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The Space Elevator
The Space Elevator (spaceelevatorblog.com) has great Space elevator news, photos, videos and more
Sunday, Dec 13
Space Elevator Miscellany…
With the recent effort surrounding the Space Elevator Games and the EuroSpaceward Conference, I’ve neglected some Space Elevator related items which have been piling up in my RSS Reader. And so… A YouTube clip from a CNN-Chile newscast states that NASA wants to build a Space Elevato...
Wednesday, Dec 9
Carmina Burana and the Space Elevator
Here is the latest video from Ben Shelef, CEO of the Spaceward Foundation - organizers of the Space Elevator Games. He explains it in his latest post on the official site of the Space Elevator Games. He says, in part: The video clip tries to capture the scope of the project, and is dedicated t...
Saturday, Dec 5
2009 EuroSpaceward Conference - Day 1 (4)
At the 2008 Space Elevator Conference, a large contingent from the then newly-formed Japan Space Elevator Association (JSEA) showed up. They blew us away with how much they had accomplished in so little time and wowed us with videos, TV-show recordings and Anime from Japan - all showing...
Thursday, Dec 3
A new Brad Edwards interview
Sander Olson of the Next Big Future kindly emailed me to let me know that his recent interview with Dr. Brad Edwards has now been posted at their website. Most interesting quote (IMHO) from the interview: Small quantities of some nanotubes have been made that are sufficiently strong to be us...
Sunday, Nov 29
LaserMotive talks power-beaming
On the LaserMotive Blog, mention is made of a recent article in the SunBreak, a local Seattle newspaper (team LaserMotive is based in Seattle). It’s a very interesting article and well worth the read. LaserMotive’s Jordin Kare talks about power-beaming and why that interests LaserMot...
Monday, Nov 16
LaserMotive to appear on XM and Sirius satellite radio on Tuesday
On Tuesday, November 17th, at 4:30pm (Eastern time), members of the 2009 Space Elevator Games prize-winning LaserMotive team will be interviewed on the Jay Thomas radio show. This will be broadcast both on Sirius radio (channel 108) and XM radio (channel 139). The show will be replayed a...
Friday, Nov 13
Three (more) caballeros…
In yesterday’s post, I wrote about the contributions and leadership provided by Ben Shelef, Andy Petro and John Kelly. Today I’d like to thank the three people who actually made the whole space elevator raceway work. Readers may remember the problems that previous incarnations of the r...
Thursday, Nov 12
The three caballeros…
Time to start giving thanks where thanks are due. There were many, many people and organizations who’s help was crucial to the success of the recently completed Space Elevator Games. Pictured are, from left-to-right, Andy Petro, John Kelly and Ben Shelef. Andy is from the NASA Centennia...
Tuesday, Nov 3
Re-installing rotor blades on a helicopter
The helicopter used for the Space Elevator Games, a McDonnell Douglas MD530FF, was trucked in from its base in Washington. The rotor blades were taken off for transport and consequently had to be re-installed when it got to NASA-Dryden. This occurred on Monday morning and I filmed part of...
Tuesday, Oct 27
Games updates
Over at the official site of the Space Elevator Games, Ben Shelef (aka the CrazyEddieBlogger) has put up a couple of new posts. In the first, appropriately titled “Are you sure it’s going to work?“, Ben talks about how he thinks everything is ready to go from the Host side - the new raceway des...
Tuesday, Oct 20
More views of the NSS Testing…
Over at the official site of the Space Elevator Games, Ben Shelef has posted his video / picture ‘montage’ of the NSS climber ‘melt test’. Very cool post, but I deny that the ‘maniacal laughter’ that Ben attributes to me on a previous post of mine was caused by me. While I was recording the [...]
Thursday, Oct 8
NSS Follow-up
Over at http://www.spaceelevatorgames.org, the official site of the Space Elevator Games, Spaceward CEO Ben Shelef updates us on the attempt by NSS to become a fourth team in the Climber / Power-Beaming competition. As Ben writes, both Nic DeGrazia and I will be joining him in driving up to...
