[HN Gopher] Honda conducts successful launch and landing of expe...
___________________________________________________________________
Honda conducts successful launch and landing of experimental
reusable rocket
Author : LorenDB
Score : 716 points
Date : 2025-06-17 15:02 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (global.honda)
(TXT) w3m dump (global.honda)
| brianbreslin wrote:
| Is this a precursor to a viable alternative to any of SpaceX
| products?
| oldpersonintx2 wrote:
| there are already alternatives to SpaceX products
|
| _reaching an altitude of 300 meters_
|
| ...but this isn 't one of them, yet
| stego-tech wrote:
| Not at this stage. Looks like they used a smaller rocket to
| test the core concepts involved, rather than build a huge,
| production-ready platform like SpaceX. Good to see Japanese
| industry still improving their self-reliance.
| wingspar wrote:
| Seems like this test is equivalent to the SpaceX Starhopper
| which went 150m... https://spacenews.com/spacexs-starhopper-
| completes-test-flig...
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| I often described my wife's old Honda Civic, which we finally
| sold (still running and able to be driven) w/ just north of
| 340,000 miles, as having been to the moon and on its way back. I
| like the idea that someday Honda hardware could, in fact, send
| something to the moon.
| pkdpic wrote:
| Agreed, same experience with my wife's current Honda Fit. And I
| like the thought experiment of Tesla Model S (or whatever) is
| to Falcon 9 as '98 Honda Civic is to... Wait they do they say
| the name if this rocket anywhere?
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| The Honda rocket won't be as "fancy" as the SpaceX but it'll
| have vastly better parts availability.
| randmeerkat wrote:
| And JDM badges.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| And magic seats
| tersers wrote:
| VTEC decal on the side
| redwall_hp wrote:
| Hopefully anime wraps will be available as well.
| spacecadet wrote:
| US Taxpayers ain't wrong, voted most reliable rocket 10
| years in a row.
| HeWhoLurksLate wrote:
| I just want to know who will get the J.D. Power Initial
| Quality Award and then subsequently fall apart five
| minutes after it gets judged (lookin at you, Stellantis)
| SEJeff wrote:
| I can't wait to see the GIANT spoiler on the engine cowling
| that does nothing more than help them push it if it breaks
| down.
| legitster wrote:
| Make sure you do a valve adjustment on the Fit engine every
| 100k or so. Easy job to do with some basic tools and a few
| hours on a Saturday afternoon.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| My experience with Honda has not been great. Both Hondas I
| have owned had complete transmission failures. Full
| disclosure, I bought them used (as I do all my cars) with
| unknown maintenance history and I did get a few years out of
| each of them so it still worked out "ok" in an economic
| sense. The engines do seem pretty bulletproof. But I would
| not buy another, at least not one with an automatic
| transmission.
| officeplant wrote:
| I find the common problem with automatics is their service
| time scale. Bad car owners often forget to do oil changes
| often enough and those are only 3.5-10k miles apart
| depending on climate/oil type/etc. Which means services
| that happen every 50-75k miles or greater get left to
| people that actually maintain service histories and timely
| maintenance.
|
| Personal example buying a used car with 60k miles that had
| some idle/start issues at times but generally ran well.
| Everything seemed to be serviced in a timely manner but the
| spark plugs were still the originals. Those spark plugs
| have a generous "100,000 mile" service interval. I pulled
| the originals and sure enough they weren't in the greatest
| shape. $40 later I never had start/idle issues again for
| the remaining time I owned the car.
| caycep wrote:
| That was a known thing from the '00s decade cars. But good
| excuse for a manual transmission swap!
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| The real fun is the equivalent spaceship. "This here Honda
| Bucolic has so many miles on from its Earth-Moon runs that it's
| basically been to Neptune and back."
| GeneralMayhem wrote:
| That'd be a very impressive service record - Neptune is right
| around _ten thousand_ times as far as the moon.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| That's just short of 20 years worth of use if earth-moon is
| your work-home commute, that's a pretty good analogy
| actually.
| le-mark wrote:
| A lady backed into my 99 civic in 2008, totaled it. The body
| work was more than the value of the car. I'd still be driving
| it if that hadn't happened :sad-face.
| pjmorris wrote:
| An inattentive person rear-ended my 82 Civiv in 87. I
| probably wouldn't still be driving it, but it has led to a
| long association with Honda/Acura products.
