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JPL Begins Commercialization
An anonymous reader writes "JPL has always been concerned with how their work has benefitted society and the Earth as a whole. Everything from developing tools to study what causes El Nino/La Nina to helping find sources of pollution in our environment. In an effort to continue their work while decreasing their burden on NASA's budget, JPL will introduce the JPL Commercialization Center. This means they will begin developing relationships with commercial entities to adapt their technologies for public use. The public benefit is two-fold since licensing fees will help ease NASA and taxpayer burden and life-enchancing technologies will be put into public use."
So does this finally mean i can finally buy my own space shuttle?
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
If JPL can generate some real income, I don't see the boys in DC letting it go for what it was intended. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me to see upper level management at JPL use the extra income to fund pet projects of their own rather that using it as intended. I can only hope that somehow I will be wrong. Be the best mistake of my life! ;)
You must be the change you wish to see in the world - Ghandi
so why would the average slashdot reader care?
What's the IPO on JPL look like? ;)
Why not fork?
I hadn't realized that the JPL was doing weapons research.
Actually, I normally don't cop on spelling errors, since I am not the world's best speller, but I really like this new term and think I shall use it frequently:
Don't disturb Phil while he is in deep hack mode, it is life-enchancing.
7. What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.
Some people may complain that commercializing aspects of the JPL is questionary, but the sad fact is that congress, in its infinite wisdom, does not see fit to provide NASA and JPL with the money they really need. I'm afraid this is probably a necessary move, but perhaps in the end it will be a positive thing.
Personally, I'd like to see NASA as a whole be able to commercialize to some degree to help offset the lack of funding. I'd like to see NASA receive more funding. The money it will cost to pick a fight with Iraq would go a long way at NASA. Hell, it would go a long way to feed a lot of nations, but what can you do other than vote and protest.
Any commercialization of NASA research or technology is a *good thing*. NASA needs to go the route the post office went aka let NASA run like a business, but still be able to receive some funding from the government when it's needed. It's just not working anymore with the current setup (allocate fixed amount of funding every year). If you allow NASA to begin making money then they can further their research and development, they can plan more missions, and maybe just maybe we'll get to mars sometime in our life time.
An added bonus, is maybe we can further kindle the private sector space exploration spark.
Since when is Tang a life-enhancing product?
I swear if I develop cancer it's the Tang's fault.
While I fully support non-profit organizations seeking public money I can't help but feel a bit violated by this.
JPL is one of the last vestigates of "pure" science now that every other institute has sold out for cellular satellites, titties in space, and singings fags on the Space Center.
If JPL sells out to the highest bidder then surely Linus or the GPL is next!
Um, I'm *about* to read the article, but...
If the JPL is a gov't entity (and I'm not sure yet, haven't read the article) then isn't all their software already public domain? Isn't it impossible for them to have a copyright?
I've posted here before ranting *against* gov't agencies releasing GPL software, for only this reason. I'd love to say that I could justify gov't funded GPL software, but I can't, because all government generated intellectual material must be in the public domain. We own the government, right? So it's our software.
If this is a government agency, and they're going to sell someone their copyright, I'm going to be *livid*. Can a lawyer please tell me exactly when the goverment can and cannot hold a copyright on intellectual creations? I have no idea where I'd begin to research this question. If they can hold a copyright, then I'd support legislation that that copyrighted material should always be under some sort of open-source or free-software type license. If they cannot hold a copyright... good.
Anyway. Now I'm going to go read the article and become informed. Unfortunately, that means I can't post on the subject, right?
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
JPL is run by Caltech (a school) for NASA. I doubt that Caltech would be able to sweep that much money under the rug, or divert it for other uses, without massive outcry.
Just because JPL is going commercial doesn't (necessarily) mean that all their decisions will be of the secret star chamber CEO-screws-the-world type. They will be in the public eye more than ever, over precisely these concerns.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
NASA's budget is less than .5% of the entire federal budget, and JPL is worried about the taxpayer burden they are being??? How completely asinine. Why aren't all the meaningless bureaucratic positions in the Department of Commerce, the Export Import Bank, and all the other do-nothing federal agencies expressing this kind of worry over the taxpayer burden they pose?
At least JPL help keep us at the forefront of various technologies for 40+ years. What has the Department of Commerce ever done for the average American?
Go Lakers!
JPL has always farmed out new technology to private industry. Its our secondary charter just under our NASA work. From what I've read of the press report linked, this just seems to be a re-organization and re-focus of the old Technology Affiliates Program. I've worked primarily for non-NASA reimbursable projects. In the 10 years I've worked at JPL, I've only charged to a NASA number ONCE. And then only for a summer. A reimbursable project is when an outside organinzation pays JPL (through NASA) to do work for for them, and they get something in return, like a research paper, technology, or a piece of hardware. JPL will do the work, and then will get reimbursed by the company at completion, IIRC.
