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

Building it...

[tsa]

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

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

[jhoger]

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

-- John.

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.

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?