SpaceX will become a co-owner of valuable data, biological samples, and possibly even patents and intellectual property related to human spaceflight, according to Terms and Conditions For a new program calling for research on manned Dragon missions.
The company started Calmly invite proposals “For exceptional scientific and research ideas that will enable life in space and on other planets” to be implemented in orbit using the Dragon spacecraft capsule. Specifically, SpaceX says it’s looking for studies and research trials that focus on fitness, or solutions to increase “efficiency and effectiveness,” and those that focus on human health during long-duration spaceflight missions.
Select research study groups will have access to SpaceX’s crewed Dragon missions, opening up an entirely new use case for one of the company’s core products.
The company has discussed using Dragon as an orbiting laboratory, similar to the International Space Station (ISS), for a decade. Obviously the business case didn’t make sense until recently. But through the orbital research platform, the company will also have access to valuable data in addition to any fees or other terms offered to customers.
In the terms and conditions of the research collaboration, SpaceX states that it and the entity behind the scientific research will “jointly own” the rights to all recorded data and samples obtained during the on-orbit research – regardless of whether or not SpaceX captured this information itself or Research institution. The document also states that all “technology” — defined expansively to include software, inventions, proprietary information and more — jointly developed by SpaceX and the research organization will be jointly owned.
The agreement also stipulates that the technology will be jointly owned “without accounting to other parties,” legal language that means each party can essentially market or license the technology without any duty or obligation to the other.
“Each party can license to anyone else, [though] “They can’t grant an exclusive license to anyone else, because they don’t have exclusive rights themselves,” Stephen Wood, a space law attorney at Villa Wood, explained in a recent interview. “They can market independently, and have no duty or obligation to share any of the proceeds with the other party.”
There are clear exceptions: the document specifies that any technology developed using only researchers’ own equipment (defined here as equipment used to “measure, record, and transmit data”) is owned solely by the researcher; However, even in this case, it is clear that the data and samples will still be jointly owned.
Wood explained that these are fairly standard terms for patents and inventions in this context, and noted that ownership of data and samples is not off limits either. But he reveals that commercializing Dragon will provide SpaceX with much more than just revenue.
“Expanding the Light of Consciousness”
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has always been clear about the company’s primary goal: making human life multi-planetary, starting with Mars. The company has made significant progress toward its mission, the most obvious example being the massive Starship rocket, which was designed with deep space travel in mind. SpaceX has conducted two orbital flight tests of the Starship vehicle, and is preparing to conduct a third sometime this month.
But getting to Mars is only half the problem. As NASA noted earlier this month — and SpaceX leadership is no doubt aware of it — astronauts who go to the Red Planet will face serious physical and psychological risks. As NASA recently summarized in A A white paper was released last week, Risks of interplanetary travel can include exposure to high levels of radiation, the physiological effects of different gravitational environments, and long-term exposure to isolated and exclusive environments.
NASA has spent years studying the effects of microgravity on the human body. But the agency is clear that the risks are very different for astronauts who stay on the ISS for six months or even a year (which might not be so bad after all) versus those who might embark on a multi-year round trip to Mars.
Given SpaceX’s ambitions, it makes sense that the company would want to conduct more research into solutions that could reduce these risks, and better set up its own mission to Mars for success.