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2009 Space Elevator Games Has a Winner
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The 2009 Space Elevator Games, a Centennial Challenge sponsored by the Spaceward Foundation and NASA held at the Dryden Flight Research Center in California, has a winner. The LaserMotive Team of Seattle, Washington managed to propel a cable climber up a one kilometer cable suspended by a helicopter at a speed of eight miles an hour on Wednesday, November 4th. LaserMotive accomplished the same feat four times, with the best time of 3 minutes and 48 seconds.
Two other teams, the Kansas City Space Pirates and a University of Saskatchewan Space Design Team, were unable to accomplish the minimal requirements of the Space Elevator competition.
The idea was to propel on object up the cable using a laser to beam power to it. The Space Elevator Games thus advanced two different technical concepts. These were power beaming, the transmission of power using a laser rather than a transmission wire, and a space elevator.
A space elevator is a concept that would involve suspending a tether or cable from a geostationary station to the Earth’s surface and, instead of using rockets to propel a payload into space, have it climb up the cable instead like an elevator car. In theory, the cost of space travel would be lowered by orders of magnitude by a space elevator.
The LaserMotive team brings home $900,000 of the $2 million dollar purse, since no team was able to beat the three minute mark for sending a climber up the one kilometer cable. A competition will take place next year for the remaining $1.1 million.
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