{"id":855,"date":"2007-11-04T22:53:56","date_gmt":"2007-11-05T03:53:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/?p=855"},"modified":"2007-11-04T22:53:56","modified_gmt":"2007-11-05T03:53:56","slug":"e-t-c-wraps-it-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/?p=855","title":{"rendered":"E-T-C Wraps it up…"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>I received the following “post-Games thoughts”, as well as the three photos in this post, from Akira Tsuchida, captain of Team E-T-C, Earth-Track-Controllers.\u00a0 In addition to building a prototype of a Space Elevator which they entered in this year’s Games, they also have a pretty cool day job, tracking the International Space Station (ISS).\u00a0 I imagine with the problems on board the ISS recently (chronicled here<\/a>), things have been a bit hectic with their employment lately too.\u00a0 The topmost photo is an E-T-C Team photo.\u00a0 The one in the middle is a cool night shot of the spotlights they used to power their climber.\u00a0 And the photo on the bottom is a very good image of their illuminated climber at night as it attempted to climb.<\/p>\n

“Subject: E-T-C recovered and started investigation why our Climber did not climb
\n\u00a0
\nWe drove back to Houston for 3 days to return Xenon light, then some members flew back to Japan on last weekend.\u00a0 It took long time to recover and finally E-T-C had a first meeting on Nov 3 after finish competition this year.\u00a0 We re-assembled our climber again to investigate real reason what is happening in SLC.\u00a0 As all participants knows, E-T-C climber could not climb at all.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/a>Some people mentioned, even team member,E-T-C Climber seems too heavy.\u00a0 But I still do not think it is TOO heavy.\u00a0 Of course, comparing with other 7 team which participated games in Salt Lake City. Probably our wheel and mechanism is the heaviest.
\n\u00a0
\nE-T-C designed this climber as our first challenge to win this competition using the following concept.
\n(1) Try to have highest efficiency motor and energy transformation mechanism
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 (Use high performance motor and high efficiency gear)
\n(2) Minimize weight of solar panels (modules)
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 (Laminated thin mono crystal silicon PV array helped a lot to minimize support structure and damage from wind.)
\n(3) Low cost (because no sponsor)
\n\u00a0
\nAlthough we wanted to use laser, microwave or other advanced technology to this competition, but we decided use white light because we have limited human resources and money.\u00a0 So we could focus to develop climber for this year.
\n\u00a0
\n<\/em><\/em><\/a>According to our calculation and ground test (not using ribbon but using actual xenon light and solar panels, we proved that we could get enough power to climb at the starting point. (ex. 10m)
\n\u00a0
\nThat means something happening in Electric circuit between solar panels and electronics\/motor driver circuits.\u00a0 Still we need to study and experiment more to know this cause.
\n\u00a0
\nAnyway, we are proud to compete with other experienced teams.\u00a0 And we hopefully can compete at next years game in US again.
\n\u00a0
\nTo do that, we need to have good sponsor to understand about SE.
\n\u00a0
\nOur big concern about all Climber teams is for three years, no team won at all.\u00a0 If continuously criteria is becoming difficult, number of team will be decreased and can not do good competition.
\n\u00a0
\nSo E-T-C’s idea as a member of Japan Space Elevator Association (JSEA) is as follows.\u00a0
\n(1) Divide roles or goals to two or three by Spaceward, Euro Spaceward amd also JSEA.\u00a0
\n(2) Each fundation will focus to hold competition for individual part od Space Elevator system.\u00a0
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ex: US Spaceward focus to Power beam challenge
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Japanese foundation (JSEA) focus to climber, etc…
\n(3) And at each competition’s winnner’s system can be used at other competition.\u00a0
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ex. If USST won power beam challenge, their system can be used at Japanese Climber challenge, etc.
\n\u00a0
\nOf course, JSEA needs to talk Japanese government or big company like Toyota, Honda, in Japan to have prize money for competition in Japan.\u00a0 But it maybe good idea.\u00a0 I felt not only our team but also other teams are almost ‘Broke’.\u00a0 And it makes more difficult to keep each team’s physical strength and motivation.\u00a0 This kind of effort should be done by European and Japanese (or Asian) group too.
\n\u00a0
\nI also have a strong confidence that one of us (all teams) can prove that ‘Our Generation Will Go To Space’!!.<\/em><\/p>\n

Do not give up and work together,<\/em><\/p>\n

Akira Tsuchida
\nTeam Lead, Earth-Track-Controllers
\ne-t-c(at)earth-track-controllers.com”<\/em><\/p>\n

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

I received the following “post-Games thoughts”, as well as the three photos in this post, from Akira Tsuchida, captain of Team E-T-C, Earth-Track-Controllers.\u00a0 In addition to building a prototype of a Space Elevator which they entered in this year’s Games, they also have a pretty cool day job, tracking the International Space Station (ISS).\u00a0 I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spaceelevatorcompetitions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855","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=855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/855\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}