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Amazon's Bezos Seeks Spacecraft Patents
An anonymous reader writes "Design News reports that Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos is seeking patents related to his 'Blue Origin' commercial space venture. Blue Origin was recently in the news when Bezos quietly admitted that its second test capsule launch in August went out of control at 47,000 feet. The head scratcher with the patents, according to Design News, is that one is for a two-stage rocket, which doesn't seem particularly novel. What is unique, and questionable as to whether it will work, is patent application 20110017872 for 'Sea Landing of Space Launch Vehicles and Associated Systems and Methods.' This one has a reusable rocket going up into suborbital flight, then the booster stage reenters the earth's atmosphere in a tail-first orientation and lands upright on a ship (boat)."
How is this new?
Jump jets have been doing it for over 10 years.
The bit that's missing from the summary is that you can trigger the sea landing with one click.
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Uhm, something leaving orbit is plummeting through earth's atmosphere at a velocity which almost nothing else can achieve.
So, no, jump jets have NOT been doing it for over 10 years.
What is unique, and questionable as to whether it will work,...
For better or worse, patents don't have to be functional to work. There's a patent out there from 1970 for a flying saucer powered by a fusion reactor with massive magnetic fields to direct the thrust. Feasible? Obviously not. Novel? Sure is.
And as for a powered landing of a booster stage on a ship, assuming they are talking about a liquid engine power the booster, they've already done short hops showing the ability to take off and land accurately. I don't see any reason why it should be impossible, and it would certainly improve the reusibility compared to having them splash down and get waterlogged after every launch.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vaBSvMM_gY&feature=player_embedded#at=548
Can we please just burn down the whole patent system and start over before it totally screws up another industry?
Having stuck the landing the rocket will take a bow and look to the judges only to receive an 8.6 from the NASA judge. It will then storm off the boat crying.
Aircraft landing is really tough. Many pilots who train for it never get the hang of it. Landing an aircraft on a ship is also one of the most common ways for pilots in the military to die. It's that difficult. Ships, even large ships, are constantly rolling from the waves and currents. Spacecraft are also a really difficult technology. Landing on a ship might be doable in the very far future but right now the technology is nowhere near that. Patents don't need to have working examples, but I can't imagine that this patent will still be in force by the time this sort of technology becomes at all implementable.
Sounds awfully like a process and not a device. One-click all over again! At least this will be gone in 20 years as well.
The Reluctant Astronaut, starring Don Knotts from 1967, has the spacecraft landing on the carrier deck, unseen, while everyone is busy looking out to sea.
control system response. Infinite thrust availability combined with infinitesimally short feedback loops, and you can land on a dime, baby.
Oh, and the fuselage has to be able to handle the high-order accelerations.
What's the advantage of landing on a boat? If they want to have a (relatively soft) cushion of water to catch the capsule if it misses the target, then it seems like a shallow lake (natural or man-made) with a landing platform in the middle would work better. A small lake would have no pitching seas to contend with, and in the event of a catastrophe, help can arrive faster and it's easier to bring up wreckage from a shallow 20 foot lake then 200 feet of sea water with currents that spread it around.
There's a limited set of circumstances where water would be a softer landing anyway. The capsule would have to be moving at a very low velocity, otherwise water is not much better than concrete.
If they just want to catch the capsule if it tips off the landing platform, it seems that some sort of collapsible foam would be safer and more effective - no worries about the threat of drowning if the capsule starts to leak.
Ask R.Goddard - patents go poof when the gov't requires it.... When the Soviets launched Sputnik and the cold war suddenly became a race to the high ground of space, do you think the USA spent ONE DIME to compensate the patent holder for a lot of rocket technology?
What's amazing is that the government we trust to uphold the "law" is the most frequent violator of that law when it suits their agenda. Of course, our recent history is filled with examples in just the last decade alone.
Point is: If there was actually anything 'useful' in any of these patents, you can rest assured that the military will use and abuse anything that they can without any kind of fear that the patent holder will sue.
Patents in this case are kind of like auto insurance, it's something you pay for, and then find out how useless it is when you actually need it.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
"...a ship (boat)." Thanks, I was confused.
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A Device That Goes Up but does not Come Down
Variation 1: A Device That Goes Up But Splits Into Multiple Components Before Coming Down
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Patent 3872673: Autoerotic Stimulation Of Human Genitalia
Patent 3872677: Autoerotic Stimulation Of Human Genitalia To Climax
Patent 3872662: Cleaning Up Remnants Of Autoerotic Stimulation Of Human Genitalia (Procedure)
Maybe the patent is under Method for "Sinking a large ship with a container of rocket fuel."