Wednesday, Sep 30
The ‘official word’
Over at SpaceElevatorGames.org, the official website of the Space Elevator Games, Spaceward Foundation CEO Ben Shelef gives us his take on the just completed testing, complete with a short video of part of the testing. The raceway is READY - now it’s just down to scheduling. When can we get...
Monday, Sep 28
Everything is looking good…
This past weekend, the second test of the new, improved Climber / Power-Beaming raceway was held. As with the first test, everything went really well. Here is the update from Ben Shelef, CEO of the Spaceward Foundation and organizer of the Space Elevator Games: Hi folks. I wanted to update...
Thursday, Sep 24
Next Space Elevator Games testing coming up
I received this email from Brian Turner, captain of the Kansas City Space Pirates: We are off to Seattle to do some testing with the new helicopter and cable arrangement this weekend. The new helicopter is about 3 to 4 times smaller and more precise than the old one. I am quite happy about that. T...
Monday, Sep 21
“Dynon Avionics Stabilizes a Space Elevator”
One of the many challenges in the Climber / Power-Beaming event of the Space Elevator Games is keeping the helicopter that holds up the steel cable raceway in the proper position. Keith Mackey, the aviation consultant that Ben hired to assist in all-matters related to the aircraft had de...
More updates from the official website of the Space Elevator Games
Ben Shelef, CEO of the Spaceward Foundation and driving force behind the Space Elevator Games, has posted some additional information about the latest round of testing. Truly, it went very, very well. The system was stable and predictable and performed exactly as hoped. Ben’s posts dis...
Sunday, Sep 20
Is ‘vomitrocious’ a real word?
During the testing a couple of weeks of the new, simplified, improved Space Elevator Games ‘race track’, the LaserMotive team took some videos from their mock climber. They say some people labeled them ‘vomitrocious’ but I think they’re pretty cool. Check it out…
Monday, Sep 14
Space Elevator Games - testing updates
Over at the official site of the Space Elevator Games, Spaceward Foundation CEO Ben Shelef fills us in on problems that occurred during the first sets of tests, changes that have been made and where we are now. His first post is Return to Blogging (welcome back!) while his second, Old Wrap-u...
Saturday, Sep 12
Quick update
I just spoke to Ben Shelef, CEO of the Spaceward Foundation and the driving force behind the Space Elevator Games. As I indicated in my previous post, Ben was coordinating another test of the Space Elevator ‘race course’ this weekend and he tells me that everything went as well as could hav...
Friday, May 29
The Spaceward Press Release
And here is the text of the official Spaceward Press Release about the upcoming Space Elevator Games: 2009 Space Elevator Games to take place on July 14 at the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center in California’s Mojave Desert June 1, 2009 (Mountain View, CA) NASA’s Centennial Challenges...
It’s on!!
Finally! The Space Elevator Games are ON! The Climber / Power-Beaming competition will be held at the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center located at the Edwards Air Force Base in southern California. The date of this competition will be July 14, 15 and 16 (of this year!) Because of the log...
Friday, May 1
Using a Space Elevator to generate 1g…
Someone commented with an interesting question on a YouTube video I posted last year: “I wonder how far from the earth the end of the cable would have to be to allow for the equivalent of 1G due to centrifugal force.” I didn’t know so I asked Ben Shelef, CEO of the Spaceward Foundation (host of t...
Tuesday, Apr 28
Designs for a Space Elevator Base Station
In the Department of Architecture at California State Polytechnic University, Professor Michael Fox had his students do a very cool and relevant project, a design of an ocean-based base station for a Space Elevator. As far as I know, this is the first time that people from the Architectu...
Wednesday, Apr 22
GPa (g/cc) / N-Tex / MYuris - Specific strength - How strong does a tether need to be?
Ben Shelef, CEO of the Spaceward Foundation (host of the Space Elevator Games) responded to a question about how strong a space elevator tether has to be. With Ben’s help, I wrote a 3-part series about this earlier (Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3) and Ben has augmented this by discussing the prope...
