The competition heats up: A news report today claims that Google will invest $1 billion of the $10 billion SpaceX plans to spend to build a space-based internet system.
More here. Whether true or not, this story illustrates the growing buzz for the idea of investing, building, and making money in space. Increasingly, the biggest and most innovative capitalists in the world want a piece of that endless pie.
The Japanese Nobel winner who helped invent blue LEDs, then abandoned Japan for the U.S. because his country’s culture and patent law did not favor him as an inventor, has blasted Japan in an interview for considering further legislation that would do more harm to inventors.
In the early 2000s, Nakamura had a falling out with his employer and, it seemed, all of Japan. Relying on a clause in Japan’s patent law, article 35, that assigns patents to individual inventors, he took the unprecedented step of suing his former employer for a share of the profits his invention was generating. He eventually agreed to a court-mediated $8 million settlement, moved to the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) and became an American citizen. During this period he bitterly complained about Japan’s treatment of inventors, the country’s educational system and its legal procedures.
…”Before my lawsuit, [Nakamura said] the typical compensation fee [to inventors for assigning patents rights] was a special bonus of about $10,000. But after my litigation, all companies changed [their approach]. The best companies pay a few percent of the royalties or licensing fee [to the inventors]. One big pharmaceutical company pays $10 million or $20 million. The problem is now the Japanese government wants to eliminate patent law article 35 and give all patent rights to the company. If the Japanese government changes the patent law it means basically there would no compensation [for inventors]. In that case I recommend that Japanese employees go abroad.”
There is a similar problem with copyright law in the U.S., where changes in the law in the 1970s and 1990s has made it almost impossible for copyrights to ever expire. The changes favor the corporations rather than the individual who might actually create the work.
In the heat of competition: The next Falcon 9 launch and attempt to land the first stage has been delayed to no earlier than February 9.
The rocket will carry a NASA solar observatory,
No explanation for the delay was given, but, because there was no indication it is connected to the payload, I stronly suspect it is because SpaceX needed more time to make some modifications to the first stage in preparation for the vertical landing attempt.
It was interesting to get back from a weekend trip to the mountains and find that over the weekend almost every press in the country had published a story about the last first stage landing attempt. SpaceX’s effort to do this has truly captured the interest of a lot of people who normally poo-poo this space stuff.
Elon Musk has released images showing the final seconds of the Falcon 9 first stage as it attempted to land vertically on a floating barge last week.
The rocket can be seen tilted as it falls and explodes. I am more amazed that they got this close to a success on their very first try.
The competition heats up: Orbital Sciences has inked a deal with the Russian company Energomash to buy 20 rocket engines for its Antares rocket, with options to buy 40 more.
If Orbital ends up buying all 60 engines the deal will be worth one billion dollars to the Russians, which for them is a lot of money.
In the heat of competition: Recent problems during two Soyuz rocket launches has caused ESA to hesitate using the Russian rocket in the future.
Instead, they might use Ariane 5 to put their European GPS Galileo satellites into orbit.
Though she is now in Russia, Sarah Brightman has delayed the start of her astronaut training by one week due to the onset of a head cold.
Update: Russian officials now say it was a family illness, not a head cold, that forced this delay.
The competition heats up: A commercial effort to build a 648 constellation of satellites to provide worldwide intenet access has secured funding from Richard Branson’s Virgin Group and Qualcom.
Not surprisingly, Branson was immediately saying that his LauncherOne concept will be launching many of these satellites, though I think he’s got to get it built and tested first.
The competition heats up: The Indian government has picked a career space engineer, Alur Seelin Kiran Kumar, to run ISRO, its space agency.
Expect India to increase its focus on planetary and manned space exploration as well as it launch rocket industry under Kumar.
The competition heats up: Within three years SpaceX hopes to establish a new satellite operation in Seattle, Washington, employing 1,000 people and focused on the design of smaller, cheaper satellites.
The key quote from the article perhaps is this: “Musk said the office would focus on developing satellites but could also be a base for rocket-design talent uninterested in moving to SpaceX’s base in the Los Angeles area.” To put it another way, California’s socialist and highly restrictive state government has forced Musk to consider an alternative location for the expansion of his company.
His effort should also strike fear into the established satellite makers, who have done relatively little innovative design changes in the past four decades. As SpaceX has done with the launch industry, I expect SpaceX will do with the satellite industry: force them to lower costs while developing new technologies.
The competition heats up: According to SpaceX officials, the first test flight of their Falcon Heavy rocket is still on schedule to occur sometime in the third quarter of 2015.
We should all take this schedule with a grain of salt. Back in 2013 SpaceX had scheduled the first Falcon Heavy launch for the second half of 2014. Then in April 2014 they said it would occur early in 2015. Now they say the third quarter of 2015. I would not be surprised if there are further delays beyond this.
Nonetheless, I have no doubt that they will launch this rocket. SpaceX has consistently delivered on its promises, which is one reason it has grabbed so much of the launch market in such a short time.
The competition heats up: Of the new commercial launch contracts signed in 2014, Arianespace and SpaceX tied for the lead.
Russia meanwhile signed no new deals 2014, suggesting that the recent launch failures of their Proton rocket has significantly soured interest in their services, despite their low launch costs.
