First successful climb, by LaserMotive, climb time: 4:02.  Second successful climb, by LaserMotive, climb time: 4:01. Unofficial climb distance: 899 m. Unofficial climb speed is therefore 3.7 m/s, which is squarely in the $900k bracket – Congratulations to Lasermotive!

Unofficial empty weight is 4.8 kg. The unofficial payload is 0.58 kg. So the score, unofficial, is (speed times payload ratio) 3.7 * 0.59 / 4.8 = 0.45. If other teams make it into the $900k bracket, the scores will be used to determine the order of the winnings.

Kansas City Space Pirates also climbed, but a lot slower, getting to 850 m at 8:00, where we had to stop them due to a satellite lasing window closing. They were still moving when we shut them down, and their average speed was approximately 1.875 m/s.

Today’s Schedule is promising to be very exciting:

• USST will go first, since they didn’t get a climb window yesterday.
• LM will go next, and will sure be trying to get into the 5 m/s bracket, for the larger prize purse.
• USST will then get their second climb window, and lastly
• KCSP will get their second climb window and try to improve their performance.

Keep in mind that all teams have the ability to go 5 m/s – the games are ON!

If you’ve been following the games, you must have noticed that the last 2 months were taken up by solving a problem that has nothing to do with power beaming – constructing and controlling the 1-km vertical raceway.

Done.

And just in time, USST produced this nice video about what the games are all about – enjoy!

Oh, and btw, I believe USST’s 1 km battery-powered climb must have broken some record of some sort (sorry Shui!) – more on that as soon as I get the footage ready for posting.

Targets at 1 km

Mark Boots and Nathan Windels in front of the main "barrel cam" display, showing the dark (unlit) target at 1 km

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

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.

USST's PV Receiver

USSTs Drive Train (middle right) on the vertical treadmill

Andrew Williams, USST's mechanical lead

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.

Team USST

USST, for those who haven’t been following the games (and haven’t watched the trailer clip) are the consistent top performer in the games. True to form, USST is fielding a very impressive system this year, based on the TRUMPF laser platform.

USST carries their pet optical lab in a shipping container known as “The Sea Can”, or simply as “Betsy”.  Betsy is full of surprises, having been fully tricked-out on the inside to include a full mission control room and an optical systems clean room.

USST had a pretty rough time getting to the test week, however, and almost didn’t make it all – after numerous delays, their 30-hour drive turned into more of a 60 hour drive, and by the time they were set up on the lakebed it was Friday, 1:30 pm – 90 minutes before we had to pack it all up.

Pretty frustrating to drive down all this distance only to briefly toggle your system and not even complete a single test.

We’ll be working with USST on another testing opportunity (Schedule coming up soon) and will get them a fair shot at qualifying. The games are about “let the best team win”, and we’ll do what we can to let each system reach its potential.

Left to Right on this picture:

• Doug Grant
• Nathan Windels (Electrical Team Lead)
• Mark Boots (VP Engineering)
• Andrew Williams (Mechanical Team Lead)

Team Captain is Patrick Allen