Space Elevator Games Delayed Until at Least Mid-May

The Space Elevator Games – set to be held at the end of April at the Kennedy Space Center – have been delayed until the middle of May, according to Spaceward Foundation CEO Ben Shelef.

Shelef made the comments during a March 17 IM chat whose transcript is now posted on the Space Elevator Reference site. Spaceward Foundation is organizing the games.

“We have 6 teams that are in advanced stages – meaning they have working power beaming systems and climbers,” he wrote. “We are in the middle of a safety review process with NASA to ensure that we can do this in a safe way. And we expect to be done with this in a couple of weeks. This review is taking a bit longer than expected, so we’ve had to push back from the 4/29 date, I hope by no more than a few weeks.”

Shelef said nearly half of the teams that originally registered have dropped out so far.

“So we’ve had 11 teams registered, about half basically gave up on the way, and of the remaining 6, I’d say 3 are strong contenders, and 3 are realistic ones,” he wrote.

Read the full chat.