Elevator:2010
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Elevator:2010 is a competition with monetary prizes similar to the Ansari X Prize, but with the purpose of developing space elevator and space elevator-related technologies. Elevator:2010 organizes annual competitions for climbers, ribbons and power-beaming systems, and is operated by a partnership between Spaceward Foundation and the NASA Centennial Challenges.
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[edit] History
On March 23, 2005 NASA's Centennial Challenges program announced a partnership with the Spaceward Foundation regarding Elevator:2010, to raise the amounts of monetary prizes and to get more teams involved in the competitions.[1]
There are two (out of the currently seven) competitions of the NASA Centennial Challenges which fall under the Elevator:2010 banner: The Tether Challenge and the Beam Power Challenge. These are also the two original competitions.
[edit] Tether Challenge
This competition presents the challenge of constructing super-strong tethers, a crucial component of a space elevator.[2] The 2005 contest was to award US$50,000 to the team which constructed the strongest tether, with contests in future years requiring that each winner outperform that of the previous year by 50%. No competing tether surpassed the commercial off-the-shelf baseline and the prize was increased to $200,000 in 2006.
Of the four teams competing, three were disqualified for not following length rules--one of these cases by a fraction of a millimeter. Ultimately, the house-tether won against the remaining team.
The unchallenged house-tether was stronger than the machine used to test the tether itself: it began to fail at 1600 Lbs, forcing the test to be called off. Contest organizers have placed the next year's prize money at $500,000 USD for this competition.
[edit] Beam Power Challenge
This is a competition to build a wirelessly-powered ribbon-climbing robot, also done in partnership. The contest involves having the robot lift a large payload within a limited time frame. The first competition in 2005 would have awarded US$50,000, US$20,000, and US$10,000 to the three best-performing teams, meeting the minimum benchmark of 1 m/s. However no team met this standard, with only two teams climbing under beam power. Voted most likely to win the 2006 Beam Power Challenge was team Snowstar, representing the University of British Columbia, from Vancouver, Canada. This prize also increased to $200,000 in 2006, and was held October 20-21, 2006 at the NASA Ames Research Center at the Wirefly X PRIZE Cup. 13 teams were entered for competition. Only one team, from the University of Saskatchewan was able to climb the tether in under 1 minute, reaching the top in 58 seconds. However, their descent was required to be performed under power, and this was judged not to have happened, resulting in no prize awarded.
This Challenge will also have $500,000 in prize money for the 2007 competition.
[edit] Future competitions
The 2007 Space Elevator games being conducted by Elevator:2010 will have a reported total prize purse of US$1,000,000,[3] and there is a total of US$4,000,000 more that will be spent in prizes over the next 5 years.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ NASA - NASA Announces First Centennial Challenges' Prizes. nasa.gov. Retrieved on 2008-02-12.
- ^ Welcome to Elevator:2010's annual climber competition. spaceward.org. Retrieved on 2008-02-12.
- ^ Elevator:2010 - the Space Elevator Challenge. spaceward.org. Retrieved on 2008-02-12.
