2009 Space Elevator Games

[The Artist]

https://www.spaceelevatorgames.org/

Basic idea is teams have to build a robot that climbs up a cable 1km in the air. This wire is held up by a helicopter.

The robots cannot have any energy stored on them so the teams are transmitting the power to the robots with laser beams.

If they can reach 5ms then they could win $2 million.

Quite interesting for the geeks among us.

[damz]

been reading up on the space elevator concept which is pretty sound and glad to see that they are takin the idea seriously. the potential for a fully functioning lift is so great yet few people have even heard of it
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[ms51ves3]

This was on one of James May's documentaries. Isn't it all rather pointless?

[The Artist]

[5v3d3b0]

The problem comes when the robot is a million km away... What kind of laser can shine bright at that distance, and how accurate can we be? A thousandth of a degree angle difference will be a large distance on the surface of that planet.
But definitely a good idea and I think it has potential.

[The Artist]

[Mellow Matt]

Isn't the point that getting things into space is dead expensive using current methods, whereas if we had a big lift going into space it'd be relatively cheap. And we could have a load of spacecraft that don't need to be able to fly/survive in the Earth's atmosphere.

I find the idea pretty interesting! Get a lift into space, then a space taxi to the moon for a day trip (unless it takes longer to get to the moon, no idea!).
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[The Artist]

[5v3d3b0]

Think that once you get out of the atmosphere a some distance away from Earth, you can reach MUCH higher speeds cause air resistance and gravity seize to be a problem.
Ever heard of the spacecraft with 2km sails they thought about building? Was supposed to run only on the sun's "push"
Acceleration is VERY slow, but after say 10 days of constantly accelerating at say 0.001 ms^-2 you'd be up to a speed of 864 ms^-1, which is 3110.4 kmh^-1
Not bad if you ask me... The truth however is that the force acceleration would be a lot slower than that cause the force emitted by photons is miniscule

[ncrn]

One of my friends on my course at uni has done some stuff with transmitting power using lasers, so I've linked him to this. My degree is in robotics so if its possible I might give this a shot .
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[LordShaftesbu...]

The hard part is building the cable, not whatever it is that goes up it.

[Omega]

I understand this is a challenge to push technology but why not just use the cable itself to provide the power? Is the next step in the challenge to remove the cable or something?

[SoND]

[Paulington]

The cable will inevitably be constructed out of some form of carbon, they are hinting at carbon nanotubes due to their very high tensile strength and specific strength.

The idea of the cable carrying the power if we use armchair nanotubes could work but lest we forget we are building a HUGE cable. Armchair nanotubes are up to 1000 times more conductive than copper but are slightly heavier and weaker than other forms.

Simply to put in into scale, to maintain the same place on the Earth's surface it would have to be in geosynchrous orbit. This would mean the cable would have to be 35,786 km long and even the lightest cable at this length would be around 10000-40000 tons or so so must support it's own weight etc etc.

In other words, it's hard.
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[The Artist]

I would have thought they would not use a cable in space. Some sort of laser guidance system with lasers providing power aswell.

With little gravity there would be no need for a cable, and use the power to propel it some other way.

[Paulington]

Then what will the 'lift' be guided by if not a cable?

The whole point is they want to find something they can use as a lift that can climb a cable that is anchored to something on the surface of the Earth and a satellite in a geosynchronous orbit with the Earth so as to have a permanent cable there from the surface of the Earth to space to transport items easily.
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"Four wheels move the body, two wheels move the soul."
Current Vehicles: '89 Kawasaki KDX200, '99 Yamaha XV535, '00 Honda ST1100 Pan-European, '08 Suzuki GSX-R1000, '08 Mitsubishi Lancer GS4 2.0 TDCi, '15 BMW 1 Series 116d Sport Turbo.
CBT: 27/08/08. Theory: 04/09/09. Module 1: 16/09/09. Module 2: 01/10/09.

[LordShaftesbu...]

Why not run electrified tracks up the cable?

Like I said, the interesting part is building the cable. Currently there are no materials strong enough that can be manufactured in sufficient quantities to make it.

[ncrn]

I think one of the main issues with cable power is if the cable gets damaged then the lift loses all power and it is a costly and lengthly process to repair the cable. If you can transmit the power wirelessly then it could potentially be easier to repair a damaged to the power system as you can replace a section rather than say an entire massive cable.
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[5v3d3b0]

The should mimic the material in spider web... A cable just a few cm thick can support ridiculous weight!
But I trust they know what they're doing

[LordShaftesbu...]