There was supposed to be another round of the power beaming challenge in 2010. Basically a grudge match between the top 3 teams to push the max speed over 5 m/s and claim the remaining $1.1 million in prize money. However management at NASA took the opportunity of having a winner to reinterpret Congressís authorization for the Centennial challenges. The specific clause was that only US citizens were eligible for the prize. Although USST, The Canadian team, had a US citizen as the administrative captain, the team was clearly Canadian and the money would have went to Canada. This led to a big delay while options were explored to avoid disqualifying the team that had placed first every year of the competition except the last. Additionally NASA Dryden, the venue that hosted the competition, could not donate/discount as much of their services as they did last time around. This increased the venue cost by as much as 3 fold while the number of entrants had dropped to two. Us and LaserMotive. This would have made the cost to compete soar north of $100,000. So a new venue had to be found. Delay after delay has become the norm for the Space Elevator games. Because of raising costs and continual delays. TRUMPF, Our Laser vendor, very apologetically withdrew their support. They had signed up for a 1 year sponsorship and it was rolling into year 3. I am thankful that we had their support while it lasted. This forced us to drop out of the rematch. Leaving only one team- LaserMotive. Not much of a competition. So Spaceward, the organizer decided to rethink the games. Spaceward, LaserMotive and myself have chatted o! and on about what format of competition would best serve the interests of the public by advancing the state of the art while allowing a reasonable number of teams to compete.

Brian