Tehachapi News

Space Elevator Games $2 million challenge

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Three teams overcame challenges to reach the finals of the $2 million 2009 Space Elevator Power Beaming Games now scheduled for the week of Nov. 2 at Dryden Flight Research Center.

The Kansas City Space Pirates, University of Saskatchewan Space Design Team (USST) and Seattle-based Lasermotive will attempt to send laser-powered vehicles up a one-kilometer cable suspended vertically from a hovering helicopter.

To be eligible for the $2 million prize, this year the vehicles must rise up the cable at an average speed of five meters per second.

A fourth team, NSS, withdrew when they ran short of time and money to prepare for the games.

The Kansas City, Mo.,-based Kansas City Space Pirates are robotic club hobbyists with a top-notch panel of consultants. According to the web site SpaceElevatorGames.org, the Pirates are consistently the most prepared of the teams.

USST is a highly organized university student team. It is the most experienced team in the competition, having participated in all the challenges since 2005.

Lasermotive, in its second year of competition, comes from Seattle with a hefty list of industry sponsors, including Boeing.

The competition organizer is the Spaceward Foundation with financial support from NASA.

According to a  Dryden spokesperson, “The Space Elevator is a proposed space-access system that could transform access to space, replacing rockets with electrical vehicles that scale a stationary cable from Earth to space.

“Now in its fourth year, the Space Elevator Games competition has grown more sophisticated each year, although competitors have yet to win any prize money.”