Boeing owns patent for centrifugal and centripetal force - and the Moon’s gravity!
Extortion...
Attempts to salvage a wayward GEO comsat have come
unstuck in the face of institutional disinterest and an aging patent of questionable
validity…
SpaceDaily has now learned that a plan to salvage AMC-14 was abandoned a week ago when SES gave up in the face of patent issues relating to the lunar flyby process used to bring wayward GEO birds back to GEO Earth orbit…
Sources have told SpaceDaily that it was possible to bring AMC-14 back via the moon to a stable GEO orbit where the high powered satellite would have been able to operate for at four years and probably longer.
Because SES is currently suing Boeing for an unrelated New Skies matter in the order of $50 million dollars - Boeing told SES that the patent was only available if SES Americom dropped the lawsuit.
Industry sources have told SpaceDaily that the patent is regarded as legal “trite”, as basic physics has been rebranded as a “process”, and that the patent wouldn’t stand up to any significant level of court scrutiny and was only registered at the time as “the patent office was incompetent when it came to space matters”.
Essentially, SES was going to slingshot the AMC-14 sat around the moon and into geostationary orbit. Boeing “owns” a patent on using the Moon’s gravity to do that.
BTW - if you subscribe to DISH TV, this is why you ain’t gonna get a whole nuther bunch of HD channels real soon.
SpaceDaily has now learned that a plan to salvage AMC-14 was abandoned a week ago when SES gave up in the face of patent issues relating to the lunar flyby process used to bring wayward GEO birds back to GEO Earth orbit…
Sources have told SpaceDaily that it was possible to bring AMC-14 back via the moon to a stable GEO orbit where the high powered satellite would have been able to operate for at four years and probably longer.
Because SES is currently suing Boeing for an unrelated New Skies matter in the order of $50 million dollars - Boeing told SES that the patent was only available if SES Americom dropped the lawsuit.
Industry sources have told SpaceDaily that the patent is regarded as legal “trite”, as basic physics has been rebranded as a “process”, and that the patent wouldn’t stand up to any significant level of court scrutiny and was only registered at the time as “the patent office was incompetent when it came to space matters”.
Essentially, SES was going to slingshot the AMC-14 sat around the moon and into geostationary orbit. Boeing “owns” a patent on using the Moon’s gravity to do that.
BTW - if you subscribe to DISH TV, this is why you ain’t gonna get a whole nuther bunch of HD channels real soon.
Posted: Fri - April 11, 2008 at 09:14 AM