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Nature of TSI when there are commercial seasteads
Sun, 06/29/2008 - 23:21 — vincecate
I had sort of been assuming there would be a sort of open source design effort and that anyone would be able to use whatever people came up with. Forums and wiki make for a very open communication without secret results. I really think that in the end we will be using steel and that any shipyard could build the design.
But now if Patri and Wayne are keeping their best ideas secret so they can patent them, then maybe everyone else should be doing the same thing. Note that if you publish an idea on the Internet not only can you not patent it, but nobody else can either. So you can protect the idea from being stolen by others by publishing it.
I am also unclear on how TSI will evolve once there are commercial seasteads being made. If TSI helps start a factory, then clearly that factory will get to use the patents. But if TSI has invested in one factory, their rational self interest might cause them not to license the patents to other builders, or not too cheaply, to protect their investment in the factory. Even if they don't invest in the factory, they might promise not to license anyone else for 5 years to give them enough headstart to take the initial risk of starting a factory.
It is possible that some people here might contribute to several parts of the final design and then have just enough money that they could afford to build a seastead if there was no license fee. Maybe this is a small chance, but it would seem a bit unfair if that happened.
On the other hand, if TSI did not start a factory, but just had some license terms under which anyone could use their IP, then there is a danger the first factory might never get built. However, I think when it comes time for building a full scale seastead more money will be needed and maybe the person putting up the money gets the seastead. So maybe TSI does not do the funding of the factory or even the initial full scale prototypes.
Since we are contributing to TSI's online effort, I for one would be interested in more clearity on how the board envisages the transition from non-profit status to having seasteads buit. Like is there a chance that TSI sponsors are going to get their money back if TSI invests in a successful factory? Can non-profits do that? If they make a lot of money on the factory and don't give it to the TSI sponsors (since they were not investors it seems they should not get the profits) what does TSI do with the money from the factory? If a non-profit organization makes profits do they lose their non-profit status?
Just a bit puzzled on how things are going to go down. I understand that it is too early to say for sure, but what is your best guess as of this time?
If we disregard the patent
If we disregard the patent issue for a second I would hope that TSI in a future hypothethical seastead market would be focussed on "pushing the envelope" so to speak. I.e researching new and improved structures that will drive the development forward and increase the benefits of seasteading, but that may be too adventurous or risky for commercial entities (or other actors on the market) to gamble on. Accellerating the natural progress of things, I guess you could say.
great questions
I am also unclear on how TSI will evolve once there are commercial seasteads being made. If TSI helps start a factory, then clearly that factory will get to use the patents.
...
Since we are contributing to TSI's online effort, I for one would be interested in more clearity on how the board envisages the transition from non-profit status to having seasteads buit. Like is there a chance that TSI sponsors are going to get their money back if TSI invests in a successful factory? Can non-profits do that? If they make a lot of money on the factory and don't give it to the TSI sponsors (since they were not investors it seems they should not get the profits) what does TSI do with the money from the factory? If a non-profit organization makes profits do they lose their non-profit status?
The key to a non-profit is that it can only give money: for goods/services at market rate, or to other nonprofits. It cannot give back money to sponsors or donators. If a non-profit makes money in a business that furthers its mission, it does not have to pay taxes. If it makes money on an unrelated business, it does have to pay taxes. Any money it makes can either be used to further its mission, or given to other non-profits.
Here is how I see the transition from non-profit to building and operating seasteads. Some of the areas of TSI, like the online community, and the research program we're trying to start this fall, will continue permanently under TSI. If the research program produces results which are suitable for commercialization, TSI will either make them freely available or license them to for-profit ventures.
But the engineering area - designing and operating seasteads - seems to make a lot more sense to me as a for-profit business. TSI is going to pay for basic feasibility studies and cost estimates, and will make those results public, and then, I am going to put together a business plan for a for-profit seastead resort. The new company may have to license some of TSI's engineering work, but I don't think TSI is an appropriate entity to build a factory or even a large seastead.
The IRS frowns on non-profits operating even in the same *industry* as for-profits. They worry that all the for-profits in the industry would donate to the non-profit, which would then do things to enrich the whole industry. Instead, non-profits need to be in areas that (for whatever reason) have not yet attracted for-profit companies. It seems very unlikely that we'll get the capital to build a seastead or a seastead factory without the investors wanting a return, which means it will be a for-profit venture, which means (if I understand things correctly) that TSI has to stop operating in that space (doing engineering design for large seasteads).
TSI may then move into another engineering space, like Wayne's single-family-home seastead designs. If people build these themselves, TSI can publish free plans and such, but if a company starts building them, I think TSI can't do so. The problem is that a non-profit has a huge cost advantage over a profit (since they don't pay taxes), and so it's unfair competition.
Let me know if you have any more questions.
But now if Patri and Wayne
The patent system is quite imperfect. In theory you can invalidate a patent by simply showing prior art. However, it is expensive to do so. Sometimes you can show the prior art to the patent office and get them to reexamine the patent for free, but occurs only rarely. Instead, it is usually fought out in the courts with huge lawyer costs being incurred to both sides. Having been in one of these fights earlier in my career, I would like to spare the whole seasteading movement the hassle of staving off an intellectual property lawsuit.
The one database the all patent examiners '''must''' examine before granting a patent is the pre-existing patent database. Once there is a patent granted (to TSI), the courts are on seasteader's side. The attacker must find convincing prior art or uncover a patent that conflicts.
If your concern is that TSI will charge too much for a license, you should rest assured that as a non-profit, TSI basically can't charge too much. If it were my decision, I would charge $1 per license. As a board member, I will advocate such a low charge.
I'm out of time for tonight. More later.
