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

Details soon...

 
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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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WE CAN REALLY USE YOUR HELP

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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Total raised so far: $625 - THANK YOU!
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LATEST NEWS

Meet the Teams

PERMALINK Filed under: Start Here, Team Specific — CrazyEddieBlogger on June 4, 2009, 11:47 pm

The games are nothing without the teams… In this post I’ll try to give you a feel for who is playing for the prize purse this year.

Out of respect to seniority, I’ll cover the teams in the order in which they joined the challenge.

Saskatoon's Finest

Saskatoon's Finest

USST - fielded their first climber in 2005 – the first year the games were held. (Nostalgic sigh).  USST has achieved the best performance in each of the games since then, but were always heart-achingly short of winning the prize purse. USST’s strength is teamwork, industrial-level organization, self-sufficiency. improvisation ability and fast reaction time.  This is very impressive, since these qualities are all too often mutually exclusive… Clayton Ruszkowski was the team captain in 2006 and 2007 and Patrick Allen is the 2008-2009 caption. Mark Boots does a lot of the design work.

In 2007, as we were all laughing at how they were putting everyone else (including, not very surprisingly, Spaceward itself) to shame with their level of preparedness and organization, one of their guys twisted an ankle during the preparation for a climb…  Turned out that even this event had a rehearsed response – two designated people got him out of the anchor area ASAP, a different designated person stepped in, tools were transferred, and the operation continued without a hitch.

Phrases not in their vocabulary: “Where’s the 7/16″ wrench”, “it’s your fault”, and “second place”.

USST is using the TRUMPF laser system for their climber.

Pirates Family Council

Pirates Family Council

KCSP – The Kansas City Space Pirates are by far the most spirited team in the games. They made their first appearance in 2006, debuting their solar concentrating “helio beaming” solution. They are led by Pirate-First-Class Brian Turner (yes, the guy from Conan and the NY Times Sunday magazine) who is an incredibly gifted engineer and a combination fierce leader and nice guy. The pirates’ design to date were the most ingenious, and in 2007 they had the fastest moving climber - but for circumstance, they might have won that year.

KCSP is a home grown team.  Whereas USST showed up with a 20-strong undergrad team, KCSP showed up with a 20-strong family-and-neighborhood team. Just like USST, their level or preparedness was impeccable, and just like USST, they had to face some pretty daunting moments in the face of long odds.

Phrases not in their vocabulary: “Can’t”, “Give up”, and “Too hard”.

KCSP is also using the TRUMPF laser system for their climber.

Playing "Operation"

Playing "Operation"

The third veteran team is LaserMotive. Led by Dr. Jordin Kare from Seattle, this is our most laser-savvy team. They were rookies in the last games, and like all new teams, had to face to difficulties of deploying a field operation as opposed to a lab operation, but I doubt that the other teams will get that lucky twice…

Also in the team – Tom Nugent (ex Liftport fame) and Carsten Erickson.

Phrases not in their vocabulary: “Amateur”, “improvise” and “1030″

LaserMotive is using the Dilas laser system for their climber.


So this leaves us with the three relative newcomers: University of Michigan, McGill, and NSS.

U Michigan are not exactly new to the games - they did field a team in 2006, but they skipped 2007, and the team members are all new to me - thus they are a mixed rookie/veteran status.  Slow and steady wins the race – U Michigan were one of the teams that reached the top of the 100 m track in 2006 – I would not be surprised if I was surprised by what they’ve built this year.  Andrew Lyjak is the team leader.

McGill University are not new either, actually. Last year McGill supplied the high drama when their trailer, hardware and all, flipped over on the way to the games, damaging their microwave-powered power beaming system. This year they are using a laser system (powered by Dilas), and I’m looking forward to seeing them arrive in one piece at the games.

NSS (National Space Society) pursued a very interesting design for the games, based on heat conversion and a Stirling engine.  Due to technical difficulties, however, they had to make a last minute change to the Photovoltaic climber, and I wish them luck – must be serious crunch time in Maryland.  Bert Murray is the team leader, and Matt Abrams, a two-year veteran, is one of the team members.

All (or at least some) shall be revealed on June 18-19, during testing week, when the teams will be at Dryden for inspection of their systems.  I am really excited over the opportunity to see them all before the pressures of the real event begin.

Going up?

