Russia patents space station designed to generate artificial gravity: According to the patent, habitable modules would rotate around a central axis to simulate gravity for crew by producing an outward-pushing centrifugal force

391 points by ConsciousRealism42 6 hours ago on reddit | 68 comments

02meepmeep | 5 hours ago

How in the world can you patent something that has been in countless sci fi books since at least the early 1950’s?

SimiKusoni | 5 hours ago

You could probably patent a precise mechanism of achieving this, or the design of some of the systems involved.

That said it's very unlikely that Russia have come up with anything novel or useful and they obviously have their own patent system so they can essentially "patent" whatever they want for propaganda purposes, chances are the actual patent is just nonsense. There's certainly not a snowballs chance in hell of them building a space station inside of the next few decades let alone one with artificial gravity.

R0b0tJesus | 3 hours ago

"Drink a bunch of vodka, then spin around real fast until you start to feel like there's gravity." -Russian patent #367524

dick_tracey_PI_TA | 2 hours ago

No dude, you drink enough vodka and the room spins on its own. It’s called ~~alcoholism~~ innovation.

ExaminationDouble226 | 2 hours ago

When was the last time you looked at per capita alcohol consumption statistics?

indy_110 | 5 hours ago

Just google lazerpig Armata to see just how accurate that is...with citations.

RandomWorthlessDude | 5 hours ago

Lazerpig’s Armata video is literally the most comedically incorrect tank video on YouTube and has been (rightfully) clowned on into oblivion for its horrifically incorrect statements and assumptions.

SecondHandWatch | 5 hours ago

Patents are not strictly intellectual property. They are for processes, mechanisms, and the like. You can’t patent a concept.

Helldiver_of_Mars | 2 hours ago

You can't. Never mind it's such a generic idea that it also wouldn't have grounds to be patented.

Crying_Reaper | 56 minutes ago

Better yet how would this even be enforced if another country or company outside of Russia used this?

debauchedsloth | 5 hours ago

They patented centrifugal force?

There may be prior art here.

Wurm42 | 5 hours ago

Agreed, you should not be able to patent centrifugal force.

But the design of a space station built to use spin gravity might contain patentable mechanisms.

But this argument doesn't matter much, because it's the Russian state-owned corporation Energia applying for the parents. The Russian patent office tends to rubber stamp anything that state-owned entities submit, especially in the military and aerospace domains.

The real question is whether international courts will recognize the validity of the patent. That's hard to say without seeing the full patent with all the technical details.

SocraticIgnoramus | 4 hours ago

If I want to enforce a patent in space, which jurisdiction do I file that in?

Glittering-Ad3488 | 4 hours ago

Since the cylon invasion its Admiral Adama’s office

SocraticIgnoramus | 4 hours ago

Only humans could be pushed to the brink of extinction and become MORE bureaucratic lol

Glidepath22 | 3 hours ago

We are really stupid, aren’t we?

SocraticIgnoramus | 3 hours ago

Quite the opposite, in my opinion, we are the cleverest of apes — the problem is that we forget we are, in fact, apes.

debauchedsloth | 4 hours ago

Prior to the invasion, I believe Starfleet would have been the proper jurisdiction. Or maybe after? The lawyers will need to figure it out.

FlukeSpace | 3 hours ago

They should patent using gravity to stand up on Earth too. (I have more ideas in case anyone’s wondering.)

Edit. Drinking water to stay alive is another one I’m giving away for free. All future ideas will require a consultation fee.

tinny66666 | 5 hours ago

Wouldn't a patent just prevent people selling a product using the tech? It doesn't prevent anyone building one for themselves, like a sovereign country might. And wouldn't it only last 10 years anyway?

Soviet_Canukistan | 2 hours ago

Also, are patents even real? Like the Chinese would steal any technology they could use. And I don't think the west would honor Russian patents really.

SecondHandWatch | 5 hours ago

Title: Russia patents space station

You: they patented centrifugal force?

maxstryker | 5 hours ago

Becuse the Stanford torus is a thing.

Groovychick1978 | 3 hours ago

Did they patent the design? I imagine they would have known to protect that intellectual property.

However, if the Russians used a different mechanism to produce the spin gravity, it wouldn't be a patent violation, correct?

SecondHandWatch | 5 hours ago

It literally isn’t. It’s a concept. You can’t patent concept art.

edit, because apparently nobody here knows how to research something: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_torus

>The Stanford torus is a proposed NASA design[1] for a space settlement capable of housing 10,000 permanent residents.

It literally isn't a thing.

Ramental | 5 hours ago

Even with your dumb sarcastic comment that ignores the author going after the details of the claim, let's follow your shallow logic: 'russia patents space station', a concept being implemented and used for 50+ years. That would make just as little sense.

SecondHandWatch | 5 hours ago

Do you understand what a patent is? It’s not clear you do.

Ramental | 4 hours ago

Are you capable of answering with anything else but deflection?
Oh, enlighten, the wisdomteller, what IS russia suggests to patent that has not been widely known for many decades? I had even translated and read the patent in question. It is so shallow that feeding it to LLM as training data would only make it worse.

OhYeahSplunge4me2 | 5 hours ago

Did they finally watch 2001: A Space Odyssey or something?

