Pembroke, Ontario company Thoth Technologies received a US patent for a Space Elevator on July 21, 2015. The patent and the idea of a standing runway in space are getting a lot of coverage this week. The elevator would rise twenty kilometers above the earth’s surface and be used for communications, tourism, generating wind energy or as a spaceport.
Brendan Quine is listed as the inventor on the patent and envisions astronauts riding an elevator up twenty kilometers to the top of the tower and then launching in single stage spacecraft into orbit. The tower base could be used for refueling.
Caroline Roberts, CEO and President of Thoth, says that landing on a runway twenty kilometers above sea level will take space flight and make it feel more like commercial flying. In 2009 Quine and Roberts unveiled a small scale model at York University, where Quine teaches Space Engineering and Planetary Physics. The model was seven meters tall and weighed around fifteen kilograms.
The idea of a space elevator is thought to have been born in 1969 at the NASA Ames Research Center and published in 1974 by Jerome Pearson. This orbital tower was intended to anchor a geostationary satellite to the ground, and combat issues of buckling, strength and dynamic stability.
Space elevators are an amazing, science fiction level idea. My first experience with the concept was in 2009 at a nanotechnology conference and the possibilities have been buzzing in my head ever since. There are several issues with the concept itself, construction, buckling loads, and gravity that need to be worked through in the coming decades. The patent has potential solutions for these huge hurdles but we're definitely still in the idea phase. Quine hopes that a large company will buy the idea (and the patent) from him and use their resources to fully develop this moonshot level project.
(Tower image courtesy Thoth Technologies, Model image courtesy CTV News Canada, Patent image courtesy USPTO)