|
| If rockets became as common as cars, what kind of accidents
| would we see? And would insurers insure them?
| jancsika wrote:
| If you'd still be driving it then how was the resale value
| relevant?
| Finnucane wrote:
| Insurance won't pay for it. But it's probably still cheaper
| to fix than buy a new car (I had a '99 CRV that I drove for
| 17 years).
| nsriv wrote:
| I think he means that the cost to repair exceeded the
| market value of the car. As a recent victim of something
| similar with an 09 Accord, I feel the pain. Was the perfect
| car.
| jancsika wrote:
| I'm supposing he meant that the body damage was the only
| damage, and that the known cost to repair the body
| exceeded the market value.
|
| But OP states that, body aside, the car's condition was
| suitable to deliver at least two more decades of driving
| time. Buying a different used Civic at market value would
| introduce an unknown, unbound cost of repairs to reach
| that goal. Unless you're a mechanic it's essentially
| gambling. Or* it's a new vehicle-- in which case it will
| cost vastly more than the cost of the body repairs.
|
| I suppose I understand why the market is relevant-- if it
| were $1 then it would be worth the gamble. But given OP's
| goals and foreknowledge of the car's condition, I don't
| understand why market value would create a hard limit
| against paying for the repairs. That foreknowledge is
| worth at least a few hundred dollars, probably way more
| if you factor in time to find another car and risk of it
| being in ill-repair. Edit: (Not to mention the depth of
| knowledge since OP had been driving it for nearly a
| decade already!)
|
| Edit: _Plus_ the fact that OP would have run this car
| into the ground. So while market value still plays some
| role, _resale_ value does not.
| nsriv wrote:
| It comes down to insurance and salvage titles mostly. In
| PA, the vehicle I have experience with was valued by
| insurance at $11.5k, minus a $500 deductible, so $11k.
| That value determination was made by the insurance
| company by market factors, which is why market value
| comes into play. Looking around at comparable used
| vehicles of same make, model, year, mileage, I found that
| to be fair price.
|
| The cost to repair from multiple shops within
| transportable distance (important consideration as I'm
| sure someone somewhere could have done it for less) was
| $16k. To get it to an ugly but functional state was about
| $10k, which would have to be paid out of pocket.
|
| Even if repaired to "roadworthy" condition, it would need
| to be reinspected and if deemed to be roadworthy would
| hold a salvage title, meaning insurance would go through
| the roof, my liability coverage would be dropped, and the
| car could not be resold. If not deemed roadworthy, more
| cost.
|
| Needless to say, I considered the car totaled and used
| the $11k for a down payment towards another Honda.
| t-3 wrote:
| My yearly car insurance bill is more than I paid for my
| Civic.
| jamesgill wrote:
| Perhaps Honda should launch an old Civic into space, like
| Musk's Tesla.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| A Civic would be on-brand, but an S2000 convertible with an
| ASIMO waving from the driver's seat would be much more fun.
| caycep wrote:
| S2000 is worth too much, in SoCal, their going rate is
| probably equal or above that of an equivalent Porsche
| Boxster/Cayman of the same era...
| rconti wrote:
| Not just SoCal; watch the auction sites. I really only
| wanted an AP2 in Rio Yellow Pearl, and their values are
| perilously close to $30k. In fact, a 70k mile example I
| bid on last year on BaT or C&B (in San Jose) went for
| over $30k.
|
| Ultimately I "gave up" and just bought a 981 Boxster S (a
| 2013) for $42k. A 986 Boxster from the same era as an
| S2000 would absolutely be S2k prices.
|
| I owned a Miata and wanted to own an S2k before moving up
| to the Boxster, but for today's asking prices, it just
| didn't make sense.
| wmeredith wrote:
| I'm fairly certain that an S2000's current worth is a
| rounding error in rocket-science economics.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| $18,450: not bad! https://www.cargurus.com/Cars/listing/409
| 969476?sourceContex...
| kreetx wrote:
| I'd still send the Civic. Sending another convertible is
| imitation, but sending a Civic, a people's car, especially
| an older model, would by quite humorous.
| nick486 wrote:
| find an old one, connect the odometer to count the distance
| flown in addition to the x00k miles it already has, stream
| the video as it flies around the moon and back.
|
| would be a fun publicity stunt.
| agumonkey wrote:
| perhaps they could launch Elon into space, that would be
| civic
| mofunnyman wrote:
| 0.711 of the way to the moon and back. It has been to the moon
| though.
