KC Space Pirates

Games beamed energy climber competition and is also entered in the 2008 climber competition. The team is affiliated with, but is not sponsored by the KC Robotics Society

The competition is put on by the Spaceward Foundation. The goal of the competition is to encourage universities and groups to research and create designs for beaming power to distant objects, but for the competition Spaceward has used the Space Elevator concept to make it more challenging and to show how beamed power could work. NASA has put up the top prize of up to $2,000,000US($900,000 for the 2 meters/second category and $1,100,000 for the 5 meters/second category) for the 2008 competition.

The competition is in the form of a race, 1km (3,280.8399 ft) straight up. The climbers are unmanned, have a maximum allowed weight of of 25 kg (55 lbs), and may contain no fuel or batteries - they must be only powered only by beamed energy. So far, the top designs have been reflected sunlight and laser. The KC Space Pirates used sunlight reflected off of a large array of mirrors concentrated onto a highly efficient array of solar cells.

The KC Space Pirates did well in in 2006 and 2007 but fell short of the money.

External links

* [http://www.elevator2010.org/competition.html Space Elevator Competition web site]
* [http://www.kcspacepirates.com/ KC Space Pirates web site]
* [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3401/02.html 12 minute broadcast segment on the competition by PBS Nova]
* [http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/ast07sep_1.htm NASA page on the Space Elevator]