13 December 2007

Open Source Spaceships

The "brains" of the Ares I rocket that will send four astronauts back to the moon sometime in the next 12 years will be built by Boeing, NASA announced today—but the specifications will be open-source and non-proprietary

And why might that be?

so that other companies can bid on future contracts.

Of course. But the same logic applies to just about every major government contract, everywhere in the world, not just out of it. (Via 451 CAOS Theory.)

2 comments:

Stephen Darlington said...

Open Sourcing rocket designs is like freeing the plans for a sky-scraper: the prerequisites are so out of reach by "normal" people that the practical consequences are almost invisible.

I think where space travel becomes interesting is when it gets democratised. Did you see Cringely's plans?

Glyn Moody said...

Well, I think it's only the digital part that they're opening up.

And you're right, the analogue side is hard.

As for Cringely, well, we'll see.