Thoth is a Canadian company that makes miniaturized, lightweight gadgets to be taken into space, and now it has just patented an insane, sci-fi technology that could make getting them into orbit a whole lot easier. 
 
 The "design," which is really little more than a "what if?" idea typical of patents, specifies a shaft made up of inflatable segments and cars that run up and down the inside or the outside of the tube using wheels or an electromagnetic drive. It's a space elevator. But aside from the modular, inflatable construction, the other innovation here is that this elevator doesn't use a cable. 
 
 And that's a good thing too, as it would extend 12 miles up into space. Imagine the damage a 12-mile-long cable could do if it snapped. 
 
 "Astronauts would ascend to 20 kilometers [12 miles] by electrical elevator," says inventor Brendan Quine. "From the top of the tower, space planes will launch in a single stage to orbit, returning to the top of the tower for refueling and reflight." 
 
 The hardest part of getting into space isn’t going up—that’s relatively easy, and cheap in terms of fuel. The hard part is staying there, which involves accelerating the rocket until it is going fast enough not to drop back again. If you want to get into orbit around the Earth, you need to hit about 25,000 mph to do it. Think of firing a bullet from a gun. Fire it straight up and it goes pretty far. But if you want it to keep going around the Earth, you have to shoot it fast enough that it never falls back down. 
 
 Thought of another way, the bullet (or satellite, or whatever you launch) is constantly being pulled back down by gravity (i.e. falling), but it is going so fast it keeps missing the Earth. 
 
 A space elevator solves the problem because to top part is already moving at the same speed as a geostationary satellite, which orbits above a fixed spot on Earth by proportionally matching its speed to the ground below (only way faster, as the satellite is moving in a much bigger circle). Thoth’s proposed elevator is only 12 miles high, though, not nearly high enough for orbit—low Earth orbit starts at 125 miles, and geostationary orbit is 22,000 miles up. The patent does say that the elevator could be scaled to reach 200km, but that’s a little like saying that your bank balance could be scaled to reach $1 billion—it’s technically true, but the execution may prove tricky 
 
 What the Thoth elevator (theoretically) does is get your payload past the worst of the launch. Most of the mass of a rocket is fuel, and yet more fuel is required to lift it. Air resistance also significant when you’re trying to get tons of junk to move at 25,000 mph—just think about how difficult things get when you ride a bike against a wind. Even a 12-mile-high elevator would eliminate much of that, with a launch platform at the top for further travel, and a 200-km high shaft would get anything into orbit, slowly but cheaply. 
 
 Thoth’s patent also speculates on tourism opportunities. The elevator would have additional platforms at various altitudes. These could house hotels with awesome views, or provide an easy way for skydivers to get up high—kind of like a ski lift for parachutists. 
 
 These high platforms could also be used as airports. 
 
 "Landing at 12 miles above sea level will make space flight more like taking a passenger jet," says Thoth President and CEO, Caroline Roberts, although rising 12 miles in a space elevator might make those annoying trips to and from the airport seem easy. 

 Patent granted for inflatable space elevator 
 
 A Canadian company has been granted a United States patent for the design of a 20-km-high tower that would act as a launch pad for space flight. 
 
 The freestanding space tower concept, developed by Thoth Technology Inc., is held rigid by pressurized gas and would allow spacecraft and people to be lifted to a level in the atmosphere requiring less force to launch. 
 
 Reaching 20km above Earth, it would stand more than 20 times higher than the world’s current tallest building, the 829-metre-high Burj Khalifa in Dubai. 
 
 While Outer Space proper is considered to begin around 100km out, 20km is just beyond the 19-km “Armstrong Limit”, the point at which atmospheric pressure is so low that your bodily fluids would boil off without a protective suit. 
 
 Thoth Technology, named after an Egyptian god associated with the moon, says the tower would offer “an exciting new way to access space, using completely reusable hardware and saving more than 30% of the fuel of a conventional rocket.” 
 
 Astronauts would ascend to 20km by electrical 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 refueling and reflight,” said the design’s inventor Dr. Brendan Quine, who is also Professor of Space Engineering and Planetary Physics at York University, Toronto. 
 
 Thoth President and CEO, Caroline Roberts, believes the space tower, coupled with self-landing rocket technologies being developed by others, will herald a new era of space transportation. 
 
