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 ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.