SpaceX CRS-4 launch

[Aningaaq]

Where is this taking off from? Florida?

[sojourner]

Where is this taking off from? Florida?

yes. yes yes

[Kryten]

All falcon launches are from cape Canaveral (Fl) or Vandenberg (CA), at least since they abandoned Kwajalein. Flights from Canaveral are much more common.

[sojourner]

All falcon launches are from cape Canaveral (Fl) or Vandenberg (CA),

With the Texas launch site under construction.

[Aningaaq]

All falcon launches are from cape Canaveral (Fl) or Vandenberg (CA), at least since they abandoned Kwajalein. Flights from Canaveral are much more common.

Yeah I just was wondering why it was giving Eastern time. Didn't know they flew out of Canaveral. I only knew about Vandenberg since taking a train ride past it. Thanks

[Armchair Rocket Scientist]

Which would mean, selling refurbished F9 first stages to the next customer, for a lower launch price?

And Blue Origin would get a cut of that money?

I don't think any of the barge-landed stages would actually be flown again. More likely they'd do 2-3 landings on a barge a few miles offshore as a final stage of testing before landing on to a landing pad near the coast.

Jeff Bezos can afford the best lawyers money can buy. It apple can trademark rounded rectangles, he can patent landing on a barge.

And SpaceX can't afford lawyers? These are both multi-billion dollar companies. I believe NASA is paying SpaceX something like $400 million per crewed dragon flight, when their actual cost is supposed to be something like $150 million. Even if the legal fees reached a hundred million dollars, SpaceX could absorb that with the profits from a single CCDEV flight.

Patent trolling is mostly effective because individuals or small companies can't afford a year-long legal battle even if they're guaranteed to win, so they can be intimidated into out-of-court settlements. If someone actually stands up to them they won't do so well. And I can't imagine Blue Origin actually getting a patent on landing a rocket on a boat upheld.

Also, Blue Origin suing SpaceX would be PR suicide. Currently, SpaceX is very well known outside the aerospace field, but Blue Origin isn't. If they sued in the next couple years, they'd become world famous as "that company that tried to sue SpaceX over a frivolous patent when they don't even have a working spacecraft to land on their barge." Jeff Bezos might as well eat a baby on national television.

[astropapi1]

Apparently the launch got scrubbed due to bad weather. The rocket is in perfect condiction and they'll launch tomorrow morning.

[KSK]

One day some smart*** will try to get walking patented. It's crazy world.

On the bright side, the patent only covers water landings - or rather, landing on structures in the water. As soon as SpaceX move on to landing on land, the patent becomes irrelevant for them.

SpaceX shouldn't have much difficulty challenging the patent though, assuming you can challenge on grounds of insufficiency (I'm not too familiar with US patent law). A patent is supposed to tell you how to go away and replicate the protected invention yourself, with due allowance for the fact that it's written for a suitably skilled person, and so doesn't necessarily need to include every last detail. I'm not a rocket scientist, but I think the Blue Origin patent falls well short of that requirement. It doesn't appear to be much more than a wish list, strung together with some blindingly obvious features (you could land your space launch vehicle using it's gimballed booster engines - tell-me-it-aint-so), with a couple of extremely high level flowcharts, that tell you naff all about how you'd actually accomplish any of the invention.

Frankly, as somebody who is generally pro-patent, and has worked in IP for his whole professional life, this patent offends me.