Congratulations go out to Jordin Kare, Tom Nugent, and the rest of the LaserMotive team for claiming a $900,000 prize in the Power Beaming Challenge of the Space Elevator Games. In order to claim this prize, their climber, which was powered by lasers, had to climb to the top of a 1 kilometer long cable at a speed between 2 and 5 meters per second (their climber averaged about 3.9 meters per second).There are two sides to the Space Elevator Games: the Power Beaming Challenge and the Tether Challenge. The purpose of the Power Beaming Challenge is to build the fastest robotic climber to reach the top of a cable, with all energy received via beamed power (in the past they allowed solar reflectors and spotlights, but this year all power was supplied by lasers). The purpose of the Tether Challenge is to build the strongest tether, one capable of beating the "reference" tether....

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