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Finally starting to rev up towards an exciting 2010 sequel, power beaming and tether

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THE SPACE ELEVATOR BLOG
For the obvious reasons, I invariably get too busy to blog exactly when things get interesting...

For the latest word, and for a wider perspective on all things Space Elevator, you can alway turn to Ted Semon's most excellent Space Elevator Blog - www.SpaceElevatorBlog.com

OUR SPONSORS

The TRUMPF Group is one of the world's leaders in the field of production technology - machine tools, material processing, high power lasers, electronics and in medical technology.

TRUMPF took a natural interest in the Power Beaming challenge, and they are providing their 8 kWatt top-of-the-line laser system for use by teams KCSP, USST, U Michigan, and NSS.

Find out all about TRUMPF's laser systems at www.trumpf-laser.com

Mackey International is an aviation consulting firm specializing in aviation safety, risk management, accident investigation, air carrier certification and safety/compliance audits.

With Mackey's experience and expertise, Spaceward was able to put together an operations plan that satisfied the requirements of NASA's aviation safety review - not an easy feat given that a rotorcraft-tether configuration such as ours has never been flown before.

Find out all about Mackey International's capabilities at www.keithmackey.com

Bitter WHAT?! Exactly. This is what Nic DeGrazia, Creative Director of Bitter Jester Creative, told me about their company's name. Nobody ever forgets it.

The same is true about BJC's work. Winners of Telly and Hermes awards, their work brings out the human element in every story.

BJC are continuing their 2-year project of documenting the games, now in its third year. Find out all about them at www.BitterJester.com

Dynon Avionics designs, manufactures and distributes a growing line of affordable glass cockpit avionics. Operated by aviation enthusiasts, Dynon utilizes the very latest state-of-the-art technologies to create modern avionics products with an emphasis on lowering prices and enhancing reliability.

For the games, we had to assemble a special helicopter station-keeping system that will allow the pilots to position the helicopter accurately even when flying at 4300' AGL. Dynon components were our first choice, and are doing the job beautifully.

Find out more at www.dynonavionics.com

Lockheed Martin is a global security company that employs about 146,000 people worldwide and is principally engaged in the research, design, development, manufacture, integration and sustainment of advanced technology systems, products and services.

Find out more at www.LockheedMartin.com

Since its inception in 1962, OMEGA has grown from manufacturing a single product line of thermocouples to an established global leader in the technical marketplace, offering more than 100,000 state-of-the-art products for measurement and control of temperature, humidity, pressure, strain, force, flow, level, pH and conductivity. OMEGA also provides customers with a complete line of data acquisition, electric heating and custom engineered products.

Omega has been sponsoring the games with various equipment such as large format displays and load cells since 2006.

Find out more at www.omega.com

SPIE is an international membership society, serving scientists and engineers in industry, academia, and government, as well as companies producing leading-edge products. SPIE constituents work in a wide variety of fields that utilize some aspect of optics and photonics, which is the science and application of light. More specifically, optics is a branch of physics that examines the behavior and properties of light and the interaction of light with matter. Photonics is the science and technology of generating, controlling, and detecting photons, which are particles of light.

Find out more at www.spie.org

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While NASA sponsors the $4M prize purse, Spaceward does not receive any of it - we fund our operations from donations and sponsorships from people like you.

Our sponsors and donors are people who believe in the infinite promise (and cool factor) of the Space Elevator, and would like to be associated with it and help in its development.

You can see the media impact we've had to date here, and with our NASA TV coverage this year (available on DirecTV #238) and our livecast we will reach millions of people with our (and your) message.

To see the impact we've had on technology education, our best advertisements are our student teams, who started out as curious high-schoolers and undergrads, and by now have built cutting-edge photonics systems worthy of NASA itself!


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LATEST NEWS

USST 2 – Field Tests

PERMALINK Filed under: Team Specific, USST — CrazyEddieBlogger on July 26, 2009, 10:17 pm
Targets at 1 km

Targets at 1 km
Mark Boots and in front of the main barrel cam display, showing the target at 1 km

Mark Boots and Nathan Windels in front of the main "barrel cam" display, showing the dark (unlit) target at 1 km
Main display showing the bright (lit) PV target at 1 km. In the background, is monitoring the climber telemetry data.

