RORY MACLEAN
News Editor

A group of University of Saskatchewan engineering students are the frontrunners in a competition that could earn them world renown and $2 million to boot.

The U of S Space Design Team will be heading to the Edwards Air Force Base in southern California on Nov. 2 to compete in the Elevator 2010 competition. The USST already has two competitions under its belt. In both, they bested their competitors but fell just short of the criteria to win the prize.

Created by NASA, the contest challenges teams to find the best potential design for a space elevator.

A space elevator would consist of a thin ribbon, or tether, about 62,000 miles long, extending from a ship-borne anchor to a counterweight in space. The ribbon is kept taut by the rotation of the Earth and that of the counter weight at the end of the ribbon.

It has not yet been proven that the tether anchored by an object in orbit around the Earth can be sturdy enough to carry objects into space. But with the workhorse of NASA’s space program — the space shuttle — being retired in 2010, engineers are looking for radical new ways to get payloads into space.

The main problem is fuel. Launching a shuttle into space takes a fantastic amount of fuel, over one million pounds, not including the external fuel tank. That is a lot of energy. But with a space elevator, the fuel all stays on the ground.

“The big thing is not having to carry your fuel source,” said Stephan Kopchynski, who does mechanical work for the USST. “You transfer (energy) to the climber through light, which has no mass.”

The climber uses solar panels to convert a ground-based laser beam into electrical energy.

The competition has two facets, one to design the technology to supply power to the climber, or elevator, and another to work on the material that the tether might be built of. The USST is focused on the energy transfer.

“We’re the world leaders in that technology,” said Kopchynski. “We hold three world records.”

In the competition their model will climb a cable suspended from a helicopter. It must travel five metres per second for a kilometre up the cable to win the $2 million prize. That is 10 times higher than the last competition. The group will square off against two other teams, the Kansas City Space Pirates and LaserMotive.

With a budget of about $300,000, the USST is seriously invested in winning, though they have many sponsors behind them including the U of S and a few generous alumni.

“I think we have a really good chance,” said Patrick Allen, president of the USST. “All our components are up to the task.”

The location of the Elevator 2010 competition is actually quite suiting. The Edwards Air Force Base, located in the Mojave Desert, is where space shuttles are sent to land if weather conditions in Cape Canaveral, Fla., are not suitable.

“It’s right on a lakebed, so it’s perfectly flat for miles,” said Allen.

He says that if they win, the team would like to see the money be reinvested in the university.

“Hopefully it would be put into a savings account and let it accumulate some nice interest, then give away the interest as scholarships or to student groups like ours to help others have the same experience that we have.”

The USST plans on having a send-off party on Tuesday, Oct. 27 at 1 p.m. Plans are not finalized but Allen says it will either be in the College of Agriculture atrium or in the Hardy lab.