Las Cruces, New Mexico -- Space elevators might be the
next big things in space transportation, but Saturday's Space Elevator Games at
the Wirefly X-Prize Cup showed that they are still a long way off.
After battling winds on Friday that twisted the elevator ribbon, on Saturday the teams faced mechanical and
speed challenges in getting their respective ribbon crawlers off the ground. Still, by the end of second day, several teams could not compete and had their attempts moved to today for a post-event make-up.
The cup was founded by the creators the Ansari X Prize, the $10 million prize package offered to anyone who could launch a re-usable sub-orbital spacecraft, capable of carrying passengers, twice in a two week period.
Building on the success of that competition, the WireFly X Prize Cup was launched in 2005. The two-day affair involves plenty of roaring rockets, privately-built spaceships, alternative technologires, like the space elevator, and cash awards.
The
six-inch industrial belt substituting for a space elevator ribbon has as much
surface area as a 50-square-foot sail, and fluttered just as briskly.
Unfortunately, this wild twisting made it rather difficult to attach a fragile
aluminum crawler, much less to have it climb up the ribbon. Despite these
difficulties, students from University of Michigan (UM) managed to get their crawler
all the way to the top of the ribbon on day one, the only team to do so, but in
six minutes, 40 seconds; the goal was one minute.
Each team
provided its own power source, and the inventions were very creative. UM used a
circle of arc lights around the base of the cable, which, when pointed upward,
bathed the solar cells in enough light to power their crawler. The German team
from Max Born College used two large spotlights directly
underneath their crawler.
The University of Saskatchewan placed angled mirrors directly
beneath the ribbon, and then pointed an arc light at the mirrors to direct the
beam upward. The Kansas City Space Pirates had perhaps the most ingenious
arrangement, with fifteen volunteers pointing a bank of mirrors at a moving
target.
Most of
the competitors managed two attempts each. The University of British Columbia's crawler
couldn't get traction; the Germans' motor didn't start on their first attempt.
A high school team from California got their flimsy-looking crawler
near the top in about five minutes on their first attempt; their second made it
all the way up in just over two minutes. The KC Space Pirates' crawler was
buffeted by the wind, to the point where the team directing the mirrors could
not keep their aim on the curved solar collector. And the games aren't over
yet. One team qualified late; two other teams were using technology that Las Cruces International Airport did not allow: an infrared beam and
a microwave beam, both of which have characteristics similar to radar.
On the
positive side, three teams managed to reach all the way or nearly to the top of
the 200-foot ribbon; the best any crawler managed last year was 30 feet. USST
came closest to reaching the goal, but their victory was still in doubt because
their crawler did not return to the ground under its own power.
Michael Laine
of the LiftPort Group emphasized that space elevators are in their infancy,
that it might be 30 years before a space elevator is actually built, and that
these challenges were proof of the difficulties ahead. But Laine--and the teams
at the X-Prize Cup--have no doubt of the value of what they are trying to
accomplish.
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