Stairway to the stars: Company receives patent for ‘space elevator’:

The saying; taking it to new heights is absolutely going to be taken to new heights if the Canadian firm Thoth Technology can pull this one off. They are calling it their hairbrain idea The world’s tallest free standing space tower. 

The intended use of this structure is for wind-energy generation, tourism, communications and a platform to launch space vehicles.

Tourism? Anyone that would go up into something that high better stop to see their shrink before they buy their ticket. That monster has to sway back and forth like a palm tree in and Hawaiian typhoon.

To start with, I think these people are nuts by pushing the aerial envelop as high as they are.

I could probably think of 50 different ways it is an insane idea but just to mention a few.

After 8,000 feet a person needs oxygen in order to breath freely. This behemoth is going to top out at 63,336 feet or 12 miles above sea level.  The vast majority of the structure will have to be built with the workers using some sort of breathing devices.

I would have to assume that the structure is going to be built using poured concrete. How in the world can something like that be formed and poured? Concrete pumps can’t pump that high.

They may be considering using a more flexible material than concrete????

How do they expect to hoist all the building material to those heights? Gotta be one hell of a tower crane. They may have to set up a couple dozen cranes at different platform elevations to reach the top.

IF they are successful, I do have reservations that this can be pulled off, have they taken into consideration the wind factor at those heights. At that height the wind speed can easily exceed 200 miles per hour on a good day. Not to mention the temperature that can go as low as 60 below zero on a sunny day.

The cost to build the world’s tallest structure in Dubai was $1,500,000,000.00. The Canadian’s structure is 20 times that height and I would assume 1,000 times more difficult to construct. These Canucks must have some deep pockets.

I think this Canadian company may have bitten off more than they can chew.

Two of the biggest questions that pops into my head is WHY and if they are foolish enough to attempt to build this space elevator, what is going to cost?

The Empire State Building is 1,215 feet high and 13 people died during its construction. The fatality numbers on this one have to be astronomical or out of this world in this very foolish undertaking.

Although in modern time the world’s tallest building (2,064 feet) Burj Khalifa in Dubai only claimed one life of a worker that fell to his death.  We can say things are looking up.