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

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

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"

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?

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.

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.