The $400,000 NASA- Centennial Challenge-backed space elevator competition Elevator 2010, organised by the Spaceward Foundation, has gained a sponsor and nine teams are expected to compete for this year’s climber and tether events, writes Rob Coppinger.
Supported with the NASA money and its new sponsor, Californian mechanical design company Gizmonics, the Spaceward Foundation’s two competitions will begin three weeks later than expected on 21 October, because it needs more time to organise the infrastructure to test the technologies (Flight International, 5-12 April).
The elevator would operate using a payload carrying vehicle, called a climber, that moves slowly up a 36,000km (22,360 miles)-long tether to reach orbit.
One competition requires a climber to move up a tether faster than 200ft/min (1m/s) with as heavy a payload as possible, while being powered by a light beam from the ground. The second competition involves stretching candidate tether material.
“We do a tug of war [with the competing tether materials] and see which one breaks,” says Ben Shelef, Spaceward Foundation co-founder. The competing climbers are from five hobbyist teams and the Canadian universities of British Columbia and Saskatchewan.
For the tether there are two competing laboratories. Shelef will not name them, but they are one private laboratory and one “well known aerospace lab”.
The winner of each competition will receive $50,000 from the $400,000 prize money on offer.
Source: Flight International
