KSK

Depends how nerdy the girl is - but moving on.

That last part strikes me as being as genuine a recommendation as 'Dell recommends Windows'.

Okay. So now the portion of IP that you do commercialise also has to support the IP that is shared or infringed. It also has to support all the research or other intellectual activity that went into creating said shared or infringed IP. Setting up a research lab on Mars for the betterment of humanity is a noble aspiration. As a reason to invest in a Mars colony, that is, put money into the colony in the hope of making a profit - its a complete non-starter. Doing so whilst the colony is still growing, even more so. I work in a university tech transfer department. My day job (more accurately the day jobs of myself and my colleagues) is making a scenario, much like the one you describe, actually work. We start with the knowledge generated by our university. We figure out whether we can get any sort of useful IP protection for it (and equally important, whether we should be protecting it at all, depending on how it was funded). Then we try and monetise that IP in various ways. Any money we do make gets ploughed right back into the university. No Ferraris for us. Incidentally, life sciences, drug discovery and medicine are particular strengths of my university, so I have at least some insight into commercialising IP in those fields. If you can point me at a single university that is able to support its biology department using the proceeds from IP generated by that department, I will be seriously impressed. I would also point out that that department is not operating in isolation in the way an equivalent Martian lab would be. Finally, the kind of examples you've picked are also very much the kind that look great on paper but are not at all easy to actually commercialise. Taking your cancer drug as an example (and ignoring the part we both know about cancer being an umbrella term for numerous separate diseases), possible drug targets for treating cancer are ten a penny (I exaggerate but not by much). Screening against a validated target and doing the hit-to-lead work required to develop a compound capable of hitting that target - is also fairly routine. Some of those compounds might even be active in-vitro and sufficiently selective to be a useful tool compound. Of those tool compounds, some of them might even be active in-vivo. They might cure cancer - in mice. Although, as the old joke goes, there's practically nothing we can't cure in mice. Then there's a slim chance that your murine wonder drug actually turns out to be sort of useful for treating cancer in humans. Not curing - treating. That's a pretty harsh winnowing process. The overwhelming majority of potential cancer treatments (and all the expensive IP behind them) wash out along the way. Pharma companies know this, as you might expect. The amount of work needed to de-risk a new drug compound to the point where a pharma company is going to look seriously at it is non-trivial. Then, assuming that they are interested and take a license to any patents protecting your compound, the chances of you actually seeing any significant returns from that license are slim. Not a great way to run a Mars colony.

Possibly but I wouldn't bet on it, and apologies in advance if anything I'm about to say is just stating the blindingly obvious! For a start, thinking about IP as a product is a bit simplistic. Different types of IP work in different ways, are intended to protect different things, are more or less difficult to enforce etc. Assuming that we're only talking about patents for example, then your orbital habitat is likely to be less like a nice neat patent production line churning out saleable product and more like a vast antique shop. There will undoubtedly be some real gems in there. There will also be a vast amount of dross. For added fun, one man's gem is highly likely to be another man's dross. Finding the right gems and matching them up to the right buyer is difficult - there's certainly been no shortage of patent trading schemes proposed over the years but I'm not aware of one that really stands out. Put another way - if dealing in patents was straightforward, many more universities would be considerably richer. For Space Patents as generated by the inhabitants of your colony, you've got the added twist that any inventions made in space may or may not be especially valuable back on Earth, simply because the problems necessitating those inventions may not be particularly applicable back on Earth. Of course, for inventions that solve a problem peculiar to your orbital colonists, there may be good money in manufacturing your Space Patented widgets dirtside and shipping them up to orbit for sale. Likewise, if your colony is large enough to have an internal market economy, then your Space Patents will factor into that economy in the same ways that patents already do here on Earth. In both cases though, you're talking about a fairly small market size, making your Space Patents correspondingly less valuable. TL: DR version. If your off-world colony is big enough to support its own economy then I'd expect patents to play a part in that economy. Setting your colony up as a kind of University of Outer Space / Interplanetary Science Sweatshop (pick a metaphor you like) churning out patents purely for export (i.e. for selling or licensing to third parties) is a lot more dubious and not a model I'd expect to work particularly well. This is just for patents of course. Other forms of IP might fare better. Bob's LEO Fashion House (for clothing that's out of this world!) could make a mint by selling its zany space themed beanie hat designs to fashion houses on Earth for example. Although for that example, I'm struggling to see why Bob wouldn't just set up shop on Earth.

Precisely! Structural parts appear too late in the tree, as do most of the engine clustering parts.

Ahh, this old chestnut again. Count me in on the pro-Barn team. Or at least on the Tier 0 Humble Origins Building team. Incidentally, I found these interesting photos of the Vostok assembly facilities. That first picture could have been the model for the KSP VAB interior. And note the conspicuous lack of clean room bunny suits anywhere. http://www.drewexmachina.com/2015/04/12/vostoks-legacy/ More pictures: http://www.russianspaceweb.com/spacecraft_manned_first.html http://pages.erau.edu/~ericksol/courses/sp425/s2003/vostok.html OK Vostok wasn't literally built in a barn but to me, those photos are at least reminiscent of the Goddard facilities that somebody else referred to.

