Proof you can get a US Patent for anything, even an Elon Musk Hyperloop stood on end!
Space Elevator?
Ambitious plans to build a twenty kilometer (12.4 miles) tall space elevator tower have been announced by a Canadian space technology firm.
Although this distance is a mere fraction of that reached in space missions, Thoth Technology says its ThothX Tower will make a major cost reduction in space flights by helping navigate the difficult first 50 kilometers (31 miles) of travel that traditionally requires rockets. The latter are inefficient, particularly regarding fuel consumption. In addition to needing to carry sufficient fuel to get a payload into orbit, they need extra fuel in order to carry the required fuel to reach that point in the first place.
OK, so somehow a 20 Kilometer tower is going to get you to an elevation of 50 Kilometers? Let's say that isn't a typo and somehow is magically possible without using rockets. You still have to get up to about 354 Kilometers to say, reach the International Space Station, another 304 Kilometers up.
But that's not good enough, you also need to reach a tangential velocity of about a whopping 28,000 Km per hour. Starting from zero the top of this tower.
But heck, we saved extra fuel! Only need one rocket stage to do that! Ya, sure.
In rocket launches mass is expelled at a high velocity to achieve thrust in the opposite direction. Thoth says its space elevator would take 30 percent less energy, because no expulsion mass is required against gravity. Thoth says their technology could make it cheaper and easier for privately funded companies to conduct space travel.
30 percent less energy to do what exactly? Certainly not to get into obit. You don't even have to make any back of the envelope calculations to see this is ridiculous.
“There’s a lot of opportunities for the structure,” said Tomaszewski. “Tourism is one. You’d have a great sight of the earth at 20 kilometers up, you’d see about 1,000 kilometers in any direction. Communications. So right now geostationary satellites, once they’re up there you can’t really service them. If we had facilities on the tower it would have that same 1,000 kilometer range and you’d be able to service them.”
You mean like the view from an airplane? OK that's just 9 kilometers up or so, but I'd say close enough. Communications? Sounds like an AWACS plane to me.
This patent is for sale. Cheap! I bet.