Space Elevator Teams Compete for NASA Prizes

Hugh Pickens writes "The University of Saskatchewan's has the first place climb in the Second Annual Space Elevator Games being held this weekend at the Davis County Event Center in Salt Lake City. Teams are competing for $1,000,000 in NASA prize money. Although the idea of a space elevator has been around for decades, the space technologies needed to support it have yet to be created. The non-profit Spaceward Foundation has hosted an annual competition since 2005 to build a super-strong tether, or get a robot to climb a suspended ribbon. In the robot climber competition, teams have to get their device to hurtle up a 100-metre-long ribbon, suspended from a crane, at an average speed of two metres per second. The climber must be powered from the ground: strategies include reflecting sunlight from huge mirrors on the ground to solar panels on the climber; shining lasers from the ground up to similar panels on the robot; or firing microwaves up at the climber. Qualifying rounds have been taking place all week, and although high winds and rain have caused delays, four out of eight teams have made it into the finals. There are no outdoor climbs today because of bad weather but some of the tether competitions will happen indoors later this afternoon."

New meaning

[Nosklo (815041)]

This gives a whole new meaning to "leaking gas on the elevator"

Space Elevator SciFi

[lobiusmoop (305328)]

For a blue-sky vision of a future with a functional space elevator, I'd recommend reading Arthur C Clarke's Foundations of Paradise [amazon.com] novel.

Re:

[Omnifarious (11933)]

It was Isaac Assimov who wrote the Foundation series books. :-) Arthur C. Clarke wrote 'Fountains of Paradise'. And what is amusing is that you linked to the right book but got it wrong in the text of the link.

Re:Space Elevator SciFi

[by Anonymous Coward]

Mod's are going to murder me for that one....

I couldn't find the (-1 Murder) mod ...

Williamsburg does not need a space elevator!

[Morky (577776)]

WILLIAMSBURG DOESN'T NEED A SPACE ELEVATOR! The Space Elevator Will Mean: Less Parking, Weird Ribbon Thing, Constant Loud Whirring Noise, Increased Space Elevator Truck Traffic. Developers have submitted plans to build a massive space elevator in Williamsburg! This monstrosity, completely out of context with existing development in the neighborhood, will be accessible only to the wealthy, forcing thousands of average Williamsburgers from their homes and live-work spaces! Jobs the elevator will generate (operators, repairmen, astronauts) are certain to go to non-residents! Don't sit idly by and let this elevator cast its impossibly long, cold, and very narrow shadow over our homes! CALL 311 AND TELL THEM 'I JUST DON'T NEED THIS SPACE ELEVATOR!'

elevator music for 4 months straight

[by Anonymous Coward]

In the robot climber competition, teams have to get their device to hurtle up a 100-metre-long ribbon, suspended from a crane, at an average speed of two metres per second.

they've got a long way to go, at 2 meters per second it would take a little over 4 months to get to geosynchronous orbit. imagine the effects of elevator music on the human mind after 4 months of listening to it.

Re:elevator music for 4 months straight

[Anpheus (908711)]

As silly as that is, these robots are in fact accelerating upwards at 1 gee with an 'initial' speed of 2m/s. So if you managed to get 1.01 gees for four months their end velocity would be over 1000 kilometers per second.

The fact that the robot can climb constantly from ground-based energy sources is the goal. Acceleration at 2 gees (double the force) would get you from ground to geosync in 48 minutes.

I can stand elevator music for 48 minutes if it means I get to go to space.

Re:

[khallow (566160)]

why all this bullshit with laser beams and microwaves? why not power it from a circut printed on the cable? is there some limitation on weight doing so or have they missed the blindingly obvious in their pursuit of the most "clever" solution.

What bullshit? Putting circuits in your cable robs it of strength. Current designs don't have the margin. As usual, the "blindingly obvious" is so only to the ignorant. As a rule of thumb about things that you aren't an expert in, if there's something obvious that isn't done, then the most likely explanation is that you don't understand the system well enough, not that someone is being too clever.

Re:elevator music for 4 months straight

[MarsDefenseMinister (738128)]

That's a good problem to have, because we have good solutions to it. Keeping a long pipeline filled (even 4 months) so that it's constantly delivering a stream of material to orbit is trivial. 4 months to orbit won't reduce the utility of a space elevator very much.

Screw

[inKubus (199753)]

I wonder if you could use a screw. I wonder what the momentum would be on a 22,000 mile screw? What would the torque required be? Or could you use a long two-way cable with a pulley at the end such as those on a ski lift? What about helium or hydrogen? When the air got too thin to provide much lift, the hydrogen could be burned in a rocket or fuel cell or something else. What about a sterling engine? Couldn't you fly the far end out to 44000 miles, and use the thing on an incline as the earth's rotation pulls it around to the tangent?

Re:

[Nazlfrag (1035012)]

I like the pulley concept, it just requires twice the length of cable. You would also need a means to keep them separate so they don't slam into each other and to stop it twisting. The benefits would include having a fixed point to apply power, being able to analyse the integrity of the loop as it passes the ground station and perhaps being able to lock one half of the ribbon while repairs are conducted on the other half.