Haven't played a Career game in ages but I found the tech tree layout very restrictive and badly designed. If I wanted to take the easiest path and grind early science at Minmus using a Mk 1 capsule, then the tech tree worked OK. If I wanted to mix things up a bit (including such radical deviations as doing my first Mun/Minmus flights with three Kerbals), then I had to scrimp out the science points to unlock the parts I needed. So I resorted to KSC science farming instead. Yep - I swapped one tedious science grind for an even more tedious science grind. Go me! I suppose I could have monkeyed around with the game settings and given myself a bunch of science points to start off with, but that seemed like it was killing off most of the point of a Career game.

I can't tell a lie - this makes me uneasy. Awesome if it works but will it work? It seems like a very large leap into the unknown to bet the company on. More importantly - will it work on time? I'm a big SpaceX fan but... well Elon time. Have they properly accounted for it?

And now I have a vision of the Kraken as the Professor from Octonauts. Blame that particular connection on my assorted small nephews, nieces and godchildren. And I suspect that distant sobbbing I hear is @CatastrophicFailure after my conflation of the ultimate eldritch evil with a friendly pink octopus.

That's for crew safety. What they can't see won't hurt them.

That's a whole lot of orbital tourists coming home. Neat - and those screenshots of formation drop pods are sweet.

Excuse me? The Cycler remains in orbit. Therefore you need some means of getting crew onto the Cycler from LEO and then off the Cycler and onto the surface once you get to Mars. Therefore a separate landing craft is required, although you might also choose to use that landing craft for other parts of the mission. Anyway - you can take your patronising first paragraph and shove it. For future reference, if you want to engage in constructive debate, I suggest being less confrontational and not immediately jumping to conclusions about what the other person was talking about. For the moment I refuse to engage in a pointless 'debate' in which @Northstar1989's preconceptions are self evidently correct and anyone who disagrees is self evidently too stupid to understand. I'm out. The door has failed to hit me on the way.

Do you any basis for these numbers at all or are you just plucking them from thin air to support your preconceptions?

That's for the Merlin 1C. The 1D vacuum can be throttled down to 40%. From figures I've seen quoted for dry masses of the two Falcon stages (if anyone has any good numbers, please share them) the first stage is about 5.5 times heavier than the second stage. We know that 3 Merlin propulsive landings are possible for the first stage (and I'm not sure if the 1D can be as deeply throttled as the 1D vacuum), so single Merlin landings for the second stage don't seem completely implausible, especially since the 1D vacuum is optimised for - well, vacuum and may not be as efficient at sea level. Admittedly there are a lot of 'maybes' in there but I don't see a compelling reason why Raptor is needed for a recoverable second stage.

I don't see why investors would care too much to be honest. SpaceX have already demonstrated the ability to bring a complex product to market, handily beating their competitors on price along the way. They've demonstrated persistence and ability to execute once they have confidence in a technology (F9 first stage propulsive landing) and, more importantly a willingness to ditch technologies that either don't work (F9 first stage parachute landing) can't be made to work in a commercially realistic timeframe (propellant crossfeed), or are no longer required (Dragon 2 propulsive landing). It's also worth noting that Elon has no ego when it comes to ditching concepts, that he's been publically gung-ho about (Dragon 2 propulsive landing). Given all that, I don't see that successful launch and 100% of a Falcon Heavy is going to tell investors much at all about SpaceX's ability to develop a completely different launch vehicle running on a completely different engine/propellant combination and with significant structural components built (if I remember rightly) from completely different material.

Well this was a good plan. Your last translation is spot on but it's not what I meant to say. Lets try this on for size:

Working on the next chapter on the go - and I can tell you that having a portable Old Kerba grammar to refer to has just come in very handy! Thanks @superstrijder15. As a mild teaser (and crowdsourced grammar check ) the phrase in question was:

The Popular Mechanics article was certainly interesting, especially the Semi-Cycler concept. However I was struck by the logistics of getting a crew to the Cycler which (as proposed in the article) required two launches to assemble the crew vehicle-lander-Earth departure stage stack, followed by a third tanker vessel to top off the tanks before trans-Mars injection. My honest opinion - the SpaceX ITS proposal looks much more straightforward , at least from a mission architecture viewpoint. In terms of hardware, the Semi Cycler vs ITS seems to be a trade off between one, complicated ship that's a big step beyond any currently flying (or slated to fly) vehicle, vs multiple, smaller ships that are closer to current technology). In terms of risk and cost - I'm going to wimp out here and claim too many variables for useful discussion.

No reason why not. Added to the Finished Works section now! It can always be replaced (or supplemented) by the remastered version in future.

