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

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?