Exploring the Unknown - NASA's History Office

Patents
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International
EXPLORING THE UNKNOWN 513
Outer Space Treaty 1958 Space Act
Article VIII
• States have control
• Ownership not affected by
location
Same as Patents
Figure 20. Legal risk assessment
Article VI
• States have responsibility and
control
Article VII
• Owners are liable for damages
United States
NASA owns funded development
rights
•Will grant conditional waivers
Possible disclosure through
safety-of-flight documentation
No provision
Patent Law
Owners have
exclusive rights
• U.S. laws apply only
to U.S. territory
Common law applies
Not applicable
Recommended
Action
Congress extend U.S.
territory to spacecraft
(as for ships at sea)
NASA permit safetyof-flight
certification
by commercial
operator
Government
formulate licensing
and liability
regulations
terrestrial solar cells for which the quality requirements are not as high as for integrated
circuits. Although the projected material characteristics of solar cell silicon are not acceptable
for integrated circuits, process improvements and new developments may occur at
any time. Thus, a significant adjustment in market risk was made to account for the impact
of ground processes competing for the same market segment.
Essential to the financial success of the space manufacturing venture is the ability to
charge a price which provides sufficient revenue for an adequate return on investment.
For space-produced silicon this involves the establishment of a price higher than its material
cost and at a level equivalent to the value of processing yield improvement benefits.
An assessment of the cost trends of LSI devices identified that as device size increases,
costs increase substantially. This is evidenced by the sharply higher cost for recently
marketed devices such as a microprocessor as compared to the cost of a relatively simple
baseline .38 cm x .38 cm calculator chip. Of greater significance is the increasing dependence
upon processing yields to make ever larger LSI devices economically competitive.
For future products such as computers-on-a-single chip and 64K Random Access
Memories (RAMs), increased yields are critically important.
It is highly probable that, as compared to value of the yield improvement benefits of
the relatively small baseline calculator chip, a much higher value will be associated with
the use of space-produced silicon for these larger sized future products. Thus, a premium
price can probably be charged to differentiate the space-produced silicon from groundmade
material which cannot produce similar yield improvement values.
Based on these considerations, today’s probability of market success was subjectively
determined to be four chances in ten. This market risk is expressed as today’s probability
that space-produced silicon ribbon will capture 10% of the projected 1985 LSI material
market. It is determined by multiplying the probabilities for each market risk factor
together at each of the four major milestones prior to project completion. This is depicted
in Figure 21 where the early [15] 1977 risk evaluation is established at 0.38, and
increases to 1.0 in 1990 at program completion when all market functions are complete
and known.