The space elevator tower has a segmented elevator core structure, each segment being formed of at least one pneumatically pressurised cell.
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In the patent, Quine explained that rocket ships expend more energy because they “must counter the gravitational force during the flight by carrying mass in the form of propellant and must overcome atmospheric drag”. The idea for a ribbon or tether-based elevator still faces the challenge of conceivable materials to make it work.
Caroline Roberts, president and chief executive of Thoth Technology, said that the space elevator, along with self-landing rocket technologies being tested by companies like SpaceX, has the potential to usher in a new era of space transportation. It would reach 20km (12 miles) above the planet.
The objective? The technology offers an exciting new way to access space using completely reusable hardware and saving more than 30% of the fuel of a conventional rocket. The space elevator tower maintains a desired pressure level through gas compressor machinery. The plan as outlined in the patent is to construct a freestanding tower that reaches a height of 20 km.
The designers of the ThothX Tower said that the facility could also be used for communications, scientific studies and power generation using wind turbines. Learning what technologies Thoth has developed should prove interesting. Or, as Information Week put it, “Rockets are extremely hard to launch off the face of the earth because of gravity and air resistance”. First proposed by Russian space pioneer Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and popularised by Sir Arthur C. Clarke in his novel The Fountains of Paradise, the space elevator can carry passengers and cargo from the Earth’s surface and into geosynchronous orbit about 36,000 km up.
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Despite sounding like something out of science fiction, Thoth Technology’s concept is more realistic than previous ones. These tubes are light enough that the helium actually helps keep the space elevator stable. “From the top of the structure you would be able to launch using a single stage space plane directly into low Earth orbit, and the return to the top of the structure and you wouldn’t need any expendable rockets that would come off during the flight”, says the inventor Dr Brendan Quine.
