Space elevator falls short of prize

NASA didn't have to write any checks at this year's X Prize Cup competition in Las Cruces, N.M., after judges decided Sunday not to honor any of the competitors in a $200,000 space-elevator event.

Ben Shelef, an executive with the Spaceward Foundation, which organized the competition, said the entry by the University of Saskatchewan climbed a 200-foot-high carbon-fiber ribbon just two seconds over the time allowed. Shelef said the judges decided it would be unfair to make an award to a team for simply coming close.

The Space Elevator Games was one of three events offering $2.4 million in NASA prize money at a two-day fair in New Mexico to spur innovation in space technology. Video-game designer John Carmack's Armadillo Aerospace unmanned rocket ship failed to win the million-dollar prize to design a next-generation lunar lander after his craft crashed.

Several teams also competed in another $200,000 challenge, to make a tether strong enough to carry an elevator to space. None won that event, either.

The idea of transporting astronauts and cargo to space not on rockets but in elevator-type carriers attached to tethers thousands of miles long and anchored to satellites in space is considered too fanciful to be practical any time soon. But NASA has included the elevator competition as part of its Centennial Challenge program to see if inventors can figure a way to overcome any of the huge problems associated with the idea.

The Space Elevator Games challenged competitors to build a machine that could climb a long tether using only power beamed onboard from sources such as sunlight, microwaves or lasers.