Landing a rocket on a boat doesn't look like the wisest way to move rocket technology forward.
How about landing the rocket in the water next to the boat.
Did the US or anyone ever file a patent on the systems used in Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, space shuttle, and other spacecraft?
No? Then do the new "first to file" laws allow a private "inventor" to be granted patents on this obviously prior art (paid by taxpayers, no less)?
and whatever financial legerdemain that allows such an obvious scam as "private space flight" to generate revenue.
While you guys were going "LOL we're gonna need a bigger boat", I skimmed the claims of the two-stage patent application (20100326045).
Basically, the novel element in each claim is some parts commonality (uising the same engine, more or less) for the first and second stage. Variations in specific claims include reusing the first-stage motor to propel the second stage, recovering a used first-stage motor to use as a second stage motor (or vice versa) on the next launch, or using multiple engines for the first stage, and one identical engine for the second stage.
I'm pretty sure I've seen some of these published exactly in the '90s (specifically the multi-engine first stage, single-engine second stage and the first-stage/second-stage motor reuse), and even if not, using multiple motors in the first stage, single motor in the second stage, is surely obvious from the Saturn V's use of 5 J-2 motors in the second stage and 1 J-2 in the third stage.
So guys, can we let up on the "OMG boatz0rs!", read the patent, and discuss any prior art you know of?
From the application:
"16. The method of claim 11, further comprising: turning off the one or more rocket engines after separating the payload from the booster stage; moving an aerodynamic control surface on the booster stage to at least partially control a flight path of the booster stage toward the platform based on platform positional information received from the platform; moving the aerodynamic control surface on the booster stage to at least partially reorient the booster stage from the nose-first orientation to a tail-first orientation; and after reorienting the booster stage, reigniting the one or more rocket engines positioned toward the aft end portion of the booster stage, wherein landing the booster stage includes performing a powered, vertical landing of the booster stage on the platform."
They DO realize it will require more fuel to land this thing then launch it, right? They will be launching a huge amount of fuel into near-orbit only to use it for slowing the craft?
What the fuck is wrong with a parachute?
Hell, they could use some sort of massive modified para-sail and even guide it to the landing platform. And why not just make the thing able to withstand water and land it directly in the water and simply load it up into a floating drydock? The Glomar Explorer would have been perfect, but it's out drilling for oil these days?
Seriously, guys. No need to patent everything that comes out of the Saturday night pot sessions.
It's called "barge landing" and the idea has been around for years. Look, Paul Breed (he has built hovering rockets for the Lunar Lander Challenge) talked about this very patent in January 2011: http://unreasonablerocket.blogspot.com/2011/01/open-message-for-blue-origin.html
The idea is that your rocket doesn't get wet and salty which would mean washing and dismantling and inspection and rebuild and retest and what ever in the worst case. You also don't need to fish it out of the water and all the other things. Armadillo Aerospace has demonstrated precision rocket landings for years, as have Masten Space and many others (Unreasonable Rocket, JAXA, McDonnell Douglas).
Why do you want to land away from land in the first place? Because, firstly, most of the Earth is ocean. So if you start from a cozy launch point x, a thousand km down range (east) you are somewhere in the sea (especially if you don't want to be in a neighbouring country). Also, there are fewer people there so it's safer and cheaper. Almost all space rockets are launched eastwards over ocean.
The other Blue Origin patent that wasn't explained for some reason (it's not hard to understand once you sort out the chaff) is about recycling old engines from reusable first stages to expendable upper stages after some amount of uses. Probably it'd be really easy to find prior mentions of that idea too, on usenet archives or some NASA papers or something else.
A form of latching device such as robotic actuator arms latch onto the landing vehicle as it descends above or to the side of the landing platform, allowing for minimal damage to the involved equipment and other claims. (Patent Pending.)
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He should quit and buy out Armadillo Aerospace:)
http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/Armadillo/Home
Then why do it on a boat? Why not a solid structure on land? Surely the boat cannot propel itself fast enough to actually catch the falling spacecraft and it is the spacecraft's responsibility to hit the boat.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
"The head scratcher with the patents, according to Design News, is that one is for a two-stage rocket, which doesn't seem particularly novel."
They do know it's the Amazon founder trying to patent it right? Not enough novelty won't stop them.
According to Design News, one of the patents is for a two-stage rocket. But Design News says nothing about it being a head scratcher or lacking novelty. And yes, while it's for a two-stage rocket, it's for a very specific two-stage rocket with interchangeable combustion chambers between the stages. That's pretty weird and quite likely novel.