TheMalibu | 6 hours ago

Hey Russia, remember when you gave Ukraine a bunch of guarantees that you'd leave them alone, and then wiped your ass with those same guarantees? Well your "patents" amount to the same.

MagneticPsycho | 6 hours ago

Russia finally discovers Halo: Combat Evolved.

Blunt4words20 | 5 hours ago

Did someone finally translate 2001 a space oddesy!

Now do the space elevator

gingerbreadman42 | 5 hours ago

Patents only apply to earth.  Ha ha

RandomWorthlessDude | 5 hours ago

Would be based. The sentiment that all this bullshit like land ownership, intellectual property hoarding and capitalism is something that only exists on earth and should be abandoned in space in favour of cooperation and friendship is a very idealistic dream from the earlier days of space exploration

vfrrandy | 5 hours ago

It's in every Science Fiction movie I've ever watched.

TheManInTheShack | 5 hours ago

Didn’t Arthur C Clarke (or Stanley Kubrick) invent this for 2001: A Space Odyssey back in the 1960s?

Jamoncorona | 5 hours ago

lmao the 40's called.

myaltaltaltacct | 5 hours ago

Prior art, just off the top of my head, being "2001: A Space Odyssey". No?

Eledridan | 5 hours ago

Spin the drum!

Working-Business-153 | 5 hours ago

Pretty sure my school physics homework would count as Prior Art in this case, of course Arthur C. Clarke has me beat by a few years. Weird because the Russian space program is nothing to sneeze at, so why?

PlayAccomplished3706 | 4 hours ago

I remember seeing a YouTube video a while ago explaining why this doesn't work. The problem is the fake gravity is not a constant. It is higher at your feet and lower at your head assuming you are standing straight up. This causes serious problems with the human body.

LJSidney | 3 hours ago

If the ring is big enough, it's less of an issue.

Another practical concern is, how do you dock a capsule to it to deliver people and cargo to the station? Do you try to dock with a rapidly spinning space station, or do you stop the space station's spin for docking? There's some technological hurdles to overcome here. Not insurmountable, just a lot of interesting engineering to get past.

Bad_Commit_46_pres | 3 hours ago

You could easily match rotation with the station

dm80x86 | 3 hours ago

The effect you're talking about drops off as the diameter of the ring increases.

As for issues with the human body it's no worse than a amusement park ride.

opinionsareus | 6 hours ago

Wouldnt want to be on board when that thing breaks down

pvtprofanity | 3 hours ago

People going on about how it's dumb that they are patenting a sci fi trope.

I'm more interested in how a state owned company would enforce such a patent if another company in another nation infringed on it. I know there's some level of cooperation between nations in that regard, ubut the nations feasibly building space stations are mostly countries that don't have the best relationships with Russia at the moment and so might not care if Russia objects.

JackhorseBowman | 3 hours ago

It was the last best hope for peace.

Jmauld | an hour ago

Patents? This design has been in media for half a century, at least.

nocloudno | 5 hours ago

So patents work in space

Rurumo666 | 4 hours ago

Typical Russian circle jerk.

Jertob | 4 hours ago

That's nice at all but you can never design the space to assume gravity is always going to be in place since that is definitely going to malfunction or need repairs at some point and stop spinning

DrDrWest | 4 hours ago

Good, now terminate this abomination of a nation.

Wet_Side_Down | 4 hours ago

I think “prior art” will make that patent application challenging

akluin | 4 hours ago

They are going to recycle their iss module in their new space station because they can't afford to build a full new one from scratch and they want a station able to generate its own gravity, good joke

userousnameous | 4 hours ago

This will go nicely with their, 'Paying to create civil unrest in neighbor countries, to generate small autonomous zones for consumption' patent.

SkotchKrispie | 4 hours ago

Centripetal force****

Glittering-Ad3488 | 3 hours ago

This is the space police, we are coming aboard your station to check for patient violations!

Dom8331 | 3 hours ago

What weight a patent even has in a divided world economic system like today? I mean, whats russia gonna do if EU company blatantly copies the patent mechanism?

Fresh_Sock8660 | 3 hours ago

Country that constantly violates almost every international law there is expects the world to respect it when it's their turn?

Not that anyone would take this patent seriously anyway.

753951321654987 | 3 hours ago

Lmao yea and they will get right on that after they rebuild a trillion dollars with or economic and military losses

TheRealTK421 | 3 hours ago

> ...producing an outward-pushing centrifugal force

Decidedly not a mechanic which can be patented.

Russians are a bad joke (and I'm being immensely generous.)

Larnievc | 3 hours ago

Like those fairground rides with the big spinny drums!

fearthainne | 3 hours ago

You mean we might get to live our Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century dreams?!

zonazog | 2 hours ago

The engineering stresses involved will be very difficult to overcome

thetransportedman | an hour ago

2001 Space Odyssey did this

isn’t this what terrence howard was talking about

Peterd90 | 11 minutes ago

Nah Russia, Larry Niven wrote about Ringworld in 1970.

SecondHandWatch | 4 hours ago

>a concept being implemented and used for 50+ years.

Where has it been in use? In science fiction writing? Tell me, how many science fiction writers have patents to their names? Do you think that maybe there’s a difference between conception of a rough idea and creating an actual process or mechanism to accomplish an engineering or manufacturing goal?