Re:Screw

[Jeremi (14640)]

I wonder if you could use a screw.

I think I speak for all of Slashdot when I say yes, we really could -- and thanks for bringing up such a painful subject.

Don't we need a tether first?

[flyingfsck (986395)]

If one can make a strong enough tether, then the obvious solution would be to leave the big heavy motors on the ground and run the tether around space based pulley, but I guess that is too simple to get funding. KISS just doesn't cut it to secure government money...

Re:Don't we need a tether first?

[pushing-robot (1037830)]

The concepts for tethers usually involve them being thicker in the middle than at the ends, so as to reduce weight in areas that have less load (and don't need as much strength). A looping cable would make that impossible. What might work is a pair of cables that oscillate vertically, out of phase with each other, with a lifter that "walks" up or down by switching between cables as they change direction.

But whether that is more or less feasible than beaming power to the lifter, or collecting power from a conductive cable, is entirely dependent on the tether material, and the tether is a far more formidable engineering challenge. It's silly to design the lifter until we have a design for - or even a means of constructing - the tether itself.

Maglev rockets?

[Loke the Dog (1054294)]

I think maglev-accelerated rockets has more potential than the space elevator. Whatever happened to that research at NASA?

I'd like to see a competition to shoot a sensitive cargo (an egg perhaps?) the furthest distance using some kind of maglev catapult without the cargo breaking. Casing of any kind, wings and a parachute are allowed.

Unlike a space elevator which either works or doesn't, this stuff has potential even if never gets anyone into space. Trains obviously, aircraft, weapons or even quick delivery systems could build on this technology.

Re:Help!

[larry bagina (561269)]

roll her over and try the other side.

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

Nah, that tastes like crap.

Re:

[Rogerborg (306625)]

Meesa wanna haul fuelsa insteada payload. Takesa twicea longa!

Re:Why can't they be self powered?

[vertinox (846076)]

Why do the elevators have to have "beamed power" to them, when they could be self powered like every other "going into space" craft? Why this unusual criteria? To save weight?

Because if the craft could carry its own power supply it might as well be a rocket. The energy required to get into orbit includes its weight in fuel which means you've got to get more thrust which means more fuel which means more requirement in thrust. There is a break even point (obviously), but if you could just haul the cargo up without the extra weight of fuel then you've saved yourself a bit more energy used for the lift which results in an exponentially smaller amount of total energy required.

I suppose they could use complete solar energy rather than "beamed power", but if someone was truly going to get a cost efficient space elevator it would still days a long time to get to cargo into orbit which might last a few days which means you'll have to go through a few days and nights. Of course you could put battery packs on the space elevator for night travel, but again your adding extra weight.

Re:

[Rakishi (759894)]

To be blunt you're an armchair physicist/engineer and an especially bad one at that. Not only do you not even understand physics (which most armchairs, unlike you, actually do understand) although like the rest of your kind you don't understand the realities of engineering for large projects either.

The highest altitude an airplane can sanely go to is say 20km, a hot air balloon can go higher but they have a very limited payload capacity. Spaceship one got detached at 15km for comparison so I'm being quite k

Re:

[ShieldW0lf (601553)]

Flat out wrong.

http://www.richard-seaman.com/Aircraft/AirShows/SpaceShipOne2004/ [richard-seaman.com]

From the article:

The White Knight drops SpaceShipOne when they reached an altitude of about 50,000 feet (15 kilometers), and it takes 30 or 40 minutes for them to reach this altitude. Along the way they levelled out for some time while they checked all of the onboard systems.

PHOTOS

As they spiralled higher above the desert, it became harder to even see where they were; eventually, though, they got high enough for co

Re:

[Rogerborg (306625)]

Given that the materials required to make them are completely conjectural, you can imagine any conductivity you like. From all the sparkling, I think that fairy wings must be pretty conductive, so let's make space elevators out of them.

Re:

[khendron (225184)]

A moving cable driving by motors would not scale very well. Imagine the momentum of a cable moving in a 22,000 mile long loop. The energy required to get it moving would be tremendous, and the problem of stopping it again would be immense.

Re:

[Rei (128717)]

I'll second your pessimism. There's really only one real scientific challenge, and that's the tether. We're an order of magnitude from the required strength, and meeting the required strength may well be *physically* impossible. Most economically viable designs call for 100-120GPa tethers with the density of graphite. Yet the strongest *inividual* SWNTs measured so far are only 60 GPa, let alone the strength of tube bundles, let alone the strength of a mass-produceable fiber. And what sort of stronger

Re:

[ozmanjusri (601766)]

There's really only one real scientific challenge, and that's the tether.

There's also the construction and materials movement. If we have spacecraft capable of moving an asteroid into geostationary orbit, and putting the initial construction team and equipment on it, chances are they'll be good enough to make the tether redundant.

I have to admit though, I don't even like the concept of a space elevator. Centralised, large scale, multiple single points of failure, untested tech, extremes of environmental