An open message for Blue Origin.

Blue Origin is Mr Bezos's company and he can run it any way he wants. If he is running it to create a profitable business with maximum advantage for B.O. then the rest of my message has no applicability.

If on the other hand if Mr Bezos has a passion for space and making the human race spacefaring then B.O.'s actions are destructive. Most of the "new space" companies are somewhat open from Space X down to the smallest garage operation. Other companies participate in conferences, they publish their success, the publish their failures, and all involved learn. B.O does none of this. They have access to everyone's information and yet share none.

In addition B.O has started filing patents that restrict the trade space. Today's news of the barge landing patent is a perfect example. Other new space people have publicly talked about barge landing of various vehicles to recover stages. I remember John Carmack talking about barge landing more than 4 years ago. Others have commented to me personally that they have written notes talking about barge landing from more than 5 years ago.

There is a huge on-line discussion base about lower cost space flight and it clearly covers this and other B.O patents. If the patent is challenged the patent will be clearly invalid, but if it is issued it will cost millions to have it declared invalid. This is a huge expense to any small organization that might want to use that technology.

So if Mr Bezos's intent is to help get the human race off of the planet, please don't be evil, try being more open.

Addendum:
I am not anti patent, but the patent needs to actually be innovative.

Vacuuming up common sense, not adding anything new, and attempting to patent that, is destructive. This is just a make work patent for patent attorneys. No real new ideas, and if you want to use one of the concepts covered in the claims one will now have to go back and find reference to the prior art, document it, and budget funds to have a lawyer defend your position.
I won't go line by line to refute the claims, that has already been done in several forums by myself and others.

If the patent actually had some new art, say:

• A unique way to adjust trajectory to compensate for performance changes and still land on the barge.
• A cool stabilization and retention system that would capture the rocket on a rolling barge and stabilize it.
• An innovative method to incorporate a flame trench or blast diffusion system on a barge.
• Anything that someone "Skilled" in the art would not find obvious to the extreme.

Then you would not hear a peep from me about it.