Tech firm eager to get space lift off the ground
Sarah Knapton It is an idea that every small child has had at some point. Instead of sending up rockets into space, why not simply build a huge lift.
Now a Canadian firm has been granted a patent for a “space elevator” which will shoot cargo 20km into the stratosphere from where it can be launched more easily.
According to Thoth Technology, the lift would cut the cost of space flight by around one third because shuttles would not need to carry enormous amounts of fuel to get themselves off the ground.
“Astronauts would ascend to 12 miles [20km] by electrical elevator,” said Dr Brendan Quine, the inventor.
“From the top of the tower, space planes will launch in a single stage to orbit, returning to the top of the tower for refuelling and reflight.”
Rockets are incredibly inefficient because they need huge amounts of power to get off the ground, using up most of their fuel fighting against inertia and atmospheric drag.
Engineers had always believed that space elevators would be unfeasible because no material exists which could support itself at such a height.
However the new design by Thoth gets around the problem by only building the elevator to 20km so that it sits in the stratosphere rather than going all the way out into geostationary orbit, where satellites fly, which is around 35,400km up.
Dubbed the ‘‘ThothX Tower’’ it would be inflatable, made with reinforced segments and topped with a runway from which satellite payloads could be launched.
It would stay upright using complex arrangements of fly-wheels to compensate for the tower bending.
The patent suggests that either pressurised cars would run in the core of the structure — like in traditional pneumatic tube message systems, or they could climb up the outside of the shaft like a funicular railway. Each car could carry around 10 tonnes of cargo.
Space elevators were first suggested by Russian scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky in 1895. He proposed a freestanding tower reaching into geostationary orbit.