X-Prize Cup Tournament This Friday & Saturday in New Mexico
For readers that haven’t established weekend plans just yet, you might want to consider a quick jaunt out to La Cruces, NM where the Wirefly X-Prize Cup will be taking place this coming Friday and Saturday (Oct. 20 & 21).
The main event of the weekend will, of course, be the $2.5 million in Prize competitions that will being going on throughout the exposition.
The Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander and Vertical Lander Challenge will probably be on of the most watched events, but the Spaceward Foundation‘s Space Elevator Challenge may be among its most technically interesting. In the Space Elevator Games, teams will be competing for two, separate $200,000 prizes, one for who builds the best climber (a machine capable of traveling up and down a tether ribbon, with powering being beamed to a transmitter on the device) and the team that builds the strongest tether (first competing against other teams and then by proving that its tether is 50% stronger than the off-the-shelf variety.
While we’ve written about the space elevator competition in the past, Really Rocket Science readers will also have a leg-up on other attendees in terms of other events going on at the space exposition. Also taking place during the fair will be the unveiling of the Rocket Racing League’s X-Racer (written about at RRS here) and meet and greet with the world’s first space tourist, Anousheh Ansari (written about on RRS just a few weeks ago).
Stay tuned to Really Rocket Science for all the information coming out of New Mexico in the next few days. While we won’t be there, we’re going to stick to this story in the days ahead.
