Asri-unix.650
net.space
utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!duke!chico!harpo!mhtsa!eagle!ihnss!ucbvax!ARPAVAX:C70:sri-unix!KING@KESTREL
Wed Jan 27 09:17:04 1982
SPACE Digest V2 #89
organizationproperly develop space. However, this is quite difficult
for several reasons:
1) Much of what is necessary to develop space is unpatentable,
often because it is in the realm of pure research. An example of
another invention that grew out of pure research is semiconductors,
which of course grew out of solid state physics research. It would
not have been possible for a company to recover the costs of their
research, even by patenting the transistor, because other devices were
promptly invented, using the same physics. Of course there was more
than enough profit for everyone, but this isn't always the case.
2) Patents are only good for seventeen years. Even those
pieces of space hardware that are patentable may not reach the peak of
their utilization within seventeen years of conception.
3) While this may seem like a pragmatic rather than a moral
argument, governments have historically been involved in blazing
trails. Oil companies drill for oil on the ocean floor, but it was
the US who invented SCUBA and exotic gas mixtures. Railroads is a
customary example (although the government probably did more than it
had to or should have done).
4) It is reasonable to suppose that space is just about now
turning the corner and should now be privatized. This will probably
bedone in a few years. I understand that there are private bidders
for STS-5. The US government will retain a few, to fulfill its own
needs, just as they own buildings to fulfill their own needs.
5) I would not be opposed to a tax checkoff for space
research. I think with such a checkoff it would fare better than it
now does. I have previously proposed (elsewhere) that a person be
able to designate what their taxes are used for (although in my
original proposal the TOTAL would be fixed - each year there would be
a referendum to choose among keeping taxes the same, raising them n%,
or lowering them n%, where n is set by congress each year (large at
the start or end of a war, small when things weren't changing rapidly,
never less than some constant, probably 2).
RMK
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