| lampiaio wrote:
| You should watch Pontiac Moon! (Or maybe not, it's not that
| great of a movie)
|
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110867/
| robszumski wrote:
| For reference, Rocket Lab's Electron has a wet mass of 13,000 kg.
| This rocket is much smaller at 1,312 kg wet mass.
| delichon wrote:
| Falcon 9 433k kg Atlas V 547k kg
| Starship 1,200k kg Starship Booster 3,600k kg
| glimshe wrote:
| Saturn V: 2.9M kg
| Certhas wrote:
| k kg is a funny unit... Much more readable than Mg of course.
| Tonnes would also work...
| overfeed wrote:
| Tonne is unfortunately overloaded, the US and the UK have
| their own versions, but for the rest of the world is on
| metric, and a tonne is 1000 kg. The Falcon 9 weighing "433
| t" reads way more elegantly to me.
| djaychela wrote:
| FTR no-one I know (other than in old school industry
| about 20 years ago) used the UK 'Ton' any more. One place
| of work made this clear by having different
| pronuncication ('Tonn-ey') as they were an old-school
| foundry. And the spelling is different from wherever I've
| seen it.
|
| The nuclear industry was using metric weights fully when
| I did my apprenticeship in it in the late 1980s. Good job
| really as I think a conversion error could be
| catastrophic.
|
| Same goes for gallons though, US gallon is smaller than a
| UK one.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| NASA is metric but its whole supply chain was not leading
| to such a catastrophic conversion error: https://en.wikip
| edia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter#Cause_of_...
| softfalcon wrote:
| Here in Canada (where the mixup of metric vs imperial
| tonnes is common) we just say "metric tonnes" and move
| on. Everyone here knows that means 1000 kg.
|
| European colleagues regularly go, "what other kind of
| tonnes are there?" and we get to share the joke of how
| silly Americans are for still using imperial tonnes.
| robocat wrote:
| I've often seen mt written as the units for metric tons.
|
| There's some ODD behavior where people in the US want to
| fuck up metric units (MB being the obvious in my lifetime
| non-engineer renaming of the meaning of a unit). I find
| the MM of finance confusing (not sure of origin). Calling
| tonnes, metric "tons", seems to be a US confusing thing.
| Or spelling metres vs meters.
|
| Or creating units that depend on something country
| specific like football field (is that FIFA (EU), US,
| Canadian, Aussie).
|
| Actually it seems common to desire to create industry
| units: https://www.theregister.com/Design/page/reg-
| standards-conver...
|
| Sort of a NIH at the county level.
| pseudocomposer wrote:
| Unless https://www.math.net/pounds-to-tons is severely
| wrong, a US ton is 2200lbs, UK 2240lbs, metric 2204lbs.
| Put a different way, US to metric is a <0.2% difference
| (the smallest), US to UK is a <2% difference (the
| biggest).
|
| At a scale of 433 tons, it doesn't really matter much
| which kind of tons (unless you're actually doing the
| rocket science, of course).
| nneonneo wrote:
| US ton is 2000 lb, not 2200. I spent some time in the US
| and had never heard of a ton meaning 2200 lb.
| Unfortunately, that's a 10% error off of a metric ton.
| jjj_throw wrote:
| US short ton is 2000lbs, long ton is ~2200.
| frereubu wrote:
| My understanding was that "ton" is the US / imperial and
| "tonne" is the metric one, but I see people using them
| interchangeably here, so I guess whether that's
| technically true or not is a bit moot!
| littlestymaar wrote:
| "Mg" wouldn't even be valid since the SI unit is the
| kilogram. But yeah, using tons is the sensible choice.
| Ekaros wrote:
| As valid as milligram, microgram or nanogram. All widely
| used.
| Certhas wrote:
| Wikipedia would beg to differ:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(mass)
|
| _The table at right is based on the kilogram (kg), the
| base unit of mass in the International System of Units
| (SI). The kilogram is the only standard unit to include
| an SI prefix (kilo-) as part of its name. The gram (10-3
| kg) is an SI derived unit of mass. However, the names of
| all SI mass units are based on gram, rather than on
| kilogram; thus 103 kg is a megagram (106 g), not a
| kilokilogram._
|
| _The tonne (t) is an SI-compatible unit of mass equal to
| a megagram (Mg), or 10^3 kg. The unit is in common use
| for masses above about 10^3 kg and is often used with SI
| prefixes. For example, a gigagram (Gg) or 10^9 g is 10^3
| tonnes, commonly called a kilotonne._
|
| One context where I have seen this used is carbon stocks,
| e.g. petagram of carbon (PgC):
|
| https://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/Carbon+Cycle
|
| Of course Gigatonne of Co2 is also found very frequently.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| TIL, thanks.