Tuesday, Apr 7
Why you should join ISEC - Part 2
On Monday of this week, I gave you my take on why you should join ISEC, the International Space Elevator Consortium. Today, I present Ben Shelef’s reasoning as to why he thinks that you should join ISEC. Ben is the CEO of the Spaceward Foundation, the host of the Space Elevator Games. Ben has d...
San Diego Science Festival features working model of Space Elevator
Reader Chris Radcliff has sent me links to photos of a Space Elevator model which is being displayed at the San Diego Science Festival. It looks like a lot of work has been put into this and I congratulate the builders on their effort. Chris has this to say: Here are a few early iPhone photos of [......
Saturday, Apr 4
Updates at the Space Elevator Wiki
Two months ago, I introduced my readers to the Space Elevator Wiki, a project put together and run by Keith Curtis. From the Mission Statement; “This wiki is intended to be a repository of information and a baseline for research of the space elevator. The general purpose is to provide a str...
Tuesday, Mar 31
Alien Space Elevator discovered!
Astronomers from the California Institute of Science have announced today the direct observation of a Space Elevator erected by an alien civilization outside our solar system, located around the second planet in the star system Epsilon Eridani. Just like the great wall of China, which...
Saturday, Mar 28
Transcript of Space Elevator Reference chat with Ben Shelef now available
On March 17th, the inaugural Space Elevator Reference chat was held. This is a series of chats that is being hosted at Marc Boucher’s Space Elevator Reference site. The first guest was Ben Shelef, CEO of the Spaceward Foundation, host of the Space Elevator Games. The transcript of this cha...
Friday, Mar 27
Call for Papers
A “Call for Papers” has been issued for the 2009 Space Elevator Conference. From the document; The Space Engineering and Science Institute Presents 2009 Space Elevator Conference Redmond, Washington, USA Sponsored by Microsoft Corporation Call for Presentations and Papers The 200...
Sunday, Mar 22
Reminder - Next Space Elevator chat coming Tuesday, March 24th
The second in the series of the Space Elevator Spring Chats, hosted by Marc Boucher at the Space Elevator Reference site, will be tomorrow, Tuesday, March 24th at 2:30pm - Eastern Time. Last week, Marc interviewed Ben Shelef, CEO of the Spaceward Foundation. This week, Marc himself will...
Wednesday, Mar 18
First test of the JSEA Balloon-Tether competition track is successful
Shuichi Ohno, Chairman of the Japan Space Elevator Association (JSEA) sent me an email about their first test of the Balloon-Tether system that they will be using in their upcoming Space Elevator competition (JSETEC): Last Monday, our first balloon-tether system experiment took pl...
Saturday, Mar 14
Japan Space Elevator Assocation to host its own Space Elevator Games
I received this word from Shuichi Ohno, Chairman of the Japan Space Elevator Association (JSEA): We at JSEA have institutionalized from private organization to Aggregate Corporation in this month, and now, we are planning to hold a new type of space elevator climber competition in Jap...
Monday, Mar 9
Competition team updates…
The arrangements are still progressing but not finalized for the upcoming Space Elevator Games - stay tuned to this blog or the Spaceward website for the latest, accurate information about the Space Elevator Games… In the meantime, two teams have posted updates about their activitie...
Tuesday, Jan 27
“Ten-X Stimulus Projects”
The DaVinci Institute’s Thomas Frey has given his opinion on “What projects can the U.S. government invest in to provide at least 10 times return on Investment?“. One of the projects he supports is the Space Elevator; “The space elevator is a proposed system to transport material from the ea...
Monday, Jan 26
Balloon-evator
And now on Flickr, we have a picture of; “The Space Elevator’s temporary low altitude support balloons, photographed here looking down from the construction shuttle at 15 miles above the Earth. The ballons provide additional stability/lift to the carbon nanotube ribbons in the lower 2...
Sunday, Dec 7
2nd International Conference on Space Elevator and CNT Tether Design
I’m interrupting my posts on tether strength as I, today, received this email from Markus Klettner of EuroSpaceward; Dear Ted Find enclosed the Book of Abstracts (2 parts) on our Luxembourg conference on Dec 6-7 FYI. The gathering has been highly constructive. Excellent presentation w...
