Space Elevator Prize Activity

It's an active time for prizes with a Space Elevator theme:

@SEGames: The "Strong Tether" Competition of the Space Elevator Games is scheduled for Friday, August 13th. Watch this space for more details.

The SEGames twitter account linked above tweated a number of times recently about the games and the related conference. I wouldn't be surprised if more updates will happen from there soon, since there is also the 2010 Space Elevator Conference.

The Space Elevator Blog has been quite active, too:

Yuri Artsutanov and Jerome Pearson are HERE - ... and you'll see more pictures of them in some of the twitter links below ...
Latest updates on the Strong Tether Challenge - From this post: Ben Shelef ... tells me that there will be at least two contestants, and possibly a third, in this year’s Strong Tether Challenge. All of the contestants are bringing entries made out of carbon nanotubes.
Results from Japan’s 2010 JSETEC Competition - This includes a summary of the competion, and also some good links. Here's one of those, and it features a couple teams from the earlier NASA competitions: Kanagawa University Egami Team B wins 2nd Japan Space Elevator Technical and Engineering Competition Grand Prize (PDF)
Strong Tether challenge just 3 days away… - ... and that was 3 days ago! I like the tug-of-war theme ...
Looking for a few good teams… - The Kansas City Space Pirates want more competitors ... to get over the funding hump!
The Mighty Tether - now on YouTube - on Team Astroaraneae

You can see more about the games and conference from Michael Lane. Here are a few examples:

@mlaine: RT @piboeing: Space elevator pioneers take part in Redmond conference http://bit.ly/af1pyg

Jerome Pearson for #SE2010 kick-off dinner. They are discussing Dyson Spheres. http://tweetphoto.com/38554156

Historical meeting. Yuri Artsutanov. #SE2010 http://tweetphoto.com/38551635

Laubscher - Now talking about @NASA_Technology Centennial Challenges - Power Beaming $1.1M left to win!

Laubscher - "But tomorrow..." is the #NASA Strong Tether competition. $2M at stake tomorrow! #SE2010

It might be worth trying that #SE2010 hashtag to keep up to date on the games and conference, but there's no guarantee that everyone will use that.

Here's some other Space Elevator prize news:

Next giant leaps for NASA tech - Cosmic Log:

... There's also a project to be conducted jointly with the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, looking into beam-powered space propulsion. That follows up on NASA's Power Beaming Challenge, which paid out $900,000 to the Seattle-based LaserMotive team during last year's Space Elevator Games.

Here's more about Japan's Space Elevator Games:

@newspacenews: Japan hosts an international space elevator competition representing 15 different engineering universities http://yhoo.it/d8sIYk

From the article linked by NewSpaceNews:

Fifteen teams from Japanese, US and German universities took part in the two day event which kicked off as teams, one-by-one, attached their mechanical climbers to cabling suspended from a balloon 300 meters above ground. ... While many teams, including last year's Munich University champions experienced trouble, Nihon University's team's climber was the only climber to make it to the top during the morning competition.

Update (Friday afternoon):

@SEGames: Finally - URL for Strong Tether Competition is http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nasa-centennial-challenge---strong-tether-competition.

Competition is scheduled to start at 4:15pm US Pacific time - less than two hours from now

We have 3 competitors and all of them have carbon nanotube entries.

@NASAPrize: At the Space Elevator Conference. Talking about Centennial Challenges at 3:45 PDT

Carbon nanotubes are HERE - The Space Elevator Blog
Another Tether entry - The Space Elevator Blog

There are plenty of updates on the whole conference at twitter hashtag #SE2010, but I'd also recommend checking NASAPrize and SEGames twitter accounts, since they haven't been using that tag (yet?).

Post-Games Update:

Results from the 2010 Strong Tether Challenge - The Space Elevator Blog
Tethers tortured in $2 million contest - Cosmic Log (through Tether contest wrap-up at RLV News)