechanism will do its thing while the tethers will be trying to stay in one piece.\u00a0 The scoring mechanism is essentially a measuring and lockout circuit; it will measure when one of the tethers breaks or stretches more than allowed.\u00a0 When this happens, a signal will be sent to light up a lamp signifying the winner (the other tether, of course), while the lockout circuit will prevent the winning tether from lighting up the other lamp.\u00a0 Matches are best two out of three.\u00a0 Tethers may weigh no more than two grams.<\/p>\n
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A two-gram \u201cHouse tether\u201d may be used as one of the competitors in order to create evenly numbered brackets.\u00a0 This depends on how many competitors show up.\u00a0 If there are four entries (a distinct possibility), they\u2019ll be divided into two brackets of two each to compete, with the two winners competing against each other for the right to compete for a chance to win the prize.<\/p>\n
Once a head-to-head winner has been declared, it will be matched against a three-gram House tether.\u00a0 If it can beat this tether, then it will be awarded the $200,000.00 Prize money.\u00a0 As the House tether will weigh 50% more than the competitors tether (three grams vs. two grams), this means that the competitors tether must be 50% stronger than the House tether to win the prize.<\/p>\n
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The plan is to increase the strength requirements each year (as well as including new requirements when appropriate).\u00a0 Teams know this; Patrick Littlejohn of Team Snowstar states; “The Snowstar Tether group has been working since January 2006, with an emphasis on extensive testing in order to get the best results out of conventional materials. As the competition progresses through 2010, we hope to incorporate more and more next gen materials into our research and development until one day a working elevator is a reality.\u00a0 If we win, we will be throwing one hell of a party.”<\/p>\n
The official tether competition rules can be found here<\/a> and this year’s tether entrants can be found here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Only 10 more days until the start of the Space Elevator Games.\u00a0 I\u2019m not associated with any of the Climber or Tether teams, but I can imagine the frantic pace\u00a0they\u2019re working at now to finalize their entries.\u00a0 The Climber competition seems to get most of the attention and there\u2019s no doubt\u00a0that it will be visually […]<\/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-361","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\/361","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=361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}