ESA Announces Space Elevator Sci-Fi Contest

Neil Halelamien writes "The European Space Agency has announced the 2005 Clarke-Bradbury International Science Fiction competition. For the competition, the ESA's Innovative Technologies from Science Fiction for Space Applications (ITSF) project is accepting short stories and artwork which incorporates or depicts a space elevator in some way. The competition is open to members of all nations, with a submission deadline of February 25, 2005. Winners and runners-up in each category will receive $600 and $300 respectively, with winning entries appearing in an upcoming book on the space elevator."

Comments

designs for future reference

[TREETOP]

Make no mistake about it....If you post an innovative design here, SCO or some other "creative agency" will probably try to steal the patent from you. Get your stuff notarized and logged before posting here. Just some friendly advice. I'm still pissed about losing out on my idea for DUAL LAYER DVDS.

Re:designs for future reference

[MindStalker]

Your kidding right? DVDs have been Dual layer from the start. The new innovation is being able to write dual layers on a DVD burner as opposed to stamped during their manufacturing.

Pipes

[Anonymous Coward]

My design invloves long sections of stove pipe, and a fantasy video game.

Prize money

[Red Moose]

So that's 3.50 and 1.75 in current exchange rates. Enough for a wrap and maybe a smoothie here in Ireland, probably the $600 and $300 will help a few hundred American's buy houses or maybe a gallon of petrol.

Re:Prize money

[Anonymous Coward]

Houses here cost an average of $350,000 . Unless you're in Japan, your house probably cost a lot less.

Re:Prize money

[Anonymous Coward]

Houses here cost an average of $350,000
Off topic, and troll-feeding, I know, but this guy is way out of order.

According to this, U.S. house prices average less than $200,000.

Slashdot ignored my euro symbol!!!

[Red Moose]

I should have previewed first.

Re:Slashdot ignored my euro symbol!!!

[FuturePastNow]

Ahh, another lame attempt at humor leads to frustration.

Building it...

[tsa]

will not be the problem I think, but producing so much high-quality carbon nanotubes will be a real challenge.

(OT)Re:designs for future reference

[TREETOP]

Actually, single layer DVD's are not. I considered that one surface (the actual media) to be a single layer... With my idea, package two DVD's back to back with a separator between them. and either flip it manually in the player -or- add a second laser head above the DVD to read the top side at the same time the lower section gets read. Voila, DUAL LAYER DVD, equals 4.7Gb X 2 (9.4Gb). The first time I saw an actual DVD, I thought there might be other, better, ways to increase storage. It may not be original, but it was an inspired revelation (for me), something on the order of spotting the genuine thing in a sea of imitations. I'll shut up now. I've said my piece.

Re:(OT)Re:designs for future reference

[MindStalker]

You mean double sided DVDs. Yes those exist also, there are as well double sided/dual layer DVDs
4.7GB X 2 X 2=18.8GB Also the DVD standard supports more layers, but I've yet to see it used.

http://www.crutchfieldadvisor.com/ISEO-rgbtcspd/ le arningcenter/home/dvd_closerlook.html

Rainbow Mars

[tsa]

Everyone who is interested in space elevators may also be interested in the book Rainbow Mars by Larry Niven, which features a (sort of) organic space elevator; a tree that grows from a planet far into space. Nice story.

Re:Rainbow Mars

[D0 J00 W4n7 K4r473]

Arthur C. Clarke also wrote about space elevators. This has sort of been done to death lately, hasn't it?

Re:Rainbow Mars

[jhoger]

That was my first thought given given this article is from the "Beanstalk dept."

-- John.

Re:Rainbow Mars

[hardie]

Charles Sheffield has an excellent description of building a space elevator in his book "Web Between the Worlds". Building it is a major difficulty as it is a structure in tension; you can't just pile stuff on the top until you are high enough.

Re:Rainbow Mars

[tsa]

Yeah, this tree in Niven's book solved that problem by bringing its seed in a stationary orbit and have it grow a root and a stem in opposite directions.

Get the word out

[AndreySeven]

A lot of people that I have talked to about this, simply dismiss it as science fiction, even thought in one for or another it could be feasible(with a few breakthroughs in technology).

Maybe this will let more people know about the ideas, especially scientists.

They're begging for it!

[Anonymous Coward]

This contest is just begging for some kind of short romance story. "The Story of Anne and Bob: Or How She Climbed His Space Elevator"

Not to mention all kinds of erotic art involving the biggest phallic symbol the physicists have ever dreamed of!

I can't help but think that Mother Earth is getting a sex change operation with this space elevator thing.

This is the lowest budget ad campaign I ever saw

[museumpeace]

But even more annoying is the misuse of the names of some SF writers whose genius foresaw technology when engineers had not yet dreamed of it.

Instead of just using the names to promote an existing project that needs some PR, why not have a contest more in the spirit of those writers and ask for a work of SF that predicts some technology we have not heard of yet?

All your ideas are belong to us.

[Tooxs]

$600 eh, cheaper than hiring engineers I guess.

RTF endorsements

[linoleo]

misuse of the names of some SF writers

Whoa, hold yer horses. Have you RTF endorsements of the contest by Clarke and Bradbury on their website?

existing project that needs some PR

Wish it were so, but we're far from that. We've barely reached the point where the possibility of actually building it is being taken seriously at all.

Re:RTF endorsements

[museumpeace]

I should have spent a few more words saying what I meant....I did not mean that the names were used without permission. I meant that those names, because they are associated with imaginations that LEAD technical developments, set up an expectation about the contest which was contrary to the nature of the contest [which nature we can charitably describe as reacting to technical developments.]
write briefly, explain at length:(
The space tehter idea has some visibility...it was the cover story on a SciAm this year and I caught two articles reviewed in Science News. The potential [was that a pun?] for some configurations to generate electricty is a nearer term accomplishement than boosting payloads. Maybe NASA would get the $ to make it more of a race with ESA if we could fool some congressman into thinking his district could be the ground station to receive a lot of "free" killowatts. We are desperate for the killowatts over here while most people assume getting stuff into space is a solved problem. A conventional launch has one of the most wasteful energy budgets of any engineering exercise that developed nations carry out. How many taxpayers do you suppose understand that a hundred tons of rocket and fuel to get couple of tons of equiment into orbit compares with the space lift idea about the way lifting an office building to raise a person compares with that person riding the elvator?

Re:RTF endorsements

[linoleo]

Fair enough, I understand your sentiment. I just don't think that requiring that the story features a space elevator in some way is all that restrictive. Not trivial in fact to think of an SF story into which a space elevator couldn't be happily worked in. If you want to be wild and imaginative, how about a story about what will *replace* space elevators in some far future?

Just give it to Clarke.

[LWATCDR]

I doubt that any of them will be better than the master.

On the subject of space elevators in literature...

[Anonymous Coward]

....read Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson. Aside from serving as a 1000 page discussion of terraforming, politics, genetics, botany, psychology, economics, religion, computing, and a multitude of other topics, this novel (and its counterparts Green Mars and Blue Mars) details the design, construction, manipulation, feasibility, uses, and maintenence of a space elevator.

Read it for some wonderful mental stimulation, and for any interest in future technologies like a space elevator.

Re:House Prices

[Anonymous Coward]

Houses here cost an average of $350,000

Ha ha! And you think that's a lot!

Here, 2-bed starter flats cost £220,000 or about $400,000. These flats are probably 60,000 square feet or so - a tiny, poky hole. Houses cost significantly more.

I know how to build it

[hartba]

I have plans to build a space elevator. My plans are unique in the fact that the actual shaft of the elevator is built using virtual reality technology and the elevator itself it propelled using rockets.