Note the bright (lit) PV target at 1 km. In the background, Ariq Chowdhury is monitoring the climber telemetry data.
USSTs beam director station

USST's beam director station

Tuesday and Wednesday were dedicated to field testing – as much as we can get done before the helicopter flight on Thursday.

While KCSP are here for their second round of testing, USST is here for their first, and so they get priority on the laser.

Because of several late-in-the-game design changes, quite a bit of USST’s system is still untested, so there’s a lot of tension in the air – if a major flaw shows up, there might not be enough time for them to fix it.

The initial tests are successful, and establish that tracking works, that the beam director can handle full power (that was a big unknown) and that the climber can take this photonic power and extract enough electrical power out of it to make them competitive. This is also the stage where we look at reflections coming off of the climber,  and confirm that no significant reflection go outside of a 15 degree cone from the vertical.

In true USST fashion, everything just falls into place. They might be late coming into the party, but once they’re there, they catch up awfully quick.

With qualification behind them, USST spends Friday on system optimizations, measuring power and temperature profiles, and making sure they can get the most amount of power out of their PV array.

Snagged again

PERMALINK Filed under: Timeline — CrazyEddieBlogger on July 25, 2009, 11:01 am
The flight ops crew (back to front) John Kelly, John Piatt, Mike Kapitzke

The flight ops crew (back to front) John Kelly, John Piatt, Mike Kapitzke
Taking off..

Taking off..
The Kelly Kage (TM) - when the two crosses align, Kelly knows hes looking straight up. The circle represents a 15-degree half-angle vertical cone.

The Kelly Kage (TM) - when the two crosses align, Kelly knows he's looking straight up. The circle represents a 15-degree half-angle vertical cone.
Frangible link - body

Frangible link - body
Frangible link - pop-out disk, with swivel link below it

Frangible link - pop-out disk, with swivel link below it

Things were going too good to be true until this point…  and when something is too good to be true, well, you know what happens.

The helicopter flight started off well, and we clearly took care of the problems we saw last time – the re-designed pulley was working very well, and the operation was proceeding smoothly.  We got through cable deployment ok, (though pull-out was still too fast) but then just as we were entering the station-keeping portion of the flight, the helicopter exited the prescribed “box” it was supposed to be in, and also dropped the tension to the point where we had slack forming on the ground.

The procedure at that point is for the winch operator to spool in the slack in a controlled manner (since the pilot cannot see how much slack is on the ground) but before Michael had a chance to do so, the helicopter picked up the tension too fast, causing a release of a safety device at the top of the cable. That “breakaway link” is placed at the top of the cable to ensure that in such a contingency the cable separates in a controlled manner.

Not what we wanted at all.

I attached two pictures of the two parts of the link, after they separated. As you can see, there are three leaf springs that hold a small disk (the small part) in place, so in order for the small disk to extract, it has to force the springs open. Since the unit is reusable (in contrast to a single-use break-away link, which actually breaks) we can replicate the pull to figure out the force that it separated at.

So, again, we’re delayed. We need to look into why the helicopter exited its box, and why tension was lost – a process which will likely take at least 4 weeks. At this early stage, the best and only advice I can give you is – stay tuned!  We’re working on it, this is very fixable, and we’ll be flying again soon.

Friday laser testing are going to go forward as planned, hope to have a better day than today was :)

Ben

The National Space Society Space Elevator Blues

PERMALINK Filed under: NSS, Team Specific — CrazyEddieBlogger on July 24, 2009, 8:29 pm
NSSs Climber

NSS's Climber
Small is Beautiful

Small is Beautiful

NSS (National Space Society) started its participation in the games pursuing a novel Stirling Engine based design – very different than the rest of the teams. A Stirling engine is a heat engine, which means that the laser beam is converted to heat (with almost perfect efficiency), but the heat is then converted to mechanical energy subject to the laws of thermodynamics, which dictate a certain level of inefficiency that depends on the ability of the engine to dissipate the heat. I will dedicate a separate post to that concept, just as soon as Bert Murray, NSS’s Captain, will allow me to…

Construction of a competitive Stirling engine is very challenging, and even though NSS was able to design around many of the difficulties, time was drawing short and NSS decided to switchto a more conventional PV-based design.

