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NASA Unveils Centennial Challenges
wonderfesten writes "NASA has finally got its Centennial Challenges program off the ground. Like the X Prize, the Challenges award cash prizes to private inventors who come up with solutions to problems. The first challenges are to design a light-weight, ultra-strength tether and a means of transmitting power wirelessly. But with a prize of just $50,000, will anyone give it a shot?" Details also available on MSNBC and Space.com.
Transmitting power wirelessly is easy. Every signal, be it from a radio station, wifi, a cell phone or whatever, is a transmission of power.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
Do not underestimate the power of a winnebago full of batteries.
liqbase
The first challenges are to design a light-weight, ultra-strength tether and a means of transmitting power wirelessly.
:)
This has "space elevator" all written over.
My site
I think whoever can solve any of those problems can licence the invention for a lot more money! Or is this the new form of OSS (Open Source Science)
Err... I got married a few months back. That 50 grand is mine soon as I tell NASA.
Note: This sig contains nine S's, nine I's and five O's which... means absolutely nothing.
Good lord! They want to combine a light-weight, ultra-strength tether with a means of transmitting power wirelessly. Read that again. A light-weight, ultra-strength tether with a means of transmitting power wirelessly. My God! Do you know what this means? Do you?!?
Yeah, neither do I.
I submitted a one page white paper on using the Sun. I can't wait to get my $50,000?
Wireless power -- first conceptualized (correct me if I'm wrong) in a short story, science fiction piece by Theodore Sturgeon in his 1941 publication"Microcosmic God." I read it in high school and it has been one of the most endearing scifi works I've read....
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
Congress currently limits NASA to awarding prizes of $250,000 or less. The space agency is lobbying lawmakers for the authority to increase the limit to as much as $40 million. That would allow the Centennial Challenges program to set up competitions for more-advanced projects, like a human orbital flight.
The longer the government stays involved in NASA, the less the chances of NASA having successful missions and regaining achievement through innovation and daring. As long as Congress holds the reigns (and the pursestrings), NASA will be hampered by inefficient bureaucracy and meddling from unqualified naysayers. The XPrize is proof that it's time for government to exit this area of scientific examination and for philanthropists and concerned businesses to take control.
Just my $0.02, not counting inflation or exchange rates
when it rains, it gets real soggy. when it pours, i'm under the tap just _waiting_ for the joy
And you know a wireless wall-power-level bunny vibe would have serious sales potential.
--- What?
Tesla ruined himself trying to make it practical. htm
http://www.tfcbooks.com/articles/tws8c
The early posts (and the submitter) seem to be missing the point... The $50k reward is just that - a reward. It's not like with the X Prize that the reward covered development costs. It's just an incentive - the *real* reward comes after you win. That's when you secure licensing deals, like Rutan did with Virgin.
-----
Michael Braukus
Headquarters, Washington
(Phone: 202/358-1979)
Metzada Shelef
Spaceward Foundation, Mountain View, Calif.
(Phone: 650/969-2010)
March 23, 2005
RELEASE: M05-083
NASA Announces First Centennial Challenges' Prizes
NASA and its partner, the Spaceward Foundation, today announced prizes totaling $400,000 for four prize competitions, the first under the agency's Centennial Challenges program.
NASA's Centennial Challenges promotes technical innovation through a novel program of prize competitions. It is designed to tap the nation's ingenuity to make revolutionary advances to support the Vision for Space Exploration and NASA goals. The first two competitions will focus on the development of lightweight yet strong tether materials (Tether Challenge) and wireless power transmission technologies (Beam Power Challenge).
"For more than 200 years, prizes have played a key role in spurring new achievements in science, technology, engineering and exploration," said NASA's Associate Administrator for Exploration Systems Mission Directorate, Craig Steidle. "Centennial Challenges will use prizes to help make the Vision for Space Exploration a reality," he added.
