It looks like they just won almost a million dollars in the power beaming contest.
I sure hope that the administration will request a lot more money for Centennial Challenges, and Congress grant it. Tomorrow’s award of the NGLLC prizes at the Rayburn Building would be a good opportunity to make the point that, dollar for dollar, they put to shame anything else that NASA is doing, Constellation most of all.
Indeed. The Centennial Challenges selected interesting problems and several people competed in each. At a low cost NASA gets a lot of R&D done and the market gets people with working experience in solving these problems.
I don’t understand the nature of this competition, and didn’t see a link to its description, or rather a description that I understand.
I’m just a regular kinda guy.
also, all of these competitions should be well covered with HD camera’s a photo pool, and actual film. An informed enthusiast, or experienced educator should thoroughly cover them.
Cuz there is a cool factor going on in the last few years that I don’t recall from when I was a kid, other than when I was actually there for a couple launches in florida.
@Douglas, indeed, the coverage is not that great. To clarify: this is a competition designed to encourage development of technologies for orbiting tethers, specifically the cars that would climb an orbital tether. A 1km tether is lowered to the ground from a 1km altitude, then competing robotic vehicles attempt to ascend the tether, some using battery power some using beamed laser power. The prize was for climbing 1km at a speed of 2m/s or more (a slightly larger prize for 5m/s) using beamed power. Laser Motive achieved this and has qualified for $900k of prize money.
These capabilities are amazing but they are still a tiny fraction of what will be needed for a feasible beanstalk elevator system. Nonetheless, for the price, this is a tremendously successful competition.
Note that there is a related $4 million competition for strong, lightweight tethers which has not yet been won.
Thanks robin.
I did a bunch of clicking and finaly realized what was intended. I remember seeing a thing about laser propulsion forever ago, and always thought it was awesome. To see the specific controls in one of the vids I clicked, was impressive as all heck.
2 m/s is aproximately have the spead of a distance runner If I didn’t eff up my math too much. 5 m/s is impressive, if it’s all “beamed” energy.
Thank you very much, I think that those with means should buy better Digicams, and worry less about streaming, rather focusing on Hi-Res footage that can be reused without looking silly on the nets, and the enthusiast blogs.
True story (I’m kinda known for these) robin.
I’m affraid of heights, TERRIFIED! I used to climb rocks and when I would “mantle” my friends would make fun of me, cuz I would lay FLAT on the summit until I set the anchors.
“You climb like a spider, but you sprawl like a jelly WTF?!” or some variation there of my friends would say.
Anyways, I have an uncle who when he was in school (before the space program, I wanna say ’48) (he told me this story when I was a kid) was learning about physics, and my uncle said “I want to go to the moon.” His teacher kinda mocked him, but time proved him true.
Later, when I was a kid, unc told me that My generation could visit the moon as everyone visits europe or other places. I said. “But I’m affraid of heights.”
And he responded with, “doug? the moon and space isn’t up. It’s Forward, at a VERY high rate of speed.”
So I’m affraid of heights, but I’m not affraid of the moon, I’m not affraid of speed, ask anyone who’s driven with me.
That sort of simple explanation, that sort of engagement is whats missing from the “newspace” discussion.
Doug,
I remember talks of Moon Hotels, Moon Excursions, Moon Resorts and the like in the mid to late 60’s.
Too bad it never came true. I’d have gone to work, not visit.
Then when Mr. Bush said we need to go to Mars. I was hoping they’d decide, fat, 50ish, techy guys would be the best candidates.
Then 9/11 happened.
Now it’s easier to get to Mars or the Moon than Pittsburgh. (almost) It’s certainly quicker!!
Well, they’re basing the tests on a helicopter, so the beam is relatively small. So for the test, they could easily beam the power from somewhere other than the anchor point. Having the beam come from a different direction wouldn’t invalidate the important concept of “can beam power from ground to power the platform”.
Not to mention, this test is based on a laser capable of delivering 400 watts of power to the target using infrared. Your average aluminum helicopter skin isn’t going to vaporize under those conditions. Heck, I doubt you’d even scorch the paint.
In the “real world” use of this, the suspension unit is going to be much further away and specifically designed with protective shielding. In fact, the endpoint might have solar panels pointed back to Earth so any “stray” IR could be caught and used at the station – though it’s far more likely they’d have a solar panel up there, too, and beam IR down to the elevator once it reaches a certain point and the beam from Earth starts dissipating too much.