When I read what the 'invention' does, my first thought was that I had never regarded getting the batteries in in the right direction as being a significant problem. My second thought was to imagine how I would solve that problem if I were going to worry about it. I immediately realized that there must be both positive and negative terminals at both ends of the compartment for each cell. I also realized that this could be made to work because the positive terminal on these types of cells protrudes. I imagined an annular negative terminal surrounding a slightly depressed positive contact in the middle. This would work and it is very similar to what MS claims to have 'invented'. I don't think I thought about it for more than ten seconds. I claim that the solution fails to pass the obviousness test. What had apparently not been so obvious was that there was any significant problem in the first place.

To solve a given tough computing problem, we have technologies that make it possible to build a complex software system to solve the problem by cobbling together appropriate software modules. A primary advantage of such an approach is that it leads to faster development. However, it rarely leads to an implementation that is efficient in terms of either size or performance. A system designed specifically to solve only the given problem and built carefully from the ground up can normally work much more efficiently using less resources. I would expect similar limitations would apply with the modular satellite systems. However, given the enormous costs involved in launching such hardware, inefficiencies of any sort cannot be tolerated easily. I suspect that this program will ultimately fail in its primary objective. However, I expect that there will come out of the effort improvements in the ways that many of the problems in satellite technology are addressed. Such improvements will be imitated in future bottom-up developments.