

The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance". This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary". The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional". The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics". These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. Ticket sales for Blue Origin’s future flights are already approaching $100 million whether this balloons into an industry worth the technological investment or merely consolidates into a revenue stream adjacent to more lucrative government contracts, is entirely up to the billionaires in charge and the innovators on their lengthy payroll. Now that Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson have demonstrated the appeal of space tourism, the ultrarich are lining up for their own out-of-this-world experience. Still, patent hurdles have stopped neither Blue Origin nor SpaceX from taking their respective steps toward commercial space flight.
#Blue origin rocket landing trial#
Patent Trial and Appeal Board granted their motion to cancel claims 1-13 of the rocket-landing patent. The comparison provided by SpaceX between the reusable launch vehicle concepts from NASDA (left) and Blue Origin (right).īezos’s company accepted defeat months later, as the U.S. SpaceX attorneys pointed out how Blue Origin’s patent attempted to lay claim over the technique described over a decade before.
#Blue origin rocket landing software#
Engineers from the National Space Development Agency of Japan (NASDA) and Mitsubishi Space Software developed the earlier designs. Around the time Blue Origin filed their patent application, SpaceX was conducting test flights for their Falcon 9 rocket which employed a similar type of landing mechanism.īut SpaceX fired two challenges against patentability in 2015, one of which cited prior art from 1998 covering similar technology. Despite not having built a reusable rocket of its own, Blue Origin’s claims would have entitled it to damages over SpaceX’s supposed infringement. However, Blue Origin tried to patent the technology in 2014, specifically for a method to recover rocket boosters by landing it tail-first on a platform at sea. SpaceX has famously designed, manufactured, and landed reusable rockets, which stand to cut space travel costs by millions of dollars. Much of it has been between Bezos and Musk, at times about their respective companies’ intellectual property.īesides their differing visions for humanity’s spacefaring future, the Amazon executive chairman and Tesla CEO have been more adversarial over similarities in technology aimed at paving the way for our “future in space”. In the span of two weeks, two of the world’s wealthiest have chartered flights to outer space: Richard Branson aboard his Virgin Galactic rocket, and Jeff Bezos on Blue Origin’s first crewed launch.Īlso in the conversation is Elon Musk who, even without his own off-planet trip, has his aerospace company SpaceX making headlines over the years for both its technical accomplishments and setbacks, as well as the occasional publicity stunt.īut the battle for space supremacy has been raging way before its financiers decided to step out of Earth. A new space race is underway, and it is billionaires-no longer major economies-running.
