{"id":886,"date":"2007-12-22T02:06:16","date_gmt":"2007-12-22T07:06:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/?p=886"},"modified":"2008-02-14T18:28:26","modified_gmt":"2008-02-14T23:28:26","slug":"planning-underway-for-2008-space-elevator-games-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/?p=886","title":{"rendered":"Planning underway for 2008 Space Elevator Games &#8211; Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" width=\"108\" src=\"\/media\/Elevator2010Logo.jpg\"  height=\"53\" style=\"width: 108px; height: 53px\" \/>In my <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/?p=885\">last post<\/a> on this subject, I\u00a0wrote about the changes that were being implemented for the upcoming Space Elevator Games.\u00a0 They are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The climb will now be\u00a0one full\u00a0kilometer (10 times what was required in the 2007 Games).<\/li>\n<li>There will now be two levels of prizes: $900,000 (for a climb averaging\u00a02m\/s and $1,100,000 for a climb averaging 5 m\/s).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I also wrote about how a couple of laser-supply companies (<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.trumpf-laser.com\/\">TRUMPF<\/a> and <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.dilas.com\/\">DILAS<\/a>) are now working with Spaceward to help lower the costs of the lasers which will be necessary to power a climber a full kilometer up from the ground.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"\/media\/MeteorCrater2008.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" width=\"200\" src=\"\/media\/tn_MeteorCrater2008.jpg\"  height=\"132\" style=\"width: 200px; height: 132px\" \/><\/a>In this post, I want to talk about the raceway itself.\u00a0 How do you build a\u00a0one kilometer vertical raceway system, a\u00a0system\u00a0which will have to a) support the raceway itself, b) support the climber, c) be able to lower &#8220;stuck&#8221; climbers back to the ground and d) be\u00a0undamaged by stray laser beams that\u00a0may occur?\u00a0 And, once you have this raceway system, where do you put it?<\/p>\n<p>The first part of this question, how do you build this raceway, has a tentative answer.\u00a0 Spaceward is aiming towards a balloon-supported\u00a0system with a\u00a0raceway made out of 3\/16&#8243; or 1\/4&#8243; twisted steel cable.\u00a0 As was all too obvious last year,\u00a0Spaceward needed to find something much stronger than the ribbon they used in the previous two competitions (and which broke a couple of times last year).\u00a0 The steel cable is more than strong enough, but will require that the Climbers use a different mechanism to grip the raceway than they did before.\u00a0 The balloon would be tethered with (probably)\u00a0three cables.\u00a0 The raceway cable itself would travel from\u00a0a ground point (centered between the three tether cables)\u00a0up to the balloon.\u00a0 Fears of the laser hitting the balloon and causing it to burst are unfounded because\u00a0most of the time the wind will be blowing the balloon and moving it and, consequently, the cable system holding it up and the raceway itself.\u00a0 This will cause the raceway cable to droop some and so a laser aimed at a climber on the cable will not be pointed directly at the balloon.\u00a0 When the climber gets very close to the top, a small shield under the balloon can shield it.\u00a0 It may also turn out that the balloon itself is &#8220;invisible&#8221; to the lasers in the 800-1000 nm range, rendering the whole issue moot.<\/p>\n<p>So, we have a tentative solution to building a\u00a0one km raceway.\u00a0 Now, where do you put it?\u00a0 This becomes a very big system.\u00a0 The\u00a0diameter of the circle created by the tethers is on the order of\u00a0two-three kilometers; i.e.\u00a0nearly two miles.\u00a0 To get an idea of how big that is, Spaceward has posted on their site (and also shown on this post) a picture of how big the raceway system would be in respect to Meteor Crater in Arizona (as an aside, wouldn&#8217;t that be the coolest place for a racecourse ever?).\u00a0 This is where we are now; Spaceward is actively looking for a site to hold the 2008 Competition.\u00a0 On their <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.spaceward.org\/elevator2010-pb.html\">2008 Competition web page<\/a>, they list the following sites they are considering:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Davis County Fairgrounds, UT (where the 2007 Games were held)<\/li>\n<li>Meteor Crater, AZ (pictured)<\/li>\n<li>Bonneville Salt Flats, UT<\/li>\n<li>Albuquerque Balloon Festival, NM<\/li>\n<li>White Sands, NM<\/li>\n<li>Rockets Sites:<br \/>\nBrothers Rocket Site, OR<br \/>\nBlack Rock, NV<br \/>\nJean Dry lake, NV<br \/>\nMansfield, WA<br \/>\nTripoli Idaho Swan Falls, ID<\/li>\n<li>NASCAR raceways:<br \/>\n(must be away from airports!)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So, if you know of any sites that might satisfy the requirements (Sites must be able to accommodate a 1 km tall tethered balloon pyramid, offer convenient logistics support, and be relatively easily accessible. Natural landmarks get extra points.) please let Ben Shelef at Spaceward know!\u00a0 You can contact Ben via email at ben [at] spaceward [dot] org.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In my last post on this subject, I\u00a0wrote about the changes that were being implemented for the upcoming Space Elevator Games.\u00a0 They are: The climb will now be\u00a0one full\u00a0kilometer (10 times what was required in the 2007 Games). There will now be two levels of prizes: $900,000 (for a climb averaging\u00a02m\/s and $1,100,000 for a [&hellip;]<\/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-886","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\/886","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=886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/886\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}