The Space Elevator: Hours before your Cargo Ship arrives at an equatorial island in the Pacific Ocean, you can see a thin, bright, vertical line bisecting the sky. As the ship draws closer, you see that the base of the line terminates at a large building that occupies much of the island. Your gaze follows the bright line from the building upward, but you cannot see its far end. The line is a ribbon of super-strong carbon nanotube grown around an unobtainium monocrystalline structure, and it stretches from this equatorial island up to the anchor asteroid in geosynchronous orbit 62,000 miles above you. Often hailed as the eighth wonder of the modern world, the Space Elevator is the premiere low-cost solution for lifting cargo out of Earth’s gravity well. It will expand lunar colonization, exobiological exploration, and asteroid mining. It has already spawned many new industries, and competition for SE contracts is fierce. The first stop on the Space Elevator is Midway Station, located just above the atmosphere, but well below geosynchronous orbit. Midway Station is a cargo transfer depot, solar power station, and a home away from home for the Space Elevator supervising engineers. The Space Elevator program needs unmanned robotic vehicles for routine cargo delivery, as well as additional Station expansion and construction. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has published a request for proposal (RFP) for the production of efficient robotic lifting vehicles for the Space Elevator program. Your job is to respond to the DARPA RFP with a Technical Design development and process document (Engineering Notebook) and prototype Technical Demonstration system (Robot). Your document and prototype system will compete with other purveyors’ entries in a “fly-off” occurring six weeks from today to support a Milestone B decision. This event (Game day) will include a technical evaluation of the engineering designs and head-to-head testing on prototype tether systems. At the Milestone B decision point, a team of judges will select a limited number of teams to pursue an accelerated Engineering Manufacturing and Development (EMD) phase. The EMD phase will last approximately three weeks, and will culminate in a follow-up evaluation and down-selection at Milestone C (regionals) where superior designs and top-performing prototypes will be awarded Limited Rate Initial Production (LRIP) contracts.