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NASA Space Hardware Technology

Space Elevator Teams Compete for NASA Prizes 158

Posted by Zonk from the going-up dept.
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."
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Space Elevator Teams Compete for NASA Prizes More

Space Elevator Teams Compete for NASA Prizes

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  • New meaning (Score:4, Funny)

    by Nosklo ( 815041 ) <WPARHFOBFDOT@spammotel. c o m> on Saturday October 20, 2007 @04:38PM (#21057771)
    This gives a whole new meaning to "leaking gas on the elevator"

  • Space Elevator SciFi (Score:3, Informative)

    by lobiusmoop ( 305328 ) on Saturday October 20, 2007 @04:47PM (#21057849) Homepage
    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: (Score:3, Informative)

      by 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.

  • ...A winch attached to a solar panel.
    • ...that doesn't work if it's windy or wet.

      The more I hear about the current state of the art, the more I think that we'll be using quantum teleportation to get things into orbit long before we have a workable beanstalk.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by 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: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by 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

        • 35,000,000 metres ...

           

  • Williamsburg does not need a space elevator! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Morky ( 577776 ) on Saturday October 20, 2007 @04:53PM (#21057901)
    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!'
    • Nimby. I say we build it in neighboring Newport News. Then we'll get the tax revenue and your mornings will still be subject to the "impossibly long, cold, and very narrow shadow over [your] homes!"

      Bwahahaha ---evil laugh
      • I think he's referring to the Williamsburg in Brooklyn, NY instead of the one in Virginia. Specifically, the criticism relating to the development of the Atlantic Yards [wikipedia.org] project, which has been opposed by just about everybody apart from the politicians and the developers themselves. Criticism of the actual project aside, there were also some very valid issues raised over the enormous public subsidies going into the project ($2 billion plus any infrastructure improvements necessary, which is insofar an undi

        • I think he's referring to the Williamsburg in Brooklyn, NY

          Oops, my bad.

          On the other hand, if they built it in Virginia (a much more sensible idea because it's closer to the equator), they wouldn't be able to send any more than 3 astronauts up in the capsule at a time. Williamsburg is one of the few cities in the US to have retained its "Brothel Laws",

          Another good reason to build in adjacent Newport News! Apparently, we don't care :P

          I'm sure the Williamsburg heat and humidity would be hell on the tether

          No worse than as if they built it where they PLAN to build it... on the equator. Most likely on the equator on a floating platform in the Pacific.

          why the colonial settlers chose to land in Jamestown, and then move to Williamsburg (essentially a swamp) absolutely boggles the mind

          Most of Hampton Roads fits that description, being low lying sedimentary land. Old Williamsburg is inland (slightly) of Jamestown.

        • On the other hand, if they built it in Virginia (a much more sensible idea because it's closer to the equator),

          My understanding is that is wouldn't work for the elevator to be built anywhere but right at the Equator, or very very close to it.
  • I've been on slashdot for a few months, and I'm kind of wondering why we're still doing these kinds of things. We appear to be perfecting the technology for this and we'll be able to make a space elevator in 5-10 years. Graphene oxide super paper, that radiation-absorbing mineral thingie, nuclear power, etc. all make this possible.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dbIII ( 701233 )

      We appear to be perfecting the technology for this and we'll be able to make a space elevator in 5-10 years

      That's what the confidence tricksters want you to believe. That materials scientists meanwhile are trying to make that unobtainium but still have no clue when.

  • So when do we hold the contest for the best lift operator? Follow this up with a good old fashioned bellhop challenge.

    Do the lift operators get to join the Astronauts union?

  • elevator music for 4 months straight (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 20, 2007 @05:06PM (#21057987)

    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.
    • Worse, don't get stuck in that lift with a lady of leasure...

    • Re:elevator music for 4 months straight (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anpheus ( 908711 ) on Saturday October 20, 2007 @05:33PM (#21058177)
      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: (Score:2)

        by Anpheus ( 908711 )
        P.S.: For a silly example, if they obtained only 1.05 gees up, that is they would counter Earth's pull and add an additional half meter per second squared, they would get from the ground to geosync in only a few hours.

        http://www.google.com/search?q=sqrt%282*42164+kilometers%2F%28.05*g_earth%29%29

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by MrKaos ( 858439 )
        Maybe that could be the 'express' elevator.
    • 4 months eh? How many months are there between Shuttle launches or even regular launches? 4 months would actually be reasonable if they were carrying a big enough payload, say 10 satellites that could be 'launched' from the end point by simply detaching from the carrier and using their own thrusters to navigate to their own unique positions, maybe delaying each detachment by a few hours so they could deploy to different points in the orbit path.

