July 2007 Archives

The SpaceWard Foundation has announced that the 2007 Space Elevator Games will be held at the Davis County Event Center just outside of Salt Lake City, Utah. The qualifying rounds will start on October 15, and the event will be open to the public between October 19 and October 21.

There will be more than 20 teams competing for this years $1,000,000 prize.

Ken Davidian, program manager for Centennial Challenges: “I am excited and impressed with the evolution and level of technical maturity demonstrated by the teams in both the Tether and Beam Power Challenges. Over the past 24 months, individual teams started from scratch, have grown continually, have coalesced into communities, and are on the verge of accomplishing substantial achievements worthy of a Centennial Challenges prize.”

New this year is the "Light Racers" -- that allows kids and young adults to take part in a realistic lunar exploration scenario and win cash prizes for their performance.

• Learn more about the 2007 Space Elevator Games
• What you will see
• Attractions
• Tickets
• Directions
• Sponsorship
• Exhibitors

Over at the Space Review Sam Dinkin ask's whether a space elevator worth its weight in diamonds?

"Diamonds have a big advantage over carbon nanotubes. They are currently being produced in commercial quantities. Chemical vapor deposition (CVD) is being used to flood the jewelry market with extremely high quality diamonds at 10-30 percent below wholesale prices of natural diamonds. Substrates as wide as 15 centimeters have been reported as a base for diamond growth. That’s hundreds of times the area that’s needed for a space elevator cable."

Your thoughts?

Update: The link has been fixed, sorry about that.

By Bryan Laubscher

Introduction

There is an old adage: “Getting there isn’t half the fun, it is all the fun!” I want to adapt it to spaceflight: “Getting there isn’t half the effort, it is all of the effort!” The reason for this is the physics of the rocket equation and the depth of Earth’s gravity well. In this missive I will perform a back of the envelope calculation for the cost per kilogram (kg) of transporting mass to the vicinity of Mars. This calculation is rough and certainly not the last word. It does not include the cost of rocket research, development or engineering. Moreover, the overhead of rocket structure, tanks and staging are not included. Thus the rocket equation represents the best case scenario – true rocket performance will be less. However, the resulting cost is stunning and creates a lot of questions around how much exploration, especially manned exploration, can we afford to do with rocket technology!

Note that in this discussion, the vicinity of Mars means that it is not in orbit nor on the surface – those two maneuvers cost more fuel and hence money. I chose the vicinity of Mars because at Mars aerobraking can be used to get into orbit or to the surface without fuel expenditure. Another reason for the choice is that the ΔV, (the amount of velocity change) to reach the vicinity of Mars is less that that required to “soft” land on the surface of the Moon. Thus all costs that I derive are greater for a lunar surface mission

Black Line Ascension announces the opportunity to be an organizer of the 2008 Space Elevator Conference (PDF).

At this time we expect the conference to be held in Seattle, Washington. This conference will continue the tradition of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Space Elevator Conferences hosted by HighLift Systems, Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Institute for Scientific Research.

The purpose of the conference is to bring together scientists, engineers, businessmen, economists, educators, financiers, writers, students and others interested in the Space Elevator for wide-ranging papers and discussion sessions. The papers will report on the technical, political/social, economic and legal aspects of the Space Elevator. One discussion session will focus on the Space Elevator community’s roadmap and another will deal with raising the awareness of the Space Elevator in society. Additional sessions will be created as the need arises. The specific date of the conference has not been chosen yet.