To Infinity and Beyond

Today, I watched a livestream video of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy blast off into orbit, with the synchronized landing of it’s falcon rockets following not long after. It was truly a sight to behold, and I really feel that this is a huge achievement for mankind.

As I watched, I began to imagine a future where we might see frequent trips to mars, maybe even affordable trips into space. I think it’s possible, though I believe it would come a lot faster if the technology used to bring the falcon rockets back (and therefore make sending things into space much more economically feasible) was available to everyone to begin to work with.

All Your Patent Are Belong To Us?

It’s not unheard of, I mean, Musk himself released his tesla patents to the world so that everyone could begin making more efficient electric cars. So maybe they’ll release the SpaceX patents too?

Probably not is the answer I’ve found. Among other things, rockets and space crafts are resticted under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations as dictated by the US government, so they can’t be readily shared with.. well anyone who isn’t the government. And that’s a shame, but hopefully one day that can change.

Open Space

Already, there has been efforts to bring space into the open source realm. The team at Pocket Space Craft project aimed to give those who buy in their very own tiny space craft on the mooon! And the Open Space Agency Planned to make open source designs for machines/products that could potentially help revolutionize space travel/exploration. These are some cool efforts, though there is a reason that I use past tense.

It seems that these and most companies in this vain that I looked at haven’t posted much since about 2016, or at least their twitter accounts haven’t seen much action since then. I’m not sure entirely if they’ve shut down, they may be on a bit of a hiatus, but it would be great to see these and more projects come back in full force in the coming years. When you put the technology in the hands of everyone, the sky’s the limit.