Armadillo Aerospace vs NASA approach
Armadillo Aerospace takes the build and test approach to development. Early NASA also did a lot of build and test. In the last few decades NASA has been more the "engineering studies" approach. Most of the time the expensive engineering studies don't lead to anything real. At the end of the day it was "just another paper study". I think that when you do paper studies you don't learn as much new and interesting stuff as when you build and test.
I worry that TSI will do an engineering study of some large seastead, maybe get a patent, but never build it, and not much will ever really come from the $500,000 you had to play with.
Watching Armadillo I can tell they are making real progress. Also, other people are learning from what they are doing as they write up so much of what they do on armadilloaerospace.com. Their contribution to progress in rocketry would be substantial even if they vanished today. For years most of the Armadillo team worked for free on weekends. Now that money is coming in, people are getting paid and some are full time. I think the Armadillo approach would be good for seasteading too.
What about SpaceX?
I think a better comparison would be to SpaceX. TSI is hardly a bloated government agency like NASA has become.
Since SpaceX has started, they have gone higher, faster, and farther than any of the other New Space companies -- Armadillo, XCOR, Marsten, Pioneer, Kistler, ... While they have not reached orbit yet, I think they are pretty close. They accomplished this task by hiring real rocket scientists and designing a real rocket.
In contrast, Armadillo has spent a huge chunk of time working on hydrogen peroxide engines only to discover that they could not buy fuel at the quantity and purity that they needed. They next spent a bunch of time developing a film cooled bi-propellant engine which was initially developed well over 40 years ago. They futzed around with all sorts of thrust vector control strategies before returning to the industry standard of gimbaled rocket engines. It is hard to conclude that Armadillo has been the epitome of design efficiency. Please note, I do not want to minimize their hard work, but I think they should have spent a little more time talking to existing "experts" before they dove into bending metal.
While I really really like Armadillo aerospace, honesty compels me to admit that SpaceX had a more successful design strategy. If I had to choose between the two, I'd pick SpaceX hands down.
The reality is that New Space is large enough to support multiple businesses -- Armadillo, XCOR, Marsten, SpaceDev, Bigalow, etc. I think the same is true of seasteading. We should try multiple business models and see which ones are the most successful.
Please note that I spend most of my time thinking about the small low cost seasteads and how to build a successful community from them. TSI is also exploring some larger structures, that are way cheaper than oil platforms. My hunch is that the smaller seasteads will get built first, because they easier to design, finance, build and deploy.
Ultimately, I really do not care which kind of seastead shows up first, just so long as we actually build something.
Armadillo, SpaceX, and TSI
>While I really really like Armadillo aerospace, honesty compels me to admit that SpaceX had a more successful
>design strategy. If I had to choose between the two, I'd pick SpaceX hands down.
Armadillo was spending like $500,000/year. SpaceX started with $100 million from Musk and has gotten a similar amount of investment since then. If TSI had the SpaceX type of money, then hiring a bunch of experts might make sense.
But then, where do you find "seasteading experts"? If we knew a seastead was made like a plastic ball, maybe the expert we need is a plastic rotomold expert. Or if a seastead is like an oil platform, maybe we need an oil platform expert. Or maybe a seastead is like a slip-form concrete grain silo and that is the expert we need. Or if a seastead is like a boat, maybe we need a boat expert. Hum.
It seems like you asked people to write up proposals and then you were going to have a expert of some type give some feedback on the proposals. But instead of getting feedback, they went off and started a secret design. I think we are still close to the brainstorming stage and was hoping we would all learn something from your expert consultants.
>Please note that I spend most of my time thinking about the small low cost seasteads and how to build a successful
>community from them. TSI is also exploring some larger structures, that are way cheaper than oil platforms. My hunch
>is that the smaller seasteads will get built first, because they easier to design, finance, build and deploy.
I think TSI should focus on getting a small thing really built. Cheaper than oil platforms is probably still too expensive.
As Wayne says, there is room
As Wayne says, there is room for multiple projects. The "high road vs. low road" debate has been around for a long time, and I've been on both sides of it on mailing lists for years. I believe that the current best strategy is a "high road" one, which means designing a big structure. Wayne prefers the "low road" strategy, and is thinking about small things that can be built by individuals. (I will change my mind about high vs. low road if I fail to get funding for a "high road" startup next year).
<i>It seems like you asked people to write up proposals and then you were going to have a expert of some type give some feedback on the proposals. But instead of getting feedback, they went off and started a secret design. I think we are still close to the brainstorming stage and was hoping we would all learn something from your expert consultants.</i>
We threw a whole bunch of designs at them, and they brainstormed amongst themselves and came up with what they think is a good design, and are now filling in some of the details, doing modeling and simulations, etc. It sounds like you are saying that the community would benefit from an understanding of the consultants' design choices, and what they see as the pros & cons of different methods. That sounds like a good idea to me, and I will see if we can work it into the design process, perhaps as part of presenting their design.
I have strong feelings about the importance of involving professionals at this stage. I think a structure design by actual offshore engineers is much, much more valuable than our brainstorming right now. The ocean is a harsh environment which still kills people and destroys multi-billion-dollar platforms and ships on a regular basis, it is not something to take lightly. And the design & building of offshore platforms is a hundred-billion-dollar a year industry! There is modeling & simulation software, standard methods, and a ton of science involved, and I'm very happy that we are finally tapping into it. It's a bummer that we can't share the results until we file for preliminary patents, but so far we think this is our best strategy.
the prototype in the bay...
I think the prototype that is being planned is along the lines of what vincecate is stating, and the engineering studies are necessary to get that into production. This looks like the best of both worlds approach, I think.