The Space Elevator Games -Brought to You by Microsoft!
In final proof that sports channels don't know what the hell they're doing, for the last five years NASA and The Spaceward Foundation have been running "The Space Elevator Games" - a competition to build a robot and cable to literally CLIMB INTO SPACE - and TV still shows skateboarding instead. The future is happening, and nobody's watching.
Similar to the X Prize and the Google Lunar Prize, the Space Elevator games are based on offering a big chunk of money to access the incredible inventive potential available outside of established agencies. The games attract university teams of student researchers, the next generation of the field, with a total prize purse of four million dollars. Which is more than you'll get at the average track meet.
The games have two events: climbing space cables, and making them. The Climber battle is an awesome combination of edge-pushing technologies as it requires lightweight cargo-carrying robotics and power-beaming technology to drive them. As a model of an actual space elevator, a cable into orbit, the machines can't carry any power source - they need to have energy transmitted to them. This means that the games involve experimental robots climbing a one kilometer cable suspended by a helicopter while high energy lasers fire at them, or in other words, about five action movies happening at once.
The second stage of the competition is building a the cable, or "tether", so the competition really is bootstrapping space elevation: they're working out how to build the cable and then climb it, aka "Most of the stuff you need to get this scifi idea actually working." While the climbing prize is based on speed, the cable competition requires continual improvement: to win the prize you have to do 50% better than last years winner. If there's ever been a better acceptance of exponential technology acceleration we've yet to see it.
It's an awesome motivation for a whole new generation of scientists, and even those who don't win have an incredible boost in the field of "Thinking of something awesome and making it happen." Plus, with a $900,000 prize awarded at a climbing speed of 2 m/s (and the most recent record being 1.8 m/s) sometime soon a student dorm is going to have the best bigscreen in the world.
Luke McKinney
Space Elevation http://www.spaceward.org/elevator2010
do you have to be such a douchebag in every one of your articles? Is simply presenting the content too difficult for you?
Posted by: jonny | July 30, 2009 at 09:06 AM
Agreed, he's such an ignorant idiot
Posted by: Harry | July 30, 2009 at 09:33 AM
What the hell is wrong with you two ninnies? Can't stand a jab at muscle sports in support of brain sports? Wahhhhhhh.
My only complaint is it's too short! I want years' past participants, winners, and specs! I want current specs and participants, and I want to know how they spent or split their winnings!
And I want to throw stuff from the top of that thing.
Posted by: SiliconJon | July 30, 2009 at 12:48 PM
Oh, looks like that link may give me much of what I asked for...good enough!
And here's another tiny violin for you cry babies while I'm posting. [ ]
Posted by: SiliconJon | July 30, 2009 at 12:50 PM
SiliconJon :
My God. They're actually going to take a stab at constructing this !!!
Wonder where they'd actually build this. I have heard - Thanks to Arthur C. Clarke & the novel " The Fountains of Paradise " -
that building it on a location on the Equator would be the BEST option. Sri Lanka ( Adam's Peak ), Mt. Kilimanjaro, or any such location would be great.
Bahrain, Quatar or one of the UAE countries is building a super -sky - scraper that you can supposedly see the curvature of the Earth from. Do you think that they might have a similar idea, perhaps ? Building such a tower would be like putting up a billboard saying " Pick Me !! ".
Tossing a penny from the top would be epic !!!
Posted by: EvilCosmicMonkeyfrom Knoxville | July 30, 2009 at 10:32 PM
I could converse with a person named EvilCosmicMonkey all day!
An equitorial location would be ideal as I see it. Atop a mountain may provide more hurdles than benefits, though...we'll see when we get there, :)
It is so awesome this thing is on so many peoples' plates. Between this and ION drives, I'm looking forward to my Old Fart stories with my grandchildren about decade long probe trips and multibooster trips required for orbital entry of a handful of people, and how there was no such thing as Virgin Galactic spacefare!
Now to just not blow each other up, or at least not the eggheads ;)
Posted by: SiliconJon | July 31, 2009 at 08:54 AM
SiliconJon:
Thanks !!!
I think locations along or near the Earth's equator have MARGINALLY less gravitational pull, there have been studies, but don't make me swear an oath about it.
A space elevator tower might host a community of its own, rather like a city or community, with different levels of gravity possibly. How COOL is that ? As to that honkin' tall skyscraper in Bahrain ( Pretty sure it was / is Bahrain ), there also plans for a similar one in Hong Kong ( Huang Gung ), those locations could be used, too. Maybe some people should talk to these guys about finding money & room for a space elevator, or am I over - dosing on idealism ?
A Cable / Satellite company like NASA Select or even the re - vamped Sci - Fi / Syfy Channel could do weekly coverage of the elevator after it gets going, & have a REAL " reality " series, instead of " Scare Tactics ", Ghost Hunters ", " Axe Men ", " Ice Road Truckers ", etc. It's a potential win - win situation, & we would have Arthur C. Clarke ( posthumously, unfortunately ) to thank for it.
It's time to start thinking BIGGER.
Posted by: EvilCosmicMonkeyfrom Knoxville | July 31, 2009 at 04:57 PM
Not sure if you'll see this, as I swear I didn't see that reply even the day after...but think the equitorial location would have more to do with the spin of the earth, much the same reason it benefit the launch of the shuttle, but also a new twist with having something tethered from the earth adding another reason to why it need be nearest the equator. I'm no rocket scientist, though...we'll see what they do.
I just hope I can get into space before I die without going completely broke doing it.
As for SyFy, they should sponsor some space battles once we get up there. That should help generate some revenue.
Posted by: SiliconJon | August 21, 2009 at 01:15 PM