The new PV climber is tiny – a micro-climber. The rules for the competition do not prohibit such a small climber, but at some level going too small is difficult since some components cannot shrink along with the rest of the  climber and so end up being fixed-weight overhead.  Whether such a smaller climber can indeed be made to work remains to be seen.

The bags in the picture are an interesting feature – can you guess when thet do?

As of this moment NSS is still not qualified, and with time drawing short and resource scarce, well, it’s a tight race.  They are very close, as this post testifies, and are working hard to catch up.


The University of Alberta

PERMALINK Filed under: Team Specific, U Alberta — CrazyEddieBlogger on July 23, 2009, 8:32 pm
University of Albertas beam director taking shape

University of Alberta's beam director taking shape
Jordan and Kienan working on the PV receiver

Jordan and Kienan working on the PV receiver
The climbers drivetrain

The climber's drivetrain

The University of Alberta team arrived on Tuesday – Aditya Bhargava, Jerry Ding, Jordan Larson, and Kienan Stewart. The climber is probably the largest of all climbers I’ve seen at the games, probably slightly larger than the University of Michigan’s. Somewhat lighter, too, but without the concentrating optics design. The beam director was just coming together that week, and just on Friday late morning it was ready for testing – just a tad late since by that time we were already out on the field for our last field testing day – not enough time to start a complete team qualification run. I can imagine their disappointment.

We have at this point four teams that have not qualified - NSS, U Alberta, U Michigan, and McGill. The policy we’re following is that while qualification in the future is still possible, it is incumbent on the teams to make it happen, which is quite a tall hurdle – I can testify that it is a very difficult task to arrange all it takes to qualify. However – never underestimate the team’s ingenuity and will power – that’s the other thing I can testify for.

I will keep posting updates from these teams as we move forward, and if they can’t qualify for this year’s games, we’ll be sure to find a venue for them, since four working power-beaming systems is not something I’d like to waste.

USST 1 – The Gong of a Thousand Years

PERMALINK Filed under: Team Specific, USST — CrazyEddieBlogger on July 21, 2009, 11:14 am
USSTs PV Receiver

USST's PV Receiver

USSTs Drive Train (middle right) on the vertical treadmill
Andrew Williams, USSTs mechanical lead

Andrew Williams, USST's mechanical lead
Lean and Mean - USSTs climber

Lean and Mean - USST's climber

This time around USST is not letting anything hold them back. They got in on Sunday and were ready to go on Monday if not for the LCH inspection. While LCH was interested mostly in the beam director, most of the Space Elevator were looking at the climber.

USST is a 4 year veteran of the games, and it shows well in their design – I should post the pictures of their climbers as the progress through the years (I will). So yes, clearly, less is more. USST model 2009 is all business. Lean and mean drive train, and a very impressive PV panel with an integrated cooling backplane that looks a lot, actually, like the fins on a radiator of a truck. (USST would like to categorically state at this point that they did NOT, repeat, NOT, hack their climber around a used truck radiator).

Indeed, the front plane holding the cells and the backplane with fins seem to be all integrated – any gaps would have resulted in heat not transferring properly to the backplane. Workmanship counts.

The PV panel has a golden appearance, and when mounted on its horizontal beaming test frame appears very much like an ancient Chinese ceremonial gong – hence the title for the post.  I was wondering what would happen if we tried it out in that capacity, but none of the USST team members found it humorous.

USST is one of the TRUMPF teams, which means their operations are always coupled with the TRUMPF laser trailer, operated by Dave Marcotte.

USST this year is lead by Patrick Allen, Mark Boots, and Andrew Williams. Clayton Ruzkowsky, team captain in 2006 and 2007, came down to lend a helping hand.

Other activities of the day included University of Alberta’s system starting to come together – more on that in a post later today or this week.


Monday Summary

PERMALINK Filed under: Timeline — CrazyEddieBlogger on July 19, 2009, 11:44 pm
Brian Turner and LCHs Lt. Heather Lehmann

Brian Turner and LCH's Lt. Heather Lehmann
USSTs Mark Boots and Patrick Allen during the LCH inspection

USST's Mark Boots and Patrick Allen during the LCH inspection

LCH inspection went off without a hitch – with flying colors, actually. We now have KCSP, USST and LM all ok’d to proceed.