"This is an exciting start for the Centennial Challenges program," said Brant Sponberg, program manager for Centennial Challenges. "The innovations from these competitions will help support advances in aerospace materials and structures, new approaches to robotic and human planetary surface operations, and even futuristic concepts like space elevators and solar power satellites," he said.
The Tether Challenge centers on the creation of a material that combines light weight and incredible strength. Under this challenge, teams will develop high strength materials that will be stretched in a head-to-head competition to see which tether is strongest.
The Beam Power challenge focuses on the development of wireless power technologies for a wide range of exploration purposes, such as human lunar exploration and long-duration Mars reconnaissance. In this challenge, teams will develop wireless power transmission systems, including transmitters and receivers, to power robotic climbers to lift the greatest weight possible to the top of a 50-meter cable in under three minutes.
The winners of each initial 2005 challenge will receive $50,000. A second set of Tether and Beam Power challenges in 2006 are more technically challenging. Each challenge will award purses of $100,000, $40,000, and $10,000 for first, second, and third place.
"We are thrilled with our partnership with NASA and we're excited to take the Tether and Beam Power challenges to the next level," said Meekk Shelef, president of the Spaceward Foundation.
The Centennial Challenges program is managed by NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate. The Spaceward Foundation is a public-funds non-profit organization dedicated to furthering the cause of space access in educational curriculums and the public.
For more information about the Challenges on the Internet, visit:
- http://centennialchallenges.nasa.gov
For information about NASA and agency programs on the Internet, visit:http://www.spaceward.org
- end -
Too bad they weren't doing this in Tesla's day.
With NASA trying to do too mnay things with too little money, I'd like to get in on the action as well.
- $10 for first person to discover tenth planet
- $15.75 for invention of anti-gravity device. Must include batteries
- $17.50 for first person to deliver truckload of gold bullion to my house
- $37.50 for proof of alien life
I've got the money right here (pats wallet). Let's all not rush. Stand in line, please.
What's 'spaceaward'? "The Spaceward Foundation is a public-funds non-profit organization dedicated to furthering the cause of space access in educational curriculums and the public." [found in NASA's press release: M05-083]
I don't claim I know more than I know, and if you know you know more than I know, then by all means, let me know.
The difficulty with a thunder system is the problems and threats it poses to other things in this world. That thunder would be generating an enormous amount of EM Interference, thus making radio transmissions very difficult.
Plus, for widespread use, there would have to be control measures in place in order to avoid innocent people getting 10000VAC arcs onto their left asscheek. On the upside though, cities could entirely phase out street lights with a thunder system.
Frink: Nice try floyd, but you were designed for scrubbing, and scrubbing is what you shall do.
Previous posters... sheesh. from TFA, we see that you need to beam power to a robot climbing a cable, being judged by the amount the robot is able to carry while going. Batteries and LCRs are probably out. They suggest directed microwave or similar, if any of you are interested.
Browsing with +2 to insightful posts and a higher threshold makes the average post seen seem a lot more ingenious
I also remember reading in a Russian science and technology journal (Yiuniy Tehnik) in the early 90s, about a patent to have a huge solar array in space that would send the power to the ground as a microwave beam
You're getting confused with Sim City 2000
Today, good ir lasers can get 60% wallplug efficiency (>99% quantum efficency and little outcoupling losses, plus little additional resistances adding to the bandgap).
...
The main reason why solar cells are unefficient is that you have to gamble with the bandgap: set it too high, and you will lose to many low energy photons. set it too low, and all those high energy photons will lose all energy >E_gap as phonons/heat. So even an absolutely ideal Solar cell could only get a little over 25% or so efficiency with a backbody spectrum.
But now take a laser and create a optimally tuned solar cell with a bandgap just a bit lower than the laser wavelenght. You should be able to get 20-30% total transmission efficiency at least, imho, after a little optimisation.
That doesnt sound too good, but its not so bad compared to other ways to store and carry energy (batteries, ect).
