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<\/a>Dr. Bradley Edwards arrives.\u00a0 Here he is with Spaceward CEO Ben Shelef – both getting their hands dirty.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
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As of right now, there are still only six teams that have qualified to compete in the 2006 Space Elevator Games Climber Competition.\u00a0 They are the Kansas City Space Pirates, TurboCrawler, LiteWon, UBC-Snowstar, MClimber (from University of Michigan) and USST.\u00a0 That’s a pretty broad mix.\u00a0 The KC Space Pirates are a family affair, TurboCrawler is from a German University, LiteWon is from an American High School, UBC-Snowstar and USST are from Canadian Universities and Climber 1 is from an American University.\u00a0 No company sponsored qualifiers, though.<\/p>\n
As for the other six entrants, here is their status;<\/p>\n
Recens – From Spain.\u00a0\u00a0I have my information second-hand, but from what I understand, their Climber was lost (not delivered to the wrong address, but LOST) by UPS, somewhere in Kentucky.\u00a0 Even if it shows up tomorrow, there is almost no chance they can compete.\u00a0\u00a0If the information about their missing equipment is true, they were well and truly screwed – what a shame.<\/p>\n
SpaceMiners – They burned out 4 cells on their photocell array on a qualification attempt and are still hopeful of qualifying tomorrow.<\/p>\n
StarClimber – They suffered a mechanical problem while on the ribbon, trying to qualify.\u00a0 While Matt is working on fixing it, he’s not hopeful.\u00a0 It doesn’t look good for them, but they’re not totally dead yet.<\/p>\n
Punkworks – They still think they have a shot at it.\u00a0 They were doing some ribbon testing tonight and hope to qualify tommorrow.<\/p>\n
Beamer (the Fischer team)\u00a0– Another tragedy.\u00a0 When their Climber was being weighed in, it somehow got disconnected from the scale and crashed to the ground.\u00a0 The lens fractured and may not be usable.<\/p>\n
Centaurus Aerospace – As far as I know, no one’s heard from them – I guess they’re no shows.<\/p>\n
So that’s where we are.\u00a0 At least six teams will be competing and there’s a chance that up to 3 more may make it (though I’d give odds on only 1 or 2 of them).<\/p>\n
Below are some more pictures from today.\u00a0 Click on the thumbnails for a larger version.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/a>Dr. Bradley Edwards arrives.\u00a0 Here he is with Spaceward CEO Ben Shelef – both getting their hands dirty.<\/p>\n