Space Elevator Teams Compete for NASA Prizes

Hugh Pickens writes "The University of Saskatchewan's has the first place climb in the Second Annual Space Elevator Games being held this weekend at the Davis County Event Center in Salt Lake City. Teams are competing for $1,000,000 in NASA prize money. Although the idea of a space elevator has been around for decades, the space technologies needed to support it have yet to be created. The non-profit Spaceward Foundation has hosted an annual competition since 2005 to build a super-strong tether, or get a robot to climb a suspended ribbon. In the robot climber competition, teams have to get their device to hurtle up a 100-metre-long ribbon, suspended from a crane, at an average speed of two metres per second. The climber must be powered from the ground: strategies include reflecting sunlight from huge mirrors on the ground to solar panels on the climber; shining lasers from the ground up to similar panels on the robot; or firing microwaves up at the climber. Qualifying rounds have been taking place all week, and although high winds and rain have caused delays, four out of eight teams have made it into the finals. There are no outdoor climbs today because of bad weather but some of the tether competitions will happen indoors later this afternoon."

Comments

Screw

[inKubus]

I wonder if you could use a screw. I wonder what the momentum would be on a 22,000 mile screw? What would the torque required be? Or could you use a long two-way cable with a pulley at the end such as those on a ski lift? What about helium or hydrogen? When the air got too thin to provide much lift, the hydrogen could be burned in a rocket or fuel cell or something else. What about a sterling engine? Couldn't you fly the far end out to 44000 miles, and use the thing on an incline as the earth's rotation pulls it around to the tangent?

Re:Screw

[Nazlfrag]

I like the pulley concept, it just requires twice the length of cable. You would also need a means to keep them separate so they don't slam into each other and to stop it twisting. The benefits would include having a fixed point to apply power, being able to analyse the integrity of the loop as it passes the ground station and perhaps being able to lock one half of the ribbon while repairs are conducted on the other half.

Maglev rockets?

[Loke the Dog]

I think maglev-accelerated rockets has more potential than the space elevator. Whatever happened to that research at NASA?

I'd like to see a competition to shoot a sensitive cargo (an egg perhaps?) the furthest distance using some kind of maglev catapult without the cargo breaking. Casing of any kind, wings and a parachute are allowed.

Unlike a space elevator which either works or doesn't, this stuff has potential even if never gets anyone into space. Trains obviously, aircraft, weapons or even quick delivery systems could build on this technology.

USST video is last year's; this is the THIRD year

[seanthenerd]

Just a few corrections to the article:
The youtube link is to the U of S's winning round last year; it's now the third annual space elevator competition. The rest of the article is correct. It's worth noting that the height and speed requirements are double what they were last year.

Hopefully the weather will be better tomorrow and the competitions will continue! All the best to all the teams... and especially the USST, of course. :-)

Re:I don't get it...

[khendron]

A moving cable driving by motors would not scale very well. Imagine the momentum of a cable moving in a 22,000 mile long loop. The energy required to get it moving would be tremendous, and the problem of stopping it again would be immense.

Re:Incredible space-age technology...

[ozmanjusri]

There's really only one real scientific challenge, and that's the tether.

There's also the construction and materials movement. If we have spacecraft capable of moving an asteroid into geostationary orbit, and putting the initial construction team and equipment on it, chances are they'll be good enough to make the tether redundant.

I have to admit though, I don't even like the concept of a space elevator. Centralised, large scale, multiple single points of failure, untested tech, extremes of environmental conditions; any one of these phrases sends a shiver of fear down a reliability engineer's spine.

Re:counterweight

[MrKaos]

Maybe that's the reason to have beamable power, cars on the downward run could recover energy and transmit it to either other cars or a collecting station.

Like an electric counterweight.