| Space elevator team wins $900000 from NASA

Space-elevator-team-wins-$900,000-from-NASA A Seattle-based team has won $900,000 in this years Space Elevator Games, a NASA-sponsored contest to build machines powered by laser beams that can climb a cable in the sky.

The homemade cable-climber built by the LaserMotive team climbed a 3,000-foot tether suspended by a helicopter at a speed of 8 mph during a Wednesday attempt.

LaserMotives robot climber managed to get all the way up the cable four times in two days, with a best time of about 3 minutes and 48 seconds .

The feat was the best performance yet for a miniature space elevator prototype and qualified LaserMotive to win the lower-level prize of NASAs $2 million Power Beaming Challenge this week at the Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base in Californias Mojave Desert. The contest requires competitors to beam power from a remote source to propel their vehicles up a quarter-inch-thick steel cable dangling from a helicopter.

The 2009 Space Elevator Games are the first in which prize money has been awarded. This years event was a very successful competition, said Andy Petro, director of NASAs Centennial Challenges program. Power beaming is truly a 21st-century technology.

Despite LaserMotives success, it is still a long way away from what would be needed to carry humans to Earth orbit, as proponents envision.

Space elevators were first popularized in the 1970s by the science fiction novels of Arthur C. Clarke, as a means to reach space without using a rocket. Instead, a ship could climb along a fixed structure, like a beam or cable, suspended in space from a permanent geostationary satellite 22,000 miles above Earth. The sticking points are the need for a super-strong yet light material for the tether, and a good way to anchor the other end securely. Not to mention the vehicle to climb it.

Thats where the Space Elevator Games come in. Teams were required to use beamed power to send their robot up the cable at an average speed of at least 4.5 mph in order to qualify for a portion of the $2 million prize purse. The competition is sponsored by the Spaceward Foundation and NASAs Centennial Challenges program, which is aimed to spur development in space exploration.

An attempt by the Kansas City Space Pirates on Wednesday fell short of the speed requirement and got stuck partway up the cable during a Friday climb attempt. A climber built by the University of Saskatchewan Space Design Team was unable to compete during the three-day contest because of a series of technical glitches, NASA officials said.

Had LaserMotives entry managed to climb the entire length of the cable in under 3 minutes, at an average speed of 5 meters per second, it would have won the entire $2 million prize. As it stands, $1.1 million in prize money remains available for future competitions, contest organizers said.

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