    • 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.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Rakishi ( 759894 )
        Depends on what the primary cargo is, there are very few satellites launches each year for example and there are only so many sats that you can shove up there before it becomes a cluster fuck. Four months is too long for sending humans, tourists up, and you will need to be sending people up quite a bit. Specific people are the only thing you can't, with time, make more cost effectively in space as they're unique. Space elevators are a great way to build an infrastructure in space but you still need somethin
        • You're still not thinking the right way. You're thinking about people visiting space, and saying 4 months up is way too long for a vacation. I'm thinking of people living in space, so they won't be riding the elevator constantly.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Rakishi ( 759894 )
            Except that there is pretty much nothing for them to do up there. Tourism is about the best way to raise public desire and money for more space infrastructure. Also four months means you need to not only lift up a person but long term life support food, water recycling, emergency facilities, stewards and probably other things.
            • There's nothing much for us to do down here either. Most of us work at meaningless jobs, doing nothing important at all really. We sell stuff to our neighbors and buy stuff from our neighbors. Read Ecclesiastes and see.

              If you can get a bunch of people living on the moon permanently, providing some product or service, then the Earth Moon system will be self-sustaining, and the people on the Moon will have as much purpose as people on the Earth.

              Nothing to do. Bah. If you've got 25,000 people living on the Moo

  • Screw (Score:3, Interesting)

    by inKubus ( 199753 ) on Saturday October 20, 2007 @05:08PM (#21058007) Homepage Journal
    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: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by 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 (Score:4, Funny)

      by Jeremi ( 14640 ) on Saturday October 20, 2007 @08:36PM (#21059265) Homepage
      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.

  • 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? Who cares! Once they can make carbon nanotube space tethers, they can also make similar extremely lightweight structures and most likely have advanced electric motors also using some magical "nano" tech (might as well stay consistent with nano) and highly efficient nano solar cells. Just run the dang things during the day, park them f

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Rogerborg ( 306625 )
      Meesa wanna haul fuelsa insteada payload. Takesa twicea longa!

    • Re:Why can't they be self powered? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by vertinox ( 846076 ) on Saturday October 20, 2007 @05:32PM (#21058169)
      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.
      • Rockets are the most brain dead way to send things into space, it ought to be illegal.

        You want a Hollywood version of how space travel ought to be done, take a look at the Marvel movie The Hulk. The scene where the pilot flies right up to the edge of the atmosphere, and a relatively slightest nudge from the Hulk pushes the plane into space.

        Imagine the same scenario, except with the plane supplying the nudge, and another spacecraft waiting outside the atmosphere to receive the package that is hurled across

        • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

          by Karrde45 ( 772180 )
          Getting into orbit isn't about altitude, it's about velocity. Run the numbers for a massive lifter. You might gain 5-6 miles worth of altitude, and less than Mach 1 velocity. That still leaves you needing a lot of acceleration to make orbit. It's nice for Spaceship 1, which is only suborbital. It's even the chosen approach for Pegasus, which puts some small stuff into orbit. Ultimately, for small craft it is marginally useful for avoiding a few troublesome parts of lifting off from the ground, but suc

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Rakishi ( 759894 )

          I think it's driven by shady back room deals with the fuel industry, personally.

          Ah yes, those evil shady companies that create liquid hydrogen, liquid oxygen and aluminum (yup the last one is fuel used by nasa). They're such vile bastards. So ingenious to boot, having not only gotten NASA but having gotten their slimy hands on the soviet space program as well (less so, those damn kerosene and unpronounceable fuel companies beat them). During the heavy communist controlled days to boot. Not to mention the European, Indian, Chinese and god knows what other space programs.

          Well okay, most

        • There's no clearly defined border one can "nudge" a payload across. There is a minimum velocity one must hit, and the velocity added by the plane and the fuel savings from the reduced high-altitude would be negligible.

          One bit of stupidity stands out:
          For such a smart bunch of people, NASA sure have been taking a stupid, dangerous and wasteful approach to space travel all these decades. I think it's driven by shady back room deals with the fuel industry, personally.

          You do realize that most rockets are powered

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by khallow ( 566160 )

          Rockets are the most brain dead way to send things into space, it ought to be illegal.