The Rules of the Game

PERMALINK Filed under: Start Here, Technical Tuesday — CrazyEddieBlogger on May 30, 2009, 10:54 pm
MClimber

Powerful, Light, Fast, Efficient

The basic premise of the rules is simple: The teams have to design, build and operate vehicles that can travel up a tether, with the small caveat that they cannot have any energy stored on-board. Since direct solar conversion is specifically not allowed, they must also build a system to transfer power from the ground to the vehicle.

The rules do not call for a laser-based system, but in practical terms, if you want to keep the receiver portion of the system (on the climber) light-weight, the engineering constraints pretty much steer you towards a laser-based system.

So how are the teams scored?

It took a while to arrive a t a formula that captures what we want out of a power beaming system, and doesn’t force the games into a single technical solution, or into a “if you can’t make it good, make it large” sort of situation.

The basic role of a climber is to carry payload. Transport systems are usually rated by throughput – how much you can carry, and how fast – measured in tons per year, for example. A first attempt at a metric would thus be score = payload x speed.

There are two problem with this metric. First, if you buy a larger laser, you can move more payload. We don’t want the games to become a laser-buying competition.  Second, since the self-weight of the climber does not count, then for a given amount of generated power, it pays to move as slow as possible, and carry as much payload as possible, thus maximizing the score, but also making the games infinitely long…

The solution to the first problem is to normalize the score by the empty weight of the climber. Thus rather than ask how much mass the climber can move per unit time, we’ll ask how many times its own mass can it carry per unit time. So a 4 lb climber carrying 6 lb of payload at 3 m/s will get exactly the same score as an 8 lb climber carrying 12 lb of payload at the same speed. Thus score = payload mass x average speed / empty mass.

The solution to the second problem is to institute a minimum speed (2 m/s in our case). This way, teams will still try to move as slow as possible (carrying as much payload as possible) but will have to move no slower than 2 m/s.

While conversion efficiency doesn’t factor explicitly into the score, it is very much there – a less efficient climber will need more climber mass to generate the same amount of power, leaving even less room for payload – it will thus be penalized on both the denominator and numerator of the the score  formula.

This has worked out well. We know this since the range of entries is wide - the climbers occupy diverse points on this solution space. Some emphasise light weight, some emphasise high efficiency, and none of the teams had to rush out and get more power – they improve their score by making the most efficient use of the existing power source.

What are the Space Elevator Games?

PERMALINK Filed under: Start Here — admin on May 8, 2009, 3:14 am

The Space Elevator Games are two technology prize challenges that take aim at the two building blocks of the Space Elevator – Strong Tethers and Power Beaming. The games are backed by a $4M prize purse from NASA’s Centennial Challenges program, and are organized by the Spaceward Foundation. 

Dryden Power Beaming Split Teaser

The 2009 Power Beaming Challenge

At the center of the Power Beaming challenge is a 1-km vertical racetrack that has to be scaled by beam-powered vehicles, replicating the architecture of the Space Elevator. This year’s full prize will be awarded only to teams that can sustain an average speed of 5 m/s over the entire climb.

The Tether Strength challenge, which will be held a month later at the Space Elevator conference in Seattle, offers the prize purse to teams that can create a tether loop (2 m long, and weighing a maximum of 2 grams) that is stronger than a certain threshold. (These tethers today carry more than 1000 lb of force !)

Like all technology challenges, the SE games walk the line between full-bore technology development (as can be achieved by a dedicated research contract) and a full-bore public outreach (as can be achieved by an educational program). When the games started in 2005, the technology level was low. This was OK, since there was no previous experience or legacy to draw on, as was possible in things like rocketry, solar-cars, or other comparable programs. In 2009, the systems deployed at the games are state-of-the-art, achieving first-ever performance in the field of power beaming. In 2007, we also saw our first pure Carbon Nanotube sample, and we’re looking forward to seeing even more impressive results this year. (Since the Tether challenge is more “fundamental” than the power beaming challenge, we expected it to lag a couple of years behind the power beaming challenge)

The last benefit of the games approach is its ability to try many technical approaches at once. For the 2009 games, we had 11 teams start the registration process, wielding solution as diverse as Microwave beams and heat engines. Only 6 teams are still competing, but even in the narrower space of IR lasers (where they all ended up), each of the teams excels in a differnet aspect of the design. The prizes, unlike in traditional cost-plus contracting, are only awarded to the winning designs.

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