Canadian space company, Thoth Technology Inc., has been granted the United States patent for a inflated tower. The freestanding space tower is pneumatically pressurized and actively-guided over its base. Reaching 20 km above the planet, it would stand more than 20 times the height of current tall structures and be used for wind-energy generation, communications and tourism.
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 press release calls it a space elevator but it is not.
The patent is here
Nextbigfuture covered inflated tower work at the University of Toronto in 2009. This is follow up to that work. Brendan Quine did the work in Toronto and is named on the patent.
There does not seem to have been any information on their website of any experimental work towards realizing the inflatable tower. They do also have plans for Mars missions, moon missions and have some actual electronic equipment products.
Read more »
Reposted via Next Big Future
No comments:
Post a Comment