But of course, having solar power stations in orbit that beam down their power with lasers would make a lot of people very nervous, for very good reasons
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
We don't use it nowadays because it is not "merchantable" - there still is no efficient way to prevent leeching, unpaid use of it. Besides, I am not sure about this, but perhaps his machines needed to work with longwave radio frequencies to accomplish standing waves in concentric double sphere ground-ionosphere resonator. His work on wireless power transmission seems only remotely related to our radio of today
How do these prices weigh against NASA research costs? I wouldn't mind knowing if these are done "to enhance space travel and encourage developement" or if they are just to save a few pennies... anyone know?
I like muppets.
Does NASA realise you can make that kind of money by simply working?!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Microwave power transmission is not a figment of Maxis' imagination, incidently. According to Wikipedia, NASA did research on it during the 1970s and early 80s. Here's another entry mentioning it.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
OK, imagine this scenario:
;-)
A satellite (or other relatively still object) is up in space. It has a large collection grid that is basically a peltier in reverse (heat makes electricity). Fire a laser from the ground at the grid. Boom, wireless power.
Another model: A heat-pipe in reverse (a tank of water or highly boilable liquid with steam pipes turning a generator). Fire said laser at heating point. Liquid boils and turns generator. Liquid cools and returns to heating chamber. Boom, wireless power.
A third model: High-efficiency solar panels on the object? Didn't we recently see a story about a solar panel breakthrough in which the new panel captures infrared and converts that to electricity as well? I think it had a 25-30% transfer efficiency, WAY beyond current methods. Go talk to those guys. Boom, wireless power.
I mean, c'mon, there's all kinds of ways to do this with existing technology. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!
Stiny! Get me a danish!
I think they are trying to go the "you get free publicity" route, sort of like X-Prize. X-Prize entries definitely cost more than the 10 million dollars that they won. But they got a lot of free publicity and now they have a contract with Virgin for commercial service. Make a viable space tether or microwave power transfer system and we'll make you famous!
ForeclosuresYes - Find home foreclosures near you!
Someone who finds NASA a pair of balls should get $50,000.
Ok, maybe I'm being too harsh, it's 20/20 hindsight on my part to think that strapping people to big tanks of fuel and lighting it on fire is dangerous. We were only able to figure that out after they started blowing up, so I maybe they're justified in freezing like a deer in headlights in light of the shuttle tragedies.
Thank you for posting the real link for this story.
To everyone who is positing various ways of transmitting power wirelessly, they already have a method in mind:
Showcasing the first representative prototypes of Space Elevator climbers, this event will re-define public perception of the Space Elevator project by taking the first step away from mathematical models and drawing boards and into the world of real working hardware. By participating, you get the opportunity to partner in writing this unique chapter of history.
The competition provides the race track, in the form of a crane-suspended vertical ribbon, and a strong light source to power the climbers. Competing teams provide climbers, which have to use the power beamed to them and scale the ribbon while carrying some amount of payload. Climbers will be rated according to their speed and the amount of payload they carried.
The climbers (unmanned, of course) will weigh 25-50 kg [50-100 lbs], and will ascend the ribbon at about 1 m/s. [3 feet per second or 2.5 MPH]
The beam source is a 10 kWatt Xenon search-light (80 cm beam diameter, about 25% efficient), which should yield a climber power budget of about 500 watts.
The ribbon is roughly 30cm (1 foot) wide by 1 mm thick, is about 60m (200 feet) long, and is tensioned to about 1 ton.
Building a climber is not an easy task. The designers have to juggle light weight structure, efficient photo-voltaic arrays, efficient motors and power electronics, low-loss traction mechanism, thermal management, and control systems.
Not a walk in the park, but we'll make it worth your while. We will be offering $50,000, $20,000 and $10,000 to the 3 best teams.
link:click here
The competition rules are at the bottom (pdf). Frankly, this sounds more like a college/high school technology building competition than an X-prize.
It seems to me that questing for wireless power transmission is a waste of time. The problem with high-power microwave beams is that anything getting in the way would get cooked, same with lasers. The focus should instead be on miniaturization of power sources such as fuel cells, and maybe even miniature elementary particle power generators that harness the energy that permeates the universe on a quantum level.
