In the last 24 hours, since the end of the space elevator games, the media has been reporting on the games and of course trying to make it interesting - controversy, arguments, questionable actions,... I am happy to say the games were a little less interesting along those lines and more so along the lines of advancing technology. Below are clarifications on some of the material showing up in the press.
One of the most critical components of the space elevator is the climber. It is second only to the ribbon in importance and perfection of design. As we will see shortly at the X-Prize Cup, building the perfect climber is not an easy task but getting close is well within grasp.
The baseline climber consists of a few basic components: the power system, the drive system, the payload and the infrastructure. We will get into each of these but before we do we need to understand the goal – hauling cargo, whatever it may be, up the ribbon. The climber meets this goal by lifting the maximum payload at a specified ascent speed. A quick glance at the basic layout of a climber and we quickly understand that to maximize the payload at a given speed we need to minimize the mass of the other components – the power system, the drive system and the infrastructure. This means optimizing the systems to work together and for their precise purpose.
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