Saturday, Nov 22
Iron Man - The End, and an interview with Bob Layton - The <b>Space</b> <b>...</b>
SEB]If it’s not revealing a plot line you’d rather keep secret for now, does Tony Stark use the ‘Edwards model’ for building a Space Elevator (a carbon nanotube ribbon as the climber cable, anchored in the ocean at the earth-end) or ...
Thursday, Nov 20
New Space Elevator book on the way - The Space Elevator Blog
In principle, such “momentum exchange” tethers can be used to fly a space probe from low Earth orbit all the way into orbit around Mars, without the need for rocket propulsion. A tether can also provide scientific information on the ...
Sunday, Nov 16
Japan Space Elevator Conference - day 1 - The Space Elevator Blog
Today I participated in the closed-session Carbon Nanotube Filament Seminar intended to promote interest and awareness of carbon nanotubes as a strength material among Japanese industry. The seminar took place at Nihon University in ...
Wednesday, Nov 12
The first Japan Space Elevator Conference set to get underway this ...
This weekend, the Japanese will take their first crack at holding a Space Elevator conference (note that this is NOT the same as them actually building a Space Elevator which was erroneously reported in a myriad of places in the ...
Saturday, Nov 1
Coming November 5th… - The Space Elevator Blog
One looks like a Space Station, perhaps at the end of the tether (though I can’t see the tether) while the other looks like an earth-port under-construction. But I could be wrong on both - we’ll see when the comic book comes out. ...
Friday, Oct 31
Space Elevator News catch-up - Part 3 - The Space Elevator Blog
“JUNE 22, 2043: As predicted by Arthur C. Clarke in 3001: The Final Odyssey, the orbiting luxury hotel is connected to Earth by a massive space elevator. Hyperstrong cables anchored to the earth near the equator (as required by physics) ...
Thursday, Oct 23
More Space Elevator news catch-up… - The Space Elevator Blog
His objection is that inherent defects in carbon nanotubes will prevent it from ever being strong enough to create a Space Elevator tether (he’s weighed in on this before). But he’s not an opponent of the idea as he says that his team ...
Tuesday, Oct 21
TRUMPF and Laser testing… - The Space Elevator Blog
For the three days of testing, TRUMPF supplied both teams with clean dry compressed air, chilled re-circulating water, 8kW of laser power through a 30 meter long fiber optic cable, an EStop Button and a “laser on/off” switch. ...
Monday, Oct 20
Where’s my Space Elevator?
Over at the Discovery Channel’s DiscoverySPACE section, Spaceward’s Ben Shelef gives us a feel for what a Space Elevator tether might look like at ground level and discusses the benefits we might expect when these come into existence… ...
Monday, Oct 13
Updates from the National Space Society (NSS) Space Elevator team ...
It just occurred to me that such an endeavor as building a space elevator could infinitesimally alter the earth’s center of gravity, and thus infinitesimally alter it’s orbit around the sun. However, a similar argument could be made, ...
Friday, Oct 10
IAC2008 - The Space Elevator Blog
Cost Effective disposal of Geosynchronous Satellites by Means of Tethers; Survey of GEO Debris Removal Concepts; Space Debris & Space Elevator; Mid-Earth Orbit Momentum Transfer Tether for Reduced Space Access Costs ...
Tuesday, Oct 7
JpSEC2008 - The 1st Japan Space Elevator Conference 2008 - The ...
With the American Space Elevator Conference (held in July), the Japan Space Elevator Conference (coming in November), the European Conference on Space Elevator & Carbon Nanotube Tether Design (coming in December), the upcoming Space ...
Monday, Oct 6
The Space Elevator makes xkcd.com… - The Space Elevator Blog
But the real prize in the “Depth” image is the carbon nanotubes and resulting Space Elevator. We’re everywhere! We’re everywhere! This website / cartoon strip is HIGHLY recommended. Put it into your RSS reader - it really is worthwhile. ...
