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R_www.dailymail.co.uk_sciencetech 2015 03699.txt.txt

#Going up! Space elevator in a tower 12 miles high could one day give astronauts a leg-up into the cosmos While Nasa is busy testing its biggest ever rocket in the hope it will propel mankind to Mars, one company is planning a rather different approach to usher in a new era of space travel. Canadian space firm Thoth has outlined plans for an elevator to space, potentially saving huge amounts of fuel and money that form part of the vast cost of launching rockets into orbit. The company has been granted a US patent to build a freestanding tower reaching 12 miles (20 km) above the planet's surface. The space tower would be more than 20 times the height of Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world. President and chief executive of Thoth Caroline Roberts claims the space tower will also include self-landing rocket technologies to herald a new era of space transportation. Referring to the powered landing system being developed by Space X, she said:''Landing on a barge at sea level is a great demonstration, but landing at 12 miles (20 km) above sea level will make space flight more like taking a passenger jet.''As well as tourism, the elevator could also be used for wind energy generation and communications. The mastermind behind the project is inventor Dr Brendan Quine. He said:''Astronauts would ascent to 12 miles (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 refuelling and reflight.''While other designs for space elevators have involved complex designs using graphene or carbon nanotubes, the Thoth design reportedly uses inflatable sections and flywheels to provide dynamic stability. This is not the first time a space elevator has been proposed, with many engineers considering it as a possibility since it was suggested first by Russian scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky in 1895. Engineer Peter Debney last year proposed a theory that borrows the methods by which cathedrals control their centre of gravity-by tapering at the top -and applied it to the concept of an elevator that takes humans into space. When building any tall structure-from gothic cathedrals to skyscrapers and eventually a space elevator-the sturdiness and balance comes from its centre of gravity. By creating strong, far-reaching foundations deep into the Earth, the centre of gravity is shifted from above the ground, to below it. The second part of Mr Debney's plan is to place a satellite in geostationary orbit, and lower a cable from it to the ground. But as soon as the cable lowers, it changes the centre of gravity of the satellite, placing it at a lower orbit and causing it to move relative to the ground. To keep the whole thing in orbit a cable would then also need to be extended up at the same time, to keep the system balanced. Because this would make a nonlinear system, the cable would need to extend out almost twice as far as it is brought down. The alternative is to use a counterweight, such as a suitably sized asteroid, beyond geostationary orbit to balance the cable and save the excessive length. The design by Thoth seeks to get around the complication of geostationary orbit by limiting its height to just 12 miles (20km) instead of the full 62 milles (100 km) considered the end of our atmosphere and the beginning of space e

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