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IPFS News Link • Space Travel and Exploration

Judges Killed a Patent Aimed at Stopping SpaceX's Reusable Rocket Plan

• motherboard.vice.com

A team of federal judges has thrown out Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos's attempt to patent a reusable rocket concept that was already being used by Elon Musk's SpaceX.

Besides Amazon, Bezos has been attempting to compete in the commercial spaceflight industry with a company called Blue Origin, which successfully tested a rocket earlier this year.

Part of Blue Origin's plan to become an affordable launch operator is to land the first stage of a rocket on a boat and then reuse that rocket. Blue Origin attempted to patent this technology back in 2010 and won the patent in 2014.

If any of this sounds familiar, it's because that's exactly what Musk's SpaceX has been trying to do for the last couple years, with varying levels of near-success. Musk argued in 2010 and for years since that the concept of landing a rocket on a drone boat has been floating around for quite some time, and, by the time Blue Origin was actually granted the patent, SpaceX was already trying to perfect the technique. Blue Origin hadn't even launched a rocket at the time.


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