Wireless power in many instances is easy but low powered. What the focus needs to be on is superconducting materials that enable us to make devices that require minimal power to function.
Imagine a watch that took your body heat and with the right chips in the watch would convert that heat and power/charge the watch.
The same could be said for any number of ways to get power somewhere. If things were ultra low powered then fiber optics could be used to power devices.
That is also a reason I think seti faces a problem. Modern civilizations may be using superconductor tech that gives them virtually no ELM footprint past their local region of space. If we do find something more likely that signal will fade and eventually dissapear over time.
The cable is pulled tight by the satelite wanting to fly off into space. It's a bit beyond geostationary orbit, so it isn't actually orbiting in the conventional way.
Not quite....
Based on orbital dynamics:
1. A single structure will orbit at the speed of it's center of mass.
2. Only thoes objects that orbit at geosync. orbit (about 23K KM on earth) will remain over the same spot.
3. Long object will orient in a radial manner through the center of mass of the parent object.
THEREFORE:
The cable is not held in place by the counter weight. The cable is kept taught by the counter weight. However most of the tension in the cable comes from the mass of the cable rather than the counter weight.
The cable's center of mass absolutly HAS to be at geo-sync orbit or the cable will move away from the base station.
Now as per the grandparent's original proposal...
I see what you are saying and it could in theory work...
THe problem is the cable will weigh gigatons. It will take an extremely large amount of energy to get it moving and stop it if there are any problems. There will be large amounts of enery lost as it moves through the atmosphere which will cause massive heat buildup and electrical discarge. This will cause excess tension on the already strained cable lowering effective carrying capacity.
Plus the big one....the two sides of the cable will want to move toegther. So you will have to build a counter weight which can prevent the gigatons of mass from coming together...and have this system in a fairly small space...a few hundred feet max.
The idea of a counter weight to assist in lifting/lowering is an important one. It will dramatically lower costs and help maintain the cables center of mass. However turning the whole cable into a huge rotating band is far less efficient and would not be as usefull as a much similer system.
I submitted this story a couple of times yesterday, but it sadly wasn't accepted. Maybe it was too long or had too many links? In any case, here's a copy, which has a little additional info:
MSNBC, Space.com, and Wired report that NASA, in collaboration with the non-profit Spaceward Foundation, has announced its first two Centennial Challenges. The Centennial Challenges, inspired by the Ansari X Prize and DARPA Grand Challenge, are prize contests seeking to stimulate private industry development of technologies relevant to space exploration. One contest is the Tether Challenge, for building the sort of super-strong tether needed to make a space elevator feasible. The other is the Beam Power Challenge, for creating a wirelessly-powered ribbon-climbing robot capable of lifting as large a payload as possible within a limited timeframe. The initial set of challenges in 2005 will award $50K to the winners of each contest. A second set of challenges in 2006 will award first, second, and third place prizes worth $100K, $40K, and $10K. It's hoped that these contests will further space elevator technology and help eliminate the 'giggle factor' surrounding them. Additional contests will be announced in the coming weeks, although Congress currently restricts NASA from awarding prizes of more than $250K; the agency is lobbying to try to get this limit raised to $40 million for future prizes.
Space elevators ARE free floating constructions.
The elevator will only be attached in the most rudimentary form of the word. It will probably be clamped so we can dampen any vibrations that it develops but that would not effect it's strength. A space elevator can be perfectly functional floating 5 inches above the ground.
The rules of orbital dynamics are actually determined by gravity, velocity, angular velocity and acceleration. Centripetal force is a combination of velocity, acceleration and angular velocity.
As you can see orbital dynamics is just a specific application of centripital force using gravity as the acceleration source.
It is best to think of orbital dynamics as a spinning invisible string. In a two body system (the only trully stable orbit) both items lie somewhere in the middle of that invisible string (Not at the ends). Orbital dynamics allows you to predict what the objects will do when you tap them.