As an example of some of the work either I, or my co-workers have done under the TAP-like programs include things like systems, hardware, and behavior software for autonomous urban robots like Urbie under DARPA. Ford has funded my group to develop hardware for Engine Control, Emission Control, and diagnostics using Neural Networks. 3-Dimensional IC stacks with Irvine Sensors Corporation for novel Neural Network architectures. Quantum Well Infrared Photodetectors (QWIP) imagers by various companies. Active Pixel Sensors (APS, buzword category: CMOS Imagers) has been licenced to private companies like Micron (formerly Photobit, before they were bought by Micron). Our Micro Devices Lab has farmed out a metric buttload of MEMS instruments and sensors to more companies than I can remember.
That said, JPL WILL NOT compete with private industry. We're not allowed to and it doesn't make sense to. We don't do manufuacturing or marketing. JPL does things that no-one else does. Once we figure out how to do something, we give it to someone else and figure out how to do something new. Since we are a Federally Funded Research and Development Center, it is unappropriate for us to steal business away from legitamate business. However it is appropriate for us to be in bleeding edge research areas that are still not financially or strategically desirable for private industry. The Government usually plays anchor tennant to most technolgies.
As a peon looking up, I can see why they've started to emphasize more on reimbursable projects. NASA and Congress is getting more and more fickle on what and when to pay for new projects. The next rover is finishing up soon (The Mars Exploration Rovers, or Mars '03) and work is rolling off. Everyone coming off MER is looking for new jobs and the project that was supposed to pick everyone up (Mars '05) was pushed back to '07. So the scare of layoffs is real amongst us. I'm actually in the same boat since my projects had the misfortune of ending at the same time MER did, so I'm competing with them. (I believe I've got my funding covered, but I'm in the gap at the moment taking vacation). I'm not the only one I know in my situation. If JPL can get more reimbursable projects, I believe JPL can better weather the whims of congress.
I am glad that JPL is re-emphasizing in comercialization. Although Space missions are fun, novel technology is much more satisfying to me. If we can get more industry to fund new technology, I believe the US will be much better off.
--Carlos V.
Kelso: " Man, chicks must love astronauts, it says here they get all the tang they want"
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
So now do we start demanding that all our software be JPLed?
Now I can finally buy a giant air bag so that I can jump out of the plane instead of wait for the landing, runway taxi, and checkout process.
Table-ized A.I.
This would be catastrophic! The post office does not have to innovate, there is no profit in long term innovations in the aerospace industry (or execs are too focused on short term goals to acknowledge it...). NASA would eventually become another competitor for Boeing, Lockheed, Pratt & Whitney, and all of the other commercial aerospace companies in the US. Right now the aerospace industry relies on NASA to help them develop products on the distant horizon. They could not work with them nearly as effectively if NASA was out to sell the product themselves...
You don't see UPS and FedEx jumping at the opportunity to work with the USPS do you?
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
Heh, the problem I have with NASA is that congress doesnt let there be enough of a taxpayer burden.
One worry that I have about when this publicly funded organization joins up with the commercial sector: Do they start to focus on projects that can be turned into viable products sooner? Does their research start getting directed towards the more potentially lucrative products, at the expense of the projects that could change the way we live for the better?
I'm glad to see that this initiative is being taken, partially for the cool stuff that I'll be able to buy as a result of it, and also because getting more for our tax-dollars always appeals to me. I just hope this doesn't go the way of some of the university research facilities that have deals with corporations, patents/other exclusive rights in return for funding.
The new commerialized version of NASA: Shuttle_vp.jpg
Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
Hopefully any JPL commercialization doesn't work out the same way as the space shuttle. When someone pays beaucoup cash to send something up on the shuttle the money goes not back to NASA but instead goes back into the general fund. When someone pays to use the space shuttle Congress uses that cash to give themselves a raise or do whatever else they want. So not only is NASA given an insultingly tight budget but any money they make gets taken away from them.
Hopefully the federal part of JPL's charter won't suck all the cash out of commercialization. JPL has a ton of cool things they could license out to commercial ventures. It'd be a shame if NASA and CalTech don't get to see any of the returns.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
You are correct and it is something not widely known! Actually as I understand it, NASA HQ issues one big contract to Caltech to run JPL for NASA. There are very few NASA government employees at JPL but mostly Caltech employees whose paycheck is issued by Caltech, not NASA. This becomes even more complicated when JPL turns around and issues a subcontract to a 3rd party (i.e. Lockheed) for missions such as Mars Polar Lander etc. as Lockeed reports to Caltech (JPL) which in turn reports to NASA (NASA HQ plus a few bonefide NASA employees on-site to manage the JPL contract). My son, who graduated from Caltech suggested that missions run strictly by Caltech for NASA had a high success rate, but those subcontracted out by JPL to a third parties (i.e. Lockheed) often ran into management communications problems which the NASA inquiry pointed to in the two Mars failures. Hope this clarifies that JPL is not "strictly" NASA. Legally, since JPL (Caltech) is not a government entity but a contractor (just like Boeing or Lockheed) it owns all copyrights and inventions unless it's NASA HQ contract retains such rights for NASA. This is most likely as otherwise this slashdot story from the JPL (Caltech) Press Release would not have been issued in the first place.
