Space Elevator Competition Extended One Day

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.

• VIDEO Coverage of the X Prize Cup
• Complete Coverage of the X Prize Cup
• Handicapping the Space Elevator Games
• Lunar Lander Rocket Flies But Fails In Bid For Prize Dollars
• Challenges Ahead for Spaceport America
• Astronaut Advice for Future Space Tourists
• Progress Touted In Private Space Travel
• Space Elevator: Hoist to the Heavens