LONDON: A Canadian firm has been granted a US patent to build the world’s first-ever space elevator — 20 times the height of the world’s tallest building Burj Khalifa — that will also have a tower assisting spacecrafts to land and take off.
Ontario-based Thoth Technology has already outlined plans for an elevator to space that will help save enormous amount of fuel and money that go into launching rockets into orbit, Daily Mail reported.
The company will build a freestanding tower, reaching 20 km above the planet’s surface.
“Astronauts would ascend 20 km by an electric elevator. 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,” its inventor Dr Brendan Quine was quoted as saying.
The elevator will also be used for wind-energy generation and communications.
According to Caroline Roberts, president and chief executive officer of Thoth, the space tower will also include self-landing rocket technologies to herald a new era of space transportation.
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