You are confusing the idea of a ribbon with a spinning string.
If you spun a string so that the center of the circle it creates is INSIDE the string you are correct in stating that the string will remain taught so long as both sides have the same inertia. If the center of rotation is outside the sting than the string will get flung out. The experiment is to take a record player (Old I know) and put your string one one side of the center. When you spin up the record the string will go flying.
For your model to maintain tension it would have to spin end to end. There are actually models like that already in existence but they are NOT space elevators as everyone knows them.
Now for the Space elevator. I would like to point out that we could put geosync space elevators on other planets....even planets like venus which has a single rotation per year. Based on your model it would be impossible to create such things as geosync because the centripital force created will be very different. PLUS assuming that earth just HAPPENED to have the correct spin to get a geosyn cable due to centripital forces caused by it's rotation (it doesn't) the cable itself will weigh gigatons under great force. You would have to somehow hold that weight down which honestly would be harder than creating the cable. In addition the tension would snap the cable because the bottom would have to support double the whole weight of the cable....the cable plus an equal amount of earths mass.
Finally, how would you build such a system? The only way would be to build the cable on the ground then attach massive rockets (with more delta-v than mankind has every used in it's existence) and drag it up.
So your concept of a cable is technically possible but absolutely impossible to build.
Now imagine mine....you put up a satellite into geosync orbit. It now starts to extrude cable down to the earth and up into space. The whole mass is STILL moving at geosync orbit...The cable that is closer to earth will now be moving too slow for it's orbit and will begin to fall to earth. The cable going into space will now be travelling too fast for it's orbit and will try to fall off into space....the net effect is the cable is held tight up and down with the maximum tension being one cables weight at geosync orbit.
Now it isn't that straight forward...the cable fed downwards will have a greater effect on the system than the cable feed upwards due to gravity stronger effect therefore if you wanted to use a simple cable for the system it will have to reach about 1/3 of the way to the moon. This is why the topside has a counter wieght....just to cut down on it's length.
Plus in a space cable system the ground side will have no tension and all the tension will be in the center of mass...therefore most space cable designs are actually much thincker in the middle. this allows it to hold a lot more weight. But it does complicate the orbit.
While a small part of the tension DOES come from the rotation of the cable it is actually contrary t
Space elevators ARE free floating constructions.
Ok your close but still not there.
Space elevators START AS free floating constructions.
The problem with your idea is if they're free floating then there not stable. You would start off with a Huge object in geosync orbit and take a tiny tether and drop it down to earth. The whole time your keeping it in a stable orbit with large rockets / ion jet's. After the tether is there you put it under a tiny amount of tension by moving the object just past the orbit where your structure would be free floating. Keeping that tension at all times you add more wires until you have a stable structure under tension. Now it's the tension that let's you climb the wire without pulling it out of orbit.
However, the basic idea of building a space elevator is sketchy unless we find something which is significantly stronger than carbon nonotubes that can be made in orbit cheaply it's probably not worth doing. Moving people into orbit with rockets at under 200k per person is possible if we start sending say 50,000+ people into orbit every year. We would need to build something that's about as maintainable as a modern 747 and designed around moving just people (no cargo) into orbit. As to moving cargo to orbit a simple rail gun mounted inside of a large lighter than air building that raised above 99% the atmosphere is doable, and not all that much more complex than a hydrogen filled dirigible. You would need a system to catch things in orbit or have your bullets act as rockets but it's still a lot easer and safer in the event of failure than a space elevator. (Think of what happens if your cable is cut at 1000 miles above the earth. The top of the segment you cut has a lot of angular momentum so it's not going to fall strait down but rather rap it's self around a large part of the earth. The rest of the system is going to fly into space. Where a building that's more or less lighter than air could be built out of segments that would reassemble in the even of a failure.)
PS: Think of what happens to a space elevator as it goes from day to night if it gets say 1/10 of 1% longer it would become unstable.