NASA offers “citizen inventors” $2 million prize for space elevator technology
That’s one way to private space exploration.
Microsoft just hosted and co-sponsored a “Space Elevator” conference in Redmond with “a strong NASA presence” to discuss building a 62,000 mile elevator out of the earth’s orbit. And among the highlights were a
tether-strength competition with a $2 million prize for “citizen inventors”, according to this eye-witness report.
The contest has already generated the first-ever “pull test” for a carbon nanotube. (“The hushed crowd looked on tense with anticipation…”) But the second competition involves the ultimate alternative energy — “power beaming” using lasers (or solar power) to remotely transmit energy to the device for its test climb up a one-kilometer cable dangling from a helicopter!
Their motive is economic. A space elevator could lower the per-kilogram cost of putting a payload into orbit from $20,000 to $2.