 “Landing on a barge at sea level is a great demonstration, but landing at 12 miles above sea level will make space flight more like taking a passenger jet,” she said. 
 
 An image from the patent (http://www.uspto.gov/web/patents/patog/week29/OG/patent.html) 
 
 The space elevator concept is capturing imaginations around the world. 
 
 Last year Japanese construction giant Obayashi announced long-term plans to work toward a far more ambitious one, 96,000km high, in cooperation with space technology leaders. 
 
 And last month there was a Space Elevator Conference in Seattle. 
 
 Images via Thoth Technology 

 THOTHX RELEASES SPACE ELEVATOR ANIMATION 
 
 August 22, 2016 (Pembroke Ont.) – Thoth Technology Inc. has released a two minute video animation of the ThothX space elevator. The animation features a ThothX tower reaching 15 kilometers above Earth with hotels and an observation deck. Space planes take off in a single stage to low Earth orbit and return to a rooftop runway for refueling. The animation features “Elevator,” a song by the United Kingdom band, Space Elevator. 
 
 “We are delighted to partner with Space Elevator. It was incredible to find such a talented group who are working so creatively to achieve our shared goal for humanity to reach the stars safely,” said Caroline Roberts, President and CEO of Thoth. Constructed from Kelvar, the pressurized towers feature newly patented technologies, including a new way to mount space elevator cars. 
 
 “Space elevator towers are set to revolutionise the way we access space, generate renewable wind energy and communicate over a wide footprint. With a ticket price around $2,000 USD to ascend the full elevator, we aim to make space affordable. The tourist potential is immense,” Roberts said. 
 
 Thoth plans to construct towers to 1.5 km and 15 km globally over the next decade. 
 
 Space Elevator band fan site: 
 
 http://spaceelevatorband.com/ 
 
 View the animation on youtube here: 
 
 Contact us 
 
 For interview requests: Alison King, Media Relations, (905) 484-3261, alison@thothx.com 
 
 PREVIOUS THOTH NEWS 
 
 CANADIAN COMPANY GRANTED SECOND U.S. PATENT FOR SPACE ELEVATOR 
 
 August 5, 2016 (Pembroke, Ont.) – Thoth Technology Inc. has secured further patent protection for their space elevator technology. The invention, published in this weeks United States Patent Gazette, describes an innovative new space elevator car mounting method. 
 
 “The spiral elevator mechanism allows bi-directional travel up and down a space tower,” its inventor Brendan Quine said. Thoth CEO Caroline Roberts describes the benefits of the new technology: 
 
 “Access to near space is set to revolutionise the way we do business on Earth. The advantages for energy generation, communications and space tourism are immense,” she said. 
 
 Thoth plans to construct pneumatic ThothX towers to access first 1.5 km and then 15 km above Earth within a decade. 
 
 US 9,403,607 available from USPTO here. Stay tuned for more space elevator news. 
 
 Contact us 
 
 For interview requests and additional information: 
 
 Alison King, Media Relations, (905) 484-3261 alison@thothx.com 
 
 Images 
 
 Image Credit: ThothX Space Elevator
– A Canadian company best known for building tiny objects suitable for outer space has just earned a US patent on something distinctly grander: a 12-mile-high inflatable space elevator held up not by cables but by pressurized segments, reports fastcoexist.com. That's more than 20 times taller than the world’s current tallest building, the nearly 3,000-foot-tall Burj Khalifa tower in Dubai. So why a space elevator? Because rockets (and, presumably, the space tourists inside them) require less force to launch when starting that much closer to the destination. "Landing at 12 miles above sea level will make space flight more like taking a passenger jet," says Thoth Technology CEO Caroline Roberts in a press release. The inventor says astronauts would reach the top via electrical elevator, from where rockets can launch in a single stage to orbit as well as return to refuel. If this seems far-fetched, it's actually less ambitious than Obayashi Corporation's hope to build a space elevator a quarter of the way to the moon by 2050, reports CNET. Even so, Thoth's ambition still requires building just beyond what is known as the "Armstrong Limit," or "the point at which atmospheric pressure is so low that your bodily fluids would boil off without a protective suit," reports Global Construction Review. The idea is gaining so much traction that Seattle is actually hosting a Space Elevator Conference later this month. (Obayashi plans to construct its space elevator not from Earth but from, well, space.)