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Once again, all together now;<\/p>\nOnce again, all together now;<\/p>\n
\nHappy birthday to you!
\nHappy birthday to you!
\nHappy birthday\u00a0dear Space Elevator Blog!
\nHappy birthday to you!\u00a0<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\nYes, I know it\u2019s April Fools day, but again\u00a0this is no joke –\u00a0two years ago today, I started this blog.\u00a0 It\u2019s been another\u00a0exciting year.\u00a0 On\u00a0our first\u00a0anniversary I posted a summary<\/a> of what we did and saw\u00a0in that first year and I’m\u00a0keeping the tradition going\u00a0this year.<\/p>\n
Highlights for our second year\u00a0include;<\/p>\n
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- Attending The Spaceward Foundation’s<\/a>\u00a03rd Annual Space Elevator Games where, once again, I was honored to be\u00a0the “Official Blogger”.\u00a0 These\u00a0Games were even\u00a0more\u00a0enjoyable than the first one I attended because a) I knew many of the people there and it was fun to renew acquaintances, b) I\u00a0was able to witness\u00a0multiple laser-powered climbs<\/a> and\u00a0c) I got to see (and touch)\u00a0a carbon nanotube tether<\/a>.\u00a0 I believe that these\u00a0represent the future of Space Elevator technology and being able to witness them in action was, literally, awesome.\u00a0\u00a0Finally, of course, there was Marc Boucher’s discovery of aliens at the Games, an event I chronicled here<\/a>.<\/li>\n
- Having pictures and videos I took of the Space Elevator Games appear in multiple venues including (and to my mind, the coolest), a German TV-show<\/a>.<\/li>\n
- Watching the traffic at this site continue to grow.\u00a0 In its first year, this site attracted about 28,000 page hits.\u00a0 For this second year, we attracted nearly 68,000 page hits – a more than 200% increase in traffic.\u00a0 On the peak day during our first year, we had about 4,000 hits.\u00a0 For this year, our peak day was just under 6,000 hits (5,991).\u00a0 Both peaks, of course, were during the Space Elevator Games.\u00a0 Overall blog hits during the most heavily trafficked 7 day period this year numbered 24,239, well more than double than the 10,308 during the same period in the first year.\u00a0 For the Games, I put up 77 posts, detailing all of the action and doing some ‘human-interest’ stories as well.\u00a0 And, with my new Sony HandyCam, I was able to take and post videos as well as still-shots of the Games.\u00a0\u00a0 I’ve continued to put up posts on a pretty regular basis; this post will be the 391st made in the past 12 months and I think that has helped readership to grow also.<\/li>\n
- Having this site being the semi-official reference point\u00a0for NASA during the Space Elevator Games.\u00a0 The previous NASA rep to these games, Ken Davidian, told me that he had told NASA personnel to visit this site to follow the action in the Games (Thanks Ken!).<\/li>\n
- Getting the “Translation Project<\/a>” underway, a project I’ve started to translate the phrase “Space Elevator” into as many languages as I can; this to help to internationalize the appeal of a Space Elevator.<\/li>\n
- Other ‘Uppers’ included the MAST<\/a> tether experiment, finding the first Space Elevator song<\/a> I’ve really liked, the release of a new Space Elevator book<\/a>, the creation of\u00a0the Japan Space Elevator Association<\/a>, Europe’s first Space Elevator Workshop<\/a>,\u00a0some tremendous advances in carbon nanotube technology (here<\/a>, here<\/a>\u00a0and here<\/a>) and TRUMPF partnering with Spaceward <\/a>for this year’s Space Elevator Games.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
‘Downers’ included the apparent demise of Liftport<\/a>, the demise of NIAC<\/a>, the passing of Arthur C. Clarke<\/a>\u00a0and the first post<\/a> I’ve put up that I’ve regretted.<\/p>\n
So what’s coming up this year?\u00a0 Several things including attending the upcoming Space Elevator Conference<\/a> in July (where I will once again be presenting my take on who will build the first, earth-based Space Elevator), attending the fourth annual Space Elevator Games<\/a> in September as the “Official Blogger”\u00a0(and where I hope to see some prize money awarded in both the Climber \/ Power-Beaming event and the Tether event) and attending either (or perhaps both?) the Second Space Elevator Workshop in Europe<\/a> and Japan’s first Space Elevator Conference<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Stay tuned!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Once again, all together now; Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday\u00a0dear Space Elevator Blog! Happy birthday to you!\u00a0 Yes, I know it\u2019s April Fools day, but again\u00a0this is no joke –\u00a0two years ago today, I started this blog.\u00a0 It\u2019s been another\u00a0exciting year.\u00a0 On\u00a0our first\u00a0anniversary I posted a summary of what we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-announcements"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/970","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=970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/970\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}