Citation needed on your first point I would say. How do the costs of developing a state of the art electric propulsion system stack up against developing an ISRU refuelling system and getting it to Mars? The basic science behind either option is understood, the engineering details and costs, I have no idea about but if anyone cares to provide a link to any studies we could debate them. As for the rest - you may be right. Cycler ships, slowboating infrastructure, solar electric propulsion and all the rest, may be the best way to get a lot of people to Mars. I just don't think it's the no-brainer option that you're advocating. If I'm understanding the links on your other thread correctly, the Cycler ship mission profile would use a large, relatively heavy ship with adequate radiation shielding, possibly spin-based artificial gravity to support the colonists on the relatively long journey to Mars. Transport to and from the Cycler at either end of the journey is handled by lighter ships that don't need all the heavy life support gear that the Cycler does. Those lighter ships still have to match velocity with the Cycler at one end and lose that velocity at the other, so they're not exactly trivial to design, build and operate. Then you get into the whole debate of how best to get your crew off the Cycler and down to Mars. Reusable shuttle? Possibly but the logistics of operating and maintaining one out at Mars aren't simple. Limited use shuttle? Possibly but then you need to send a steady supply of them to Mars which to some extent offsets the advantages of your reusable Cycler. Disposable shuttle(s) (aka the MDV and MAV arrangement from The Martian)? Even more ships required, further offsetting the advantage of your reusable Cycler. Also, looking at the Wikipedia link you sent, there are non-trivial tradeoffs in picking a good Cycler. You need to juggle crew journey time, vs frequency of journey, vs non-useful journey time (as in the original Aldrin cycler) where your ship is travelling way out beyond Mars orbit and back. Compare all this to the ITS concept which takes a single ship to Mars surface and back relying on orbital refuelling in LEO and refueling at Mars. Not a remotely trivial thing to design build and operate either but it's a potential workhorse ship for getting everything to Mars on a more flexible timescale than the Cycler ship and/or slowboating colony infrastructure. Sure its maybe a bit over the top for getting infrastructure there but again - you're only using a single ship, rather than a flotilla of different vessels. OK, possibly two vessels - ITS does need tanker support to LEO. But at a pinch that can be achieved using existing SpaceX technology and infrastructure. They already have the infrastructure to get propellant to orbit (on-orbit refuelling yet to be proven) reasonably efficiently with Falcon 9 and (hopefully) in more useful quantities at a time with Falcon Heavy. It's all trade-offs and - until somebody starts trying to fly serious hardware to Mars - mostly speculative trade-offs at this point. All we can say is that either option is going to be expensive.

And a belt feed?

Pfff - that's racing pace that is. You reckon we can ship a couple of pizzas and a case of his caffeinated beverage of choice out to the good @Ten Key? Dude's gonna have a busy couple of weeks with a bit of luck...

Well unless those Western patents are also valid in China then they're fair game for anyone to use inside China. Provided that the patented technology isn't exported to a country where the patents are actually in force. If you're referring to Chinese patents held by Western companies then you may have a point although anecodotally, the Chinese government is getting tougher on that as well, because even China needs some inward investment and continued disregard for IP law is an excellent way of discouraging that investment. Assuming that you're filing patents to protect your technology (as opposed to just having a big pile of patents to use as lawsuit poker chips or, more charitably, having patents that you can wave at investors to prove that your company has something worth investing in), then they're a good way of protecting said technology but they're not the answer to everything: Do you plan to actually enforce them? Can you afford to enforce them? As already alluded to on this thread, do you mind that your patent will be published, thus disclosing your technology to anyone with a web browser and the ability to spell your company name? If your patented Little Widget only really works with your (already patented) Big Machine, then was another patent for the Widget actually worth it? Can you realistically keep your technology secret, relying on contract law if necessary to enforce confidentiality? In which case, how much will a breach of confidence damage your company? Can you rely on actual security through obscurity rather than patent protection? Can you obfuscate your technology to the point where your competitors could reverse engineer it but its probably not worth their time? Can you rely on first-mover advantage and then good business practices to stay ahead of the competition (again, instead of patent protection). OK your competitors can do what you do but can they do it as well? Do they offer comparable customer service? Can they compete with you on price? There's really no right or wrong answer. Filing patents is a good rule-of-thumb I would say but that's about it. Speaking as somebody who's spent his career working with them in government, the public sector and the private sector.

Oh go on then. Seeing as it's you and seeing as I'm such a huge fan of passive-aggressive backseat moderation, I shall henceforth stick rigidly to the topic at hand.

Had to review my notes for this. Firstly, there's a bit of author's license here I'm afraid. Taleka (singular: talek) wasn't a word that had come up previously but it translates to 'ties' or 'bonds' or possibly 'connections'. My initial draft read: skilda taleka bar-onkerbal bar-onKerm - they cut ties possessed by all kerbals and all Kerm. However it didn't seem likely that something that wordy would survive very long as, what is essentially, a piece of legal shorthand. Much in the same way that Latin phrases still creep into legal terminology on Earth. So I shortened it to: skilda taleka bar-on - they cut ties possessed by all. Then I realised that the case markers should probably go before the noun (markers after the noun being read as negatives), and changed on (signifying dependence on) to an (signifying inclusion) and ended up with: skilda bar-an taleka - they cut ties possessed by all. So your translation of the phrase as 'they cut possession of nation' is pretty accurate! It certainly captures its spirit and intention. Which makes me very happy - firstly that folks are translating Old Kerba at all and secondly that it's consistent enough to make sense even when I throw new words into the mix!