Space Elevator Update

Hello Folks, greetings from elevator central.

It’s been a while since we issued this newsletter, so there is plenty to cover.

First and foremost, we’ve recently staffed up! Vern McGeorge and Marc Schwager are now spending the better part of every workday at the Spaceward office, concentrating on marketing work, team liaison, and helping Falline Danforth (our office manager) with logistics.

We’ve also moved to a new office, (courtesy of Gizmonics, our first sponsor – http://www.gizmonicsInc.com) and so have room to grow. We’re now looking for a team-liaison person, and a logistics manager for the upcoming competition. Work is still on volunteer basis. Candidates must be able to make it to the office in Mountain View, CA, since the work now is increasingly hands-on. Please contact falline@spaceward.org for details.

We now have 7 teams that have climber hardware and are intending to show up for the 2005 competition. The competition date has been pushed back 3 weeks – we will start accepting hardware on the original Sept 30th date, but will spend 3 weeks debugging both our infrastructure and the team’s hardware – this is the first time this hardware is being brought together, and we expect integration to require some extra time and attention.

We have been receiving a lot of inquiries for the 2006 competition lately, most notably from academic institutions. While the 2005 competition has 2 university teams and 5 hobbyist teams, the 2006 competition has at this point 6 academic teams, including University of Michigan, MIT, West Point Academy, and Virginia Tech. For details, check out http://www.elevator2010.org/site/teams.html

The 2006 rulebook is at http://www.elevator2010.org/site/documents/climber_rulebook_2006.current.pdf

Strong Entertainment Lighting (http://www.strongInt.com) has been more than helpful in providing the searchlight and related hardware. This is very expensive equipment and we are especially grateful to them. Please visit their site or let them know you appreciate their contribution.

We are now looking for a sponsor for the lifting equipment for the competition. Given that this newsletter reaches approx 1500 people, we thought this would make a good platform – if any of you have connections in a contractor’s equipment rental company, please make the connection for us. We’re looking for sponsorship for the rental of a long-reach forklift, a boom man-lift, and a boom crane, for various times between Sept 21st and October 25th.

We’re also looking for vehicle donations – either a large pickup truck or a flatbed truck. We’re a 501c3 non-profit, so the donation is deductible, and while most non-profits simply sell the vehicle for scrap, we actually intend to use it! (Check out http://www.elevator2010.org/site/competitionScrapbook.html to see how) Please contact ben@spaceward.org with any information.

We want to take this opportunity to congratulate NASA’s Centennial Challenge office (http://exploration.nasa.gov/centennialchallenge) on their recently launched programs for an astronaut glove and for Lunar regolith extraction. Hit the “challenges” link on their web site to see the complete list of competitions.

Last but not least, we now have an official mascot – the Yaminon, or the Hairy-Nosed Wombat! Thanks for Jan Finder for pointing it out – read all about it at http://www.yaminon.org. For the artistically minded, if you can come up with a graphics depicting a wombat on the Space Elevator, we’d like to see it! Or wombats on Mars, for that matter. (hint: they burrow)

Till next time,

Cheers

The Elevator:2010 Crew