Space travel is expensive. On lengthier trips, most of the rocket fuel is used to propel the rest of the rocket fuel along the way. Naturally, engineers in the space industry are constantly looking for ways to streamline the process.
One idea involves launching spacecrafts, pulled up by an elevator, from the top of a tower several miles high, allowing the mission to save valuable rocket fuel that would otherwise have been spent on escaping the earth’s gravitational pull.
Last month, the blueprint for such a tower was finally patented by Thoth, a Canadian tech company. The tower would be 9 miles tall—12 miles above sea-level at the peak when built atop a 3-mile high mountain—comprising of torus-shaped gas-cells stacked on top of each other, all held together by a Kevlar frame.
