Hello Folks!
The newsletter is coming to you today directly from beautiful Salt Lake City, site of the 2007 Spaceward Games.
In this newsletter:
We know some of you did not receive the previous newsletter - this has been fixed now, and if you haven't, you can catch up at http://www.spaceward.org/press.html#newsLetters.
Our first news item this week – Euro Spaceward!
Yes folks – you heard it right, we have spawned a sibling at http://www.eurospaceward.org.
Our first activity at Euro Spaceward is the Space Elevator climber workshop scheduled for November 12 thru 14 in Luxemburg, dedicated to incubating (Does anyone still use this word?) new power beaming teams in Europe and helping them with the logistics of competing in the US.
Expect to hear a lot more from Euro Spaceward in the future! Our thanks go to Markus Klettner, who is the driving force behind creating this organization.
Quick status report.
The competition is now a little more than 2 months away. We still have more than 20 teams in the running (remember that not all teams make it to the finish line!) and things are looking very well indeed.
We're getting excellent feedback on the Great Light Racer Championship project from across the board and are really looking forward to seeing the first Light Racers go this fall. We'd like to thank (again!) Paul at Strong Entertainment Lighting for helping out with the big spot lights.
Power Beaming Preview.
The Power Beaming (climber) competition this year is much more ambitious than last year's. For starters, we've raised the bar a bit - the teams need to ascend 100 m (30 stories) at 2 meters (6 feet) per second (compared with 50 m and 1 m/s last year). For a quick movie analogy, that's about as fast as Batman goes when he uses his dart gun to escape, except of course that Batman does not have power beaming technology, and our climbers do not carry beautiful women with them as they go.
Speaking of Power Beaming technology, we wanted to give you a little preview of the four design types we're expecting to see this year:
We hope this gets you as excited as it does us - we have gone from a Spaceward supplied white light beam in 2005, to helio-beaming and attempts at IR and MW in 2006, to full-blown professional systems in 2007. We could not have imagined such progress happening any faster, and we feel strongly that with this wide variety of solutions, the prize money will be handed out this year.
The list of teams, as always, is at http://www.spaceward.org/elevator2010/teams.html.
Next on our agenda is the "help wanted" section
We're looking for a few good men and women to act as guides - this event will draw on the larger SLC area population, and a lot of people coming to the games will never have heard about the Space Elevator before. (Gasp!) Do you know your Space Elevator basics? Can you explain them well? We've got a "Guide" badge waiting for you!
The next group of positions that needs more volunteer-power is the Light Racers crew. If you like the Light Racer concept, and like working with kids on science projects – this is the job for you!
For the above two positions, we need you to be on-site at least a day early, and preferably on the Monday before – there are rehearsals to perform, Media people to guide, and Light Racers runs to practice. Volunteers naturally get free access to the competition and VIP event.
If you feel you're up for it, please browse to http://www.spaceward.org/help-wanted.html and register, so we can keep you informed. Please also email help-wanted@spaceward.org with a description of what you want to do at the competition.
Finally, we're still looking for a few more good science teacher to help with development of individual Light Racer curriculum units. If you're interested, please browse to http://www.spaceward.org/lightRacers-stem.html, download and read the latest curriculum document, and register on the Light Racer education mailing list there.
Our last item today is sponsorships and promotions.
Again, we'd like to draw on your support. We are promoting the event in print media and over the web.
Do you operate a web site where promotion of the games is relevant and appropriate? If yes, are you able to post the gif below and link it to us? – you'd be doing us a great service if you can - every little bit helps.
<a href='http://www.spaceward.org'><img src='http://www.spaceward.org/images/swGames07lr.120x600.gif' border=0'></a>
We're also currently selling sponsorship for Light Racer prizes, advertising banners, and display booths. For Light Racer sponsorship information, see http://www.spaceward.org/lightRacers-sponsor.html. For other sponsorship, please see http://www.spaceward.org/eyeballs.html.
We'll appreciate it if you pass this information along to anyone who may be interested.
We look forward to seeing you at the games!
The Spaceward Crew