Besides the Lunar Lander Challenge, another major aspect of the Wirefly x Prize Cup is the Space Elevator Games, in particular the Climber Competition. I got a look at some of the efforts by teams to qualify for the competition Thursday at the county fairgrounds, a few miles west of the airport. (I had initially headed over there after hearing that Armadillo Aerospace was doing a test firing there, but missed it; I hung around to watch the climbers instead.) I got to see one of the teams, USST, from the University of Saskatchewan, successfully qualify. I even managed to take some video of their successful run:
(Now, the first thing you’re probably thinking is, “Hey, it’s sideways!” I shot it sideways, then rotated the video into the proper orientation on my laptop later using QuickTime Pro, only to have YouTube rotate it back into the original orientation. So just hold your head, or your monitor, sideways for a minute.) The commotion about 15 seconds into the video is when one of the spotlights shining light onto the climber toppled. The voice at the end of the video is Ken Davidian of NASA’s Centennial Challenges program, who was standing by me watching the run.
If you want to follow the competition, which will go through both days of the Cup, check out the official blog of the Space Elevator Games, which is updated frequently with news, photos, and some audio and video. Also, The Space Elevator Reference is covering the event.
We saw the University of Michigan team’s climber make it all the way to the top in about 6 and a half minutes. Pretty amazing, all things considered.
I still think this technology is still a very long-term project in terms of getting to even the orbit. But it would be great if it worked, at least in some way. And the competition itself does stimulate innovation, interest in space and science, and may be a driver for certain technologies. Realistically, it needs about 50 years.
So, when we go to Moon and Mars, it will still be in old-fashioned rockets.