          The obvious rebuttal is that rockets work and are feasible in today's high cost, low volume space economy. As i see it, once companies like SpaceX start selling cheap, high launch frequency rockets, we'll finally see just what you can do with rockets and create the markets that will justify the less "brain dead" approaches to space access.
      • Well, two things come to mind... one, since they're going to be climbing along a very thick cable already, why not attach power lines to the cable? The obvious problem with that is 35000 km or however long it is to geostationary orbit incurs giant, if not prohibitive, transmission losses in the power cable. A gas pipeline would work, though it obviously would need pumping substations since no pipeline will hold the pressure of a 35000 km tall pipe of fuel... the substations would in turn make it tricky to a

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Rakishi ( 759894 )
          People really don't like nuclear reactors for this sort of things, mostly the whole crashed into ground at terminal velocity and spills it's contents thing. Baseless paranoia mostly but that's people for you.
    • As was pointed out elsewhere, the climber would take four months to get to geosynchronous orbit. How big of a gas tank would be required to fuel the climber for four months? How many batteries would it take? The only solutions are nuclear, solar, and powering it from the ground. Solar would only work during daylight hours and if you go nuclear, you might as well just do gas core nuclear rockets [nuclearspace.com]. Also, you'd get all the NIMBY naysayers protesting your climber. That leaves powering it from the ground.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by khallow ( 566160 )

      To save weight?

      Yes. BTW, anyone who makes a working space elevator is going to have to worry about weight. Second, why would we be satisfied with just running climbers during the day and limit ourselves to power intensities of 1300 W per square meter otherwise? That cuts down on cargo throughput for the space tether. Makes no sense to implement unless you can't do beamed power for some reason.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dbIII ( 701233 )
      If the material used will be carbon nontubes then they are highly conductive in the high strength direction. All this weird broadcast power really makes it look like a scam since the losses of transmitting even a well collumnated microwave signal are going to be a lot more over long distances than line resistance in carbon nanotubes.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Rakishi ( 759894 )
        Except that the current design is many such relatively short tubes glued together, that would probably add a lot of resistance. I'm sure there are also problems of having such a large circuit interacting with the atmosphere and other such things.

        Remember that while you can dump as much energy into a beam as you want with little ill effect on anything you care about, doing it to a cable will cause it to heat up massively from the resistance.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dbIII ( 701233 )

          Except that the current design is many such relatively short tubes glued together

          That will never work because the strength will drop an order of magnitude at least. What people are proposing is strands as long as twice the distance to geosynchronous orbit (counterweight) bundled together into a cable. As for the heating problem - remember that these things are extremely good conductors of heat as well as electricity and you are going to need a huge number of them to take the mass anyway - the fibres used

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Rakishi ( 759894 )

            That will never work because the strength will drop an order of magnitude at least.

            I believe the current approach is to use something like Van der Waals forces to glue the nanotubes together.

            What people are proposing is strands as long as twice the distance to geosynchronous orbit (counterweight) bundled together into a cable.

            This is not practical, individual strands will break, corrode and so on which means that they will have to be replaced with shorter strands (or incur massive repair costs). More importantly we can't make tubes that long with any current (or near future) technology.

            the fibres used to conduct electricity are going to be surrounded by a lot of fibres that can be used to conduct away the heat.

            Nanotubes are I believe not very heat conductive in that direction.

            The other option is to go for the full room temperature superconductor material that we also do not yet have but is potentially also not far off.

            Those are considered by some theoretically impossible. Furthermore r

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by dbIII ( 701233 )

              This is not practical, individual strands will break, corrode

              Corrode? How? This is something effectively the same as sheets of graphite in the high strength direction which is going to be in contact with the same material in a vaccum. Also by breaking - by what mechanism? Wouldn't the design be such as to spread the load to somehting the fibres can take. I think you'll also find that the joining you describe is about bundling the fibres axially and not sticking bits on the end of individual fibres lon

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by Rakishi ( 759894 )

                Corrode? How?

                Atmospheric effects (oxygen I assume among other things), random effects, micro-meteorites and so on. And of course the climber has to do just that CLIMB the thing, that constant contact will likely cause damage over long periods of time.

                This is something effectively the same as sheets of graphite in the high strength direction which is going to be in contact with the same material in a vaccum. Also by breaking - by what mechanism? Wouldn't the design be such as to spread the load to somehting the fibres can take.

                Nothing is perfect or indestructible.

                I think you'll also find that the joining you describe is about bundling the fibres axially and not sticking bits on the end of individual fibres longitudinally otherwise you would lose an order of magnitude or two of strength.

