Elevator:2010

Elevator:2010 was an inducement prize contest with the purpose of developing space elevator and space elevator-related technologies. Elevator:2010 organized annual competitions for climbers, ribbons and power-beaming systems, and was operated by a partnership between Spaceward Foundation and the NASA Centennial Challenges.

On March 23, 2005 NASA's Centennial Challenges program announced a partnership with the Spaceward Foundation regarding Elevator:2010, to raise the amounts of monetary prizes and to get more teams involved in the competitions. The partnership was not renewed after its initial 5-year term.

There were two (out of an intended seven) competitions of the NASA Centennial Challenges which fell under the Elevator:2010 banner: The Tether Challenge and the Beam Power Challenge. There were also the two original competitions.

This competition presented the challenge of constructing super-strong tethers, a crucial component of a space elevator. The 2005 contest was to award US$50,000 to the team which constructed the strongest tether, with contests in future years requiring that each winner outperform that of the previous year by 50%. No competing tether surpassed the commercial off-the-shelf baseline and the prize was increased to $200,000 in 2006.

Of the four teams competing, three were disqualified for not following length rules—one of these cases by a fraction of a millimeter. Ultimately, the 'House Tether' won against the remaining team. The 'House Tether' is composed of Zylon fiber and M77 adhesive. It was stronger than the machine used to test the tether itself: it began to fail at 1,600 pounds-force (7,100 N), forcing the test to be called off.

The Beam Power Challenge was a competition to build a wirelessly-powered ribbon-climbing robot. The contest involves having the robot raise a specified payload to a specific height within a limited period of time. The first competition in 2005 would have awarded US$50,000, US$20,000, and US$10,000 to the three best-performing teams meeting the minimum benchmark of 1 metre per second (3.3 ft/s). However no team met the minimum standard in 2005.

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