Scientist already put a detailed plan of the new imaginary tower that would give human access to outer space much easier and convenient than the space elevator I wrote about before in my blog.
The new inflatable tower is about 15 Kilometers (9.3) miles tall, 230 meters across and weigh about 800,000 tons. The future tower is going to be tethered to a mountain top and filled out with a variety of gasses including helium.
“This structure could be made of commercially available materials,” said Brendan Quine, who, along with Raj Seth and George Zhu at York University in Toronto, Canada, wrote an article detailing their tower in the journal Acta Astronautica.
Prototype of inflatable tower
The project has several purposes:
- Reduce the cost of space travel: The tower will reduce the cost of launching aircrafts and sattelites by almost 30%.
- Replace the exesting network of geostationary communications with a new wireless date network.
- Enhance Cell phone signals.
The project was proposed by York University scientists who said that it could be completed before 2020 if we work on it.
But if they get it done, we will be able to travel to space within 40 mintues and without any rockets.
They should build this at Ground Zero as a fitting tribute to those that suffered 9/11. It would initially not get so far into space, than if it was built on a mountaintop, but the views would still be stunning.