I can almost here it now:
Elevator door opens...
"What floor sir?"
"Space Station Please."
"Yes sir."
Sound ridiculous? Well, yeah, it is actually. But, the idea of an elevator to space may be a reality sooner than you might think. The 2009 Space Elevator games are under way, and there have already been some interesting developments. For those of you not familiar the the competition, NASA has put up a $2 million prize for anyone who can construct a prototype elevator capable of taking a heavy payload up one kilometer in the air.

In order to qualify for a part of the prize money, a team must ascend a 900 meter course with an average speed of 5 meters per second. This benchmark was reached by Team LaserMotive this week, and there are two other teams that will try and reach that milestone this week as well.

Of course this all is a far cry from building an actual space elevator. But it is a necessary first step. The ultimate goal is to create an efficient way for NASA and others to transport heavy payloads (like satellites and space craft) to low Earth orbit. Right now, that is the most difficult and costly aspect of NASA's operations. The common wisdom is that such an elevator would pay for itself in just a few years of operation.

Unfortunately though, my vision of taking an elevator to space and visiting the international space station, or some other space hotel will have to remain a dream... at least for now.

After a suspenseful race to the finish, NASA handed out a $1 million prize to Masten Space Systems. The company, based in California, participated in the Northrup Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge. The Armadillo team out of Texas earned the $500,000 second place prize.

Each team that competed had to design, build and fly a module from one landing pad to another, and then return. They only had 135 minutes to complete the tasks, and were judged based on the precision and accuracy of their landings. The Masten team had difficulty getting their craft ready to fly for their scheduled attempts on Wednesday and Thursday. However, the judges allowed the team to worth through the night and attempt a flight on Friday, which turned out to be the winning attempt.

The spirit of the competition was similar to that of the $10 million Ansari X-prize, where groups competed to build a privately funded manned space craft. The hope is that new technology will be developed privately, allowing advancement to happen at a more rapid pace.

Only 630 million years after the creation of the Universe a super-massive star exploded in a violent supernova. The energy from this explosion has been traveling across the Universe ever since, more than 13 billion years. This event marks the most distant object ever observed.

These types of events, known as a gamma-ray burst or GRB, typically occur at least twice a week on average. However, this is the oldest event ever recorded, besting the previous mark by 150 million years.

GRBs are important to understanding the Universe as they allow us to "see" events that occurred billions of years ago. Normally, celestial events are difficult to observe when they are that far away, but GRBs emit so much light, particularly in the gamma-ray band (hence the name), that scientists can easily detect them.

Love space and astronomy? Have an iPhone (I wish)? Well the ultimate geek tool is now available -- a new iPhone app that will allow you to keep up on all things NASA anywhere, anytime!

The new free application, developed by NASA themselves, has four functions: Missions, Videos, Images, and Updates. The video and image functions will give you access to NASAs vast archive of, well, images and videos.

The mission function gives you access to information about any of NASAs many satellites, shuttle launches, Moon missions, rocket tests... well you get the idea. But if you just want to know what the latest happenings are, check out the updates function. You could also track orbiting craft like the international space station in real time.

Perhaps the coolest feature (in my geeky opinion) is the NASA picture of the day. Let's face it, space and astronomy pictures are pretty cool (don't believe me, check out the vast array of image galleries on this site), so this is a great way to have those images sent right to your phone.