True to Monday, NSS, McGill, and U Michigan have not met the qualification deadline – they are all in very advanced stages, and probably could qualify if the games were held a month from now, but we had to make the call, and so they will not be competing this year.

UAlberta is due here Tuesday morning, and we’ll be able to evaluate them then.KCSP and USST wil head out for more testing tomorrow morning (KCSP qualified 2 weeks ago, and USST will aim to qualify over the next two day).

So far so good – more soon.


This Week’s Preview

PERMALINK Filed under: Timeline — CrazyEddieBlogger on , 11:20 pm

This week is the final testing week, two weeks before the competition starts!  I’ll try to blog without falling back more than a day, but as experience shows, it is difficult sometimes to keep up. Luckily, Ted of SpaceElevatorBlog.com is here, so make sure you follow the action there as well – or just follow us on Twitter.

We have not yet activated the real-time live-cast console – this will only happen for the games in August.

This week’s schedule:

  • Sunday - USST and KCSP are already on site, starting to commission their equipment
  • Monday –  Laser Clearinghouse procedure rehearsal, hopefully some team inspection (at least USST, since they go out on the range first). LaserMotive via telecon. (Seattle is a much more reasonable place to be this time of year!)
  • Tuesday – TRUMPF laser setup, USST and KCSP lasing, other U Alberta, U Michigan  arrival and LCH inspection. Tether system equipment staging, procedure rehearsal.
  • Wednesday – Continued laser testing, Helicopter test dry run, Helicopter and crew arrival and briefing
  • Thursday – Continued laser testing, Helicopter flights, battery-powered climber runs.
  • Friday – Contingency day.

Stay Tuned!

Status Update

PERMALINK Filed under: Timeline — CrazyEddieBlogger on July 11, 2009, 9:24 pm

A week has gone by, with no earth-shattering events, really.

Team USST took a good first step towards catching up on their qualification by doing some testing at TRUMPF. No news is good news in that respect.

Team NSS is also making good progress, and I hope that so do the other teams. (I’ll know more after Sunday’s weekly team telechat)

The engineering folks at Dryden started manufacturing the replacement pulley – it was quickest to create a steel pulley of the same dimensions than it was to try to start from scratch. The pulley should be ready this week, in time for testing and flight next week.

Based on the experience gained at the last test flight, we did a new walk-through of the procedures, and made quite a few modification.  The biggest one is that we’ll use a new cable for every helicopter flight. This saves us the time spent reeling it back in, and a new spool of cable is a lot cheaper than the 20-30 minutes of helicopter flight time it would have otherwise taken)

Because of schedule conflicts, the test flight was moved to the week of the 20th, so now laser testing and helicopter testing will happen concurrently. In another lesson learned, daily activities will begin at 5 am, to avoide the afternoon heat.   This is sure to test my limits…   I am not a morning person.

More soon.

Here we go again

PERMALINK Filed under: Timeline — CrazyEddieBlogger on July 3, 2009, 11:02 pm
Home Sweet Home

Home Sweet Home

Flew to LA yesterday, meeting with Dryden’s John Kelly at Aris’s digs to go over the plans since the next test flight is 2 weeks away – again…

As I lifted my eyes from my screen and looked out the window, I could see the Hwy 5 – Hwy 99 intersection and the Grapevine service station before the mountain pass. Cool! I’ve driven this so many times I know the road by heart now, and the SJC-ONT flight route apparently pretty much overflies Hwy 5.

But wait!  If that’s Grapevine on the right, then the Hwy 138 turnoff should be just up the hill, with the road heading left towards Mojave… and the reservoir… yes!

I walk to the back of the plane where there’s an empty row on the left side, and peer out – sure enough, here’s the first lakebed (next to Edwards’ west gate) and right over the wing is the now-familiar shape of our lakebed. I can make out the Space Shuttle landing strip, the lakebed runways, and even compass rose.

Cool! I must have seen this white patch of sand 20 times before, but it never felt so much like home…

The picture, of course, just like all pictures out of a passenger seat in a jetliner, came out fuzzy and boring. But still I thought I’d share.

Happy Fourth!

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