Day 1 of the Spaceward Games, 2007 edition, is in the books. Today was a day for teams to arrive, setup and begin qualifying for the Power Beaming challenge. The only team that was ready was the Kansas City Space Pirates who easily qualified, although not without some technical issues which they hope to resolve before the final challenge begins on Friday.

I arrived just after 1:00 pm today to find Ben Shelef of the Spaceward Foundation working hard with the volunteers to get the crane setup so that the teams could begin qualifying. By 2:30 pm they were ready to go.

Tomorrow they'll try to get the rest of the teams here to qualify. We're still waiting for several of the teams to show up. I'm hoping that we can have the webcams up by noon tomorrow. Here are a couple of pictures from today. Ted Semon of the Space Elevator Blog has some video up from today.

Ben Shelef works on getting some of the equipment ready so teams can begin qualifying.

The 100 meter crane is readied for today's qualifying.

The Kansas City Space Pirates getting their mirrors ready to focus them on their climber.

The Kansas City Space Pirates attach their climber to the ribbon in preparation to qualify.

The Kansas City Space Pirates climber is reflected in the mirror that powers its climb.

The Kansas City Space Pirates climber climbs the ribbon in good time and qualifies for the finals.