What's past is NOT ALWAYS prologue for the future!
Drop all the paperpushers, let commercial companies do the mundane stuff like launching satellites, let the Russians run the space stations, let the Canadians build, install, and maintain the equipment, and let's get back to what NASA does best: space exploration.
Enough bullshit, NASA needs to go back to being heroes only. If the JPL discovers anything important w/ publicly funded dollars, put it in the public fucking domain and let the vcs fuck each other for it. I don't see the free market putting people on Mars anytime soon.
[o]_O
What's your view on this, both in terms of JPL and the broader context?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Additionally, the NASA Tech Briefs are published monthly for the purpose of announcing new technology developed by NASA or its contractors that is available for commercialization.
"player 4 hit player 1 with 0 stroms"
Actually, no -- government held patents and copyrights are not public domain.
... maybe your town wasn't quite like my town. Quite like it -- these were stories from Harrisonburg, VA, and VA Tech. But I'm willing to bet that it's not too different from ours. I've seen this kind of thing in too many places.
As much as any real property, they are subject to the Condemnation/Privatization cycle of transferring property from poor people/businesses to wealthy people and businesses.
As I remember, ("Surely you're Joking, Mr. Feynmann) during the Manhatten Project, they asked for and claimed the patent ideas of the scientists working on the projects. So Feynmann, in exchange for a tiny party, provided them with the patents for such things as nuclear powered ships, nuclear subs, nuclear airplanes, and such. Those aren't public domain; and the beneficiary of these patents is the US Government.
Or think back to your own town: remember all those properties that the town council condemned? Remember all those lucrative contracts that went out to companies owned by members of the town council? And the $3000 dead-town-district lots that suddenly got sold as $120k "Parking"? Or the university that traded its valuable property between the university town and the nearest commercial center (on the main road), in an acre-for-acre swap for flood-plane land with its Athletic Director? Or the mayor who got free land from the city for "improving downtown", a free building from the feds for "a medical complex", put his own "doctor's office" on the top floor, and rented the rest to the US Park Service, moving them out of the US Post Office across the street?
Ummm
Anything the government owns is NOT public domain. It is very specifically private domain, and headed into the hands of someone more powerful than you.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Privatizing brings additional risks by bringing in too many people lacking in domain expertise. If enough MBAs get involved, research may disappear altogether from the top ten actual priorities. The late Henry Ford did not get rich from designing new cars, he got rich from mass production of millions of identical cars using one design. This works until there is a new design for a better car, but if you planned ahead the design is by your research program.
Their best chance to stay competitive in Aerospace would be to never go public. The CEO for Ikea goes into great detail about the advantages of not having share holders (even dumber than MBAs) interfering. Also, staying non-profit or not-for-profit ensures that any surplus is reinvested back into the company.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
But why should only JPL do this? And why couldn't the state own more companies (preferable jointly with the people who work there, i.e. the only way to get that stock is to be hired) and run them just like any other company, just that the profit goes smack right into the state and hence lowers the tax burden.
Ok ok, our goverments are either too corrupt or to inept at doing anything useful for this to work. If the politicians actually could run a company, why wouldn't they already run companies? But then again, maybe we could get some good people in instead then.
Let NASA commercialize their cutting-edge stuff but for crissake get NASA out of the launching business. Let them deploy probes to other planets, study the Earth and environment, develop advanced interplanetary propulsion concepts, build space habitats, study space medicine - but don't let them anywhere near the drawing board of a launch vehicle. Ground to LEO transport should be off-limits for NASA.
Cargo launch vehicles don't need to be cutting edge. They don't need to be advanced - they need to be dumb, big, reliable andcheap. Crew space taxis need to be ultra-reliable, small and relatively cheap. NASA is apparently incapable of achieving any of these goals.
Subsidizing shuttle payloads has nearly killed the private space industry. Instead of competing with it with tax dollars NASA should promote it by buying launch services.
See this report by Lt. Col. John R. London III to find the historical reasons for the cost of launching and how it can be drastically reduced.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
This isn't anything new. NASA is Federally mandated to give technology back to the taxpayers that funded it. Technology Transfer programs existed almost from Day 1 at NASA. For example:n ctn.hq.nasa.gov/
http://techtran.msfc.nasa.gov/
http://
Larry Wall developed Perl while working for JPL. I wonder if Perl would have been free software if it had been developed there today.
