Space Elevator September Update

Hello Folks, greetings from Elevator Central.

Three items on our agenda today:
— Infinet team status
— Tether competition
— Competition day

Infinet:
As many of you have noted, the Infinet team is based at Gulfport,
Mississippi, and we have not been able to contact them since the storm
struck – until yesterday. Michael Flora emailed in, they have sustained
major damage to their shop but he’s scrambling to catch up and, in his
peculiar choice of words “I plan to be at the competition come hell or high
water”. I’m sure he can use some public support – the team’s contacts are
(as usual) at http://www.elevator2010.org/site/teams.html

Tether:
Interest in the tether competition has been growing in the last couple of
weeks. We now have 3 teams that have emailed us the Notice of intent, and
we’re taking them through the registration process. There’s also some
preliminary interest from other groups, so we’re definitely looking good.
We’re on track with our tug-of-war tether pulling machine (image attached)

Competition Day:
We’ve been getting a lot of inquiries about public attendance.

This being only the first annual Space Elevator games, our focus will be on
the competition itself rather than on the logistics of a major public event.
Still, we are working on provisions for some public viewing, though most
likely we will only be able to accommodate a limited number of spectators at
any given time. Details will be made available as we finalize the agreement
with our hosts.

The best way to get a backstage pass (into the team/VIP area) is to
volunteer! And with that, I’m handing the microphone to Vern McGeorge, who
is organizing many of the competition day activities:

The 2005 Beam Power and Strong Tether Competitions are upon us. These
competitions will start Friday morning, October 21st and wrap up Sunday
afternoon, October 23rd.

This will mark two historic achievements. It will be the first competition
to be held on behalf of NASA’s Centennial Challenges Program. Second, it
will be the debut of working space elevator climbers in a public setting.

All the magazine articles, academic papers, conferences and Internet chatter
that we have experienced over the last four years are all well and good, but
nothing will compare to the sight of climbers ascending on a beam of light.

We’re starting early on Friday to give the media some wicked cool B-roll
footage of a fully lit up climber against the pre-dawn sky. Seeing is
believing and this will mark a major milestone on the road to getting the
first space elevator built.

We want to use this first competition as an opportunity to work out the
kinks (ours and the teams) before the 2006 competition which will likely be
held during the summer. The 2006 competition will be a major public event.
So, the best way to view the climbers up close is to volunteer to help us
run the event. The pay sucks (while NASA has pledged considerable prize
money, they provide zero operational funding), but we’ll feed you, give you
a cool T-shirt, invite you to the parties and you’ll have an opportunity to
rub elbows with the teams and with other individuals who are working to make
our achievable dream a reality. It’s your chance to be a witness to history.

Would you like to help us change the world?

If this sounds appealing to you, please contact Vern McGeorge at (650)
969-2010 or vern at spaceward.org

Sincerely yours,

The Spaceward Team