{"id":820,"date":"2007-10-19T19:32:16","date_gmt":"2007-10-20T00:32:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/?p=820"},"modified":"2007-10-19T19:38:43","modified_gmt":"2007-10-20T00:38:43","slug":"2007-space-elevator-games-entry-52","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/?p=820","title":{"rendered":"2007 Space Elevator Games – (Entry 52)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tether torture…<\/p>\n

The Tether competition is scheduled for tomorrow, Saturday, at 5:00pm.\u00a0 That time is\u00a0subject to change (visit http:\/\/www.spaceward.org for the latest details).\u00a0 We have only two competitors this year, last year’s champion (Astroaraneae) and a newcomer to this event, MIT (yes, THE MIT).\u00a0 Astroaranaea is not saying what kind of tether they’re bringing this year, but I’m sure it’s going to be better than last years. And that tether was good enough to beat everyone else who had entered. It was even stronger than the house tether, but it wasn’t 50% stronger (as the rules stipulate), so it wasn’t eligible for the NASA Award.\u00a0 MIT is said to be bringing a carbon nanotube-based tether.\u00a0 This will be very interesting to see.\u00a0 From a very recent article in Nature.com<\/a>;<\/p>\n

Stephen Steiner, who leads one of the entries, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says he is taking an academic attitude to the games. The MIT tether is the first ever entry to be made entirely of carbon nanotubes \u2014 touted as the most promising material to make a rope strong and light enough to reach space. \u201cWe know that our materials cannot win this year,\u201d he says, but predicts that by 2010 carbon nanotube fibres will be up to the job.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I hope he’s right.\u00a0 There are so many companies and governments pouring money into this type of research, one would expect the state of the art to be advancing very rapidly.<\/p>\n

The competition will be run similarly to last year.\u00a0 Two tethers will be mounted on a “tether torture rack”.\u00a0 Pressure is applied slowly and evenly to each tether.\u00a0 They are stretched and stretched and stretched until one breaks.\u00a0 That one is the loser.\u00a0 The winner goes up against the “house tether”, made from Commercial, Off-The-Shelf (COTS) materials.\u00a0 The house tether will weigh 50% more than the competition tether (3 grams vs. 2 grams).\u00a0 Then the same torture test will be applied.\u00a0 If the house tether breaks first, we have a winner; a winner that will receive $500K from NASA.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/a>Last year’s tether machine was horizontal.\u00a0 It had some problems (see my post <\/a>from last year on this subject).\u00a0 The machine has been redesigned and is now vertical in nature.\u00a0 The thumbnail on the left shows a front view of the machine while the one on the right shows a side view of the machine.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>This thumbnail demonstrates\u00a0a kind of “macro-view” of what a carbon nanotube tether could look like.\u00a0 The individual fibers would be held together by some sort of adhesive horizontal band.\u00a0 For a real tether, of course, the fibers would be bound (or woven, or perhaps both) tightly together.<\/p>\n

.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>This thumbnail is of a sign that is posted at the tether exhibit, hosted in the middle of “Climber Row” (Building 2).\u00a0 Other items in this exhibit include the “tether torture rack”, the demonstration ribbon and some other tethe-related items.<\/p>\n

.<\/p>\n

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(As always, click on the thumbnails to view a larger version of the picture)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tether torture… The Tether competition is scheduled for tomorrow, Saturday, at 5:00pm.\u00a0 That time is\u00a0subject to change (visit http:\/\/www.spaceward.org for the latest details).\u00a0 We have only two competitors this year, last year’s champion (Astroaraneae) and a newcomer to this event, MIT (yes, THE MIT).\u00a0 Astroaranaea is not saying what kind of tether they’re bringing this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-materials","category-spaceelevatorcompetitions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820","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=820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}