The sails are up and the trade winds are a blowin'!

We have done some testing with low power lasers horizontally at 1km. We have lined up two di!erent Solar cell providers depending on what laser we end up using. We have one or two answers for every technical challenge we have anticipated. We have a few parts for the '08 climber in house that are awaiting testing along with some sketches of where to put them. Our focus has been in making sure we have a viable plan, but the fund raising environment seems warmer than last year.

We have recruited some more expertise this year to make sure we have all the skills needed. Read More…

Again we performed exceptionally well and nobody won. Click read more below for the whole story.
The good news is that we finished 2nd the bad news is that we did not finish fast enough to win the money. Our best time was 1:15. The first place team managed :54 seconds. They pulled this off in the last minutes of the last hour of the last day.

22 teams entered
8 teams showed
4 teams qualified
2 teams made credible runs for the money

We qualified on the very first hour of the very first day with a climb that was a factor of 5 stronger than the next nearest competitor. The other three qualifiers squeaked in with weather adjusted climbs in the closing hours of Thursday. Our qualifying climb had a top speed of 3.47 Meters per second (7.75MPH) Things went down hill from there. The weather got bad and kept us from having any good climbs to find the problems that would eventually make the difference between $0 and $500,000. Read More…