                No right now it's about using short fibers as we have no foreseeable technology to make massively long fibers. Pretty much short of specialized advanced nanomachines there is no sane way to make something that long, random problems wi

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by dbIII ( 701233 )

                  No right now it's about using short fibers as we have no foreseeable technology to make massively long fibers.

                  In which case the entire game is off for beanstalks until you can. The requirement is strength in the Gigapascals and you lose that at joins. I suggest you look at it in a bit more detail and consider the ramifications of something that is only millimetres thick at the base.

                  For graphite I was talking about the high conductivity and high strength direction as you would see along the length of a c

  • Question -- how is the conductivity of space elevator cable? Could you have the cable consist of two electrically insulated cables held together somehow, then supply electricity across them?

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by 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.
    • Or just one cable, taking advantage of the fact that it runs all the way from the ground to the magnetosphere.

      But designing a lifter now when we have no way of building the tether itself is like constructing a "Moone Carriage" in H.G. Wells's era. Once materials science reaches the point that we can build reliable hundred-thousand-kilometer nanotube (or another equivalently strong and light material) cables, we'll probably be able to build far better lifter than we can now. And we'll know the characterist
    • According to wikipedia, depending on configuration, carbon nanotubes can be quite conductive [wikipedia.org]. I don't know if this makes supplying power from the ground practical or not, nor if one can make a nanotube that is both sufficiently strong and superconductive. A cable that can carry a couple megawatts of power per lifter with low loss may need to be much heavier per unit of length than the elevator would otherwise be.

  • Don't we need a tether first? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by flyingfsck ( 986395 ) on Saturday October 20, 2007 @05:14PM (#21058045)
    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? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by pushing-robot ( 1037830 ) on Saturday October 20, 2007 @06:02PM (#21058421)
      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.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rbanffy ( 584143 )
        "It's silly to design the lifter until we have a design for - or even a means of constructing - the tether itself."

        I fully agree. This is a huge waste of time, talent and money. Until there can be a tether - and there is none in sight - it's a bit premature to develop the climber.

        It would be a whole lot more clever to invest in simpler, dumber, cheaper rockets that don't need LH2 for fuel (as the 1st stage of the Saturn V didn't) for now, to invest in nuclear-thermal rockets for the next-generation and mayb

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tkw954 ( 709413 )

        The concepts for tethers usually involve them being thicker in the middle than at the ends

        Like a brontosaurus.

      • Actually, don't most of the designs require the climber as the MEANS of building most of the tether?
        As in, get a single (low weight, low capacity) strand up via rockets, and then have climbers pull up the 1000 other strands in order to get a tether strong enough for full-sized cargo.

        So climber is a pre-requisite for building the elevator, not something that comes after it.

        We still need a viable material for the tether, of course - but that's a different problem in a rather different area of science and that
  • From what I understood even carbon nanotubes are not going to cut it without some major breakthroughs.

    For something we still aren't really capable of achieving I would think something like the X-prize that gives rewards for necessary breakthroughs would be more logical than a competition which people will keep failing to win every year?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Dunbal ( 464142 )
      While I agree that the concept of space elevators is cool, perhaps NASA could concentrate on making parachutes [slashdot.org] that deploy when they're supposed to...

  • Maglev rockets? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Loke the Dog ( 1054294 ) on Saturday October 20, 2007 @05:48PM (#21058295)
    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.

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

      Somebody finally did the math and figured out that the scheme really doesn't work (for space launches). More weight is required in structural reinforcement than is saved in unneeded fuel.
      • They have changed the layout from a long track, to being a circular track in a vacuum, and then slowly speed the system up. The issue was changed from one of costs (never about energy) to one of Gs. In fact, it was shown that the energy on this is MUCH better than rockets.

        Assume that you do the straight track, than you need one that is 100's of miles long, which leaves it vulnerable to attacks esp. when you need it most. And the worse attack of all is congress.

        With a much smaller circular track, it take
  • There are a lot of comments about the method of energizing the lifter-robots... why not energize the tether itself, run current through it and let the lifter use Electromagnetic Induction [wikipedia.org] and a capacitor as a battery to leach energy off as it goes?

    Is this not feasible for some reason?

  • They should simply build this thing like a normal elevator with a counter weight going down while the payload goes up...
  • Just a few corrections to the article:
    The youtube link is to the U of S's winning round last year; it's now the third annual space elevator competition. The rest of the article is correct. It's worth noting that the height and speed requirements are double what they were last year.

    Hopefully the weather will be better tomorrow and the competitions will continue! All the best to all the teams... and especially the USST, of course. :-)

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