I think we lose something when government institutions get commercial.
I know it was me who asked the question, but this is an informative answer from the horse's mouth, so to speak.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
- No one can afford to get into space because the technology is too expensive.
System after JPL privatization:- No one can afford to get into space because the licensing fees for the technology are too expensive.
At least under the current system, NASA IP immediately enters the public domain. Which is why contests like the X Prize can even get "off the ground", so to speak. With this move, any new tech developed would almost immediately be patented, and you can kiss all your dreams of space goodbye, as the lawyers get involved and we argue for 50 years. What have we gained? New tech, but only for a few people, and that handful of people gets to decide the future of space exploration (or they sue you). Some plan.In a perfect world, I'd take all of NASA private (along with a lot of the rest of the government bloat), but this isn't that world.
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
Until something like The National Science Trust exists, methinks thou doth protest too much.
We're not allowed to
For very good reasons.
and it doesn't make sense to.
If you're receiving the benefit of a violation of law and/or ethics, does it "make sense" to engage in or encourage that voilation? Some would say it does.
We don't do manufuacturing
JPL has one of the largest machine shops in the country. Yes, it is all sitting idle -- that doesn't mean it can't be cranked up at any time under the guise of a high-sounding "public private partnership".
or marketing.
Hardly anyone I know in business knows the definition of "marketing" so I'll presume you mean what they mean when they say it: "sales". JPL engages in sales all the time -- with NASA HQ and Congress, not to mention PR. This story in /. is a form of sales. If you're a contractor with JPL who hasn't sucked up to the right guys within JPL and your competitor gets the subsidy while you get shut out of the use of JPL "spin-offs", JPL's sales ability is absolutely crucial. They can sell space enthusiasts, Congress and NASA HQ on the idea that JPL is their friend and of course friends deserve loyalty against evil outsiders like you.
JPL does things that no-one else does.
Yes and you also figure out how to do things that others might be able to figure out how to do given a market for it.
Once we figure out how to do something, we give it to someone else and figure out how to do something new.
Who do you "give" "it" to? You're friends who happen to be in the "private sector" this week? Since you got the capital for this from the government and the government got the capital for it from the public why not give it to the public -- put it in the public domain? Alien concept to you all? Remember what you said about not doing manufacturing? You can't tell us that "it" is anything but intellectual property. You also said "give" -- why "give" to some, and not others, all this marvelous intellectual property?
Since we are a Federally Funded Research and Development Center, it is unappropriate for us to steal business away from legitamate business. However it is appropriate for us to be in bleeding edge research areas that are still not financially or strategically desirable for private industry.
Don't confuse "research" with "development". That's the problem with you guys. Development is "bleeding edge" because the return is direct or not to the company funding the intellectual property development. Research produces stuff that's not patentable by definition. Laws of nature are not patentable. If you guys produce something patentable you'd better put it in the public domain directly and you'd better have a damn good reason why you didn't just get something off the shelf from the private sector.
The Government usually plays anchor tennant to most technolgies.
Oh, like the Commercially Developed Space Facility? Listen, kid, I was there doing space politics when Baldridge got killed and the NASA apparatchiks took the positions within it to kill off CDSF so the Space Station would have no competition. Don't tell me about the government playing anchor tennant to most technologies.
Seastead this.
...er, not to piss on the fire from afar, but I'm under the impression that NASA's public funding is something well under 1% of the US budget, meaning that it basically has no effect on your taxes at all.
Hell, the US Government could triple NASA's budget and it wouldn't make a noticeable dent on your tax bill.
I mean, hell, something close to 45% of your tax dollar goes towards the US war machine, to the tune of about $800 *billion* dollars. Whack that back to something reasonable, and you'd likely see your taxes drop significantly.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
I think lspd might have it right when he quotes a copyright faq as saying "With one exception, works of the United States government are public domain. 17 U.S.C. 105. The only exception is for standard reference data produced by the U.S. Secretary of Commerce under the Standard Reference Data Act, 15 U.S.C. 290e."
The JPL can do this because they're a government contractor. All's fair in that case. I only brought up this offtopic question because I didn't realize that the JPL wasn't a gov't org. I hadn't read the article.
I imagine patents and copyrights by gov't employees could easily be governed by differennt laws.
On a side note, everyone knows that if a CEO gives away a part of the company in a manner that is obvioiusly not the most beneficial to the shareholder value, he can be sued, held criminally liable, and thrown in jail. Wouldn't it be nice if we could do that to politicians? Even if only in the most egregious cases? Makes me fantasize about the Singaporean meritocracy... if it were combined with a massive bill of rights.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
You suck at trolling.
Anyway, for anyone who wants the history of aerogels, click here.
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