| carabiner wrote:
| I like kilodollars for salaries and kilofeet for elevation
| though.
| dguest wrote:
| Starship is 1.2 kilotons, but I feel like quoting rockets
| in kilotons might cause some confusion.
| stingrae wrote:
| Blue Origin New Shepard 75k kg
| whatever1 wrote:
| Question why is it so easy today to build reusable rockets? Is it
| because the onboard cpu speed of the chips can solve more
| granular control problems with low latency?
| kurthr wrote:
| Proof of concept. It's a lot easier to do something, if you
| know it can be done.
| mempko wrote:
| I mean, SpaceX also knew it could be done since reusable
| rocket tests happened in the 90s.
| kurthr wrote:
| Don't you mean the SpaceShuttle in the 80s? or Delta
| Clipper which didn't reach orbit?
|
| Really, what SpaceX did was radically different from the
| tests in the 90s from the rockets, to the controls, to the
| reusability goals. Otherwise they wouldn't have built
| Grasshopper.
|
| Now NewGlen is kinda a knockoff of Delta Clipper, but
| that's a different beast.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| And physics, nothing prevents the goal beyond execution.
| hwillis wrote:
| The DC-X was 9.1 tonnes empty and 19 tonnes full- meaning
| landing thrust was ~half of takeoff thrust. The Falcon 9
| was 400 tonnes full and 26 tonnes empty, so takeoff thrust
| was >20x higher than landing thrust.
|
| That's a _huge_ engineering difference, roughly like the
| difference between a car and a helicopter. The Falcon 9 was
| also 4x taller, meaning 16x more force to correct a lean. A
| little burp would send the rocket right back up in the air.
| benjiro wrote:
| Its more about money.
|
| If you know that something can be done, and there is a
| potential market for such a project, it then becomes easier
| to get the funding. Chicken or the egg...
|
| One thing we also need to point out, is that SpaceX uses like
| 80% of their yearly launches, for their own communication /
| sat service. This gave a incentive for that investment.
|
| Is the same reason why, despite SpaceX throwing those things
| up constantly, there really is a big lag of competitors with
| reusable rockets. Its not that they where / not able to
| quickly get the same tech going. They simply have less
| market, vs what SpaceX does non-stop. So the investments are
| less, what in time means less fast development.
|
| SpaceX is a bit of a strange company, partially because they
| used a lot of the public funds to just throw shit at the
| wall, and see what sticks. This resulted in them caring less
| if a few rockets blew up, as long as they got the data for
| the next one with less flaws. It becomes harder when there is
| more oversight of that money, or risk averse investors. Then
| you really want to be sure that thing goes up and come back
| down into one piece from the first go.
|
| A lot of projects funding are heavily based upon the first or
| second try of something, and then (sometimes unwisely)
| funding is pulled if it was not a perfect success story.
| kurthr wrote:
| I agree, a lot is about money, but it's not like Honda is
| raising external funds. Getting management to agree to do
| anything pretty much requires guaranteed success in large
| organizations.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Even before SpaceX started launching their own satellites
| in huge numbers they had a business model where they were
| selling the launch, not the rocket, and selling it at a
| fixed price, so if some small refinement saved them 5% on
| launch costs _it went to their pockets_ so they had an
| incentive to make those small refinements.
|
| Dragon 9 was based on conservative and boring technology
| but it was cost optimized before it was reusable, then
| reusability crushed the competition.
|
| For that matter, Starship is boring. "Throw at the wall and
| see what sticks" isn't "trying a bunch of crazy stuff" but
| trying a bunch of low and medium risk things. For instance,
| development of the Space Shuttle thermal tiles was
| outrageously expensive and resulted in a system that was
| outrageously expensive to maintain. They couldn't change it
| because lives were at stake. With Starship they can build a
| thermal protection system which is 90% adequate and make
| little changes that get it up to 100% adequate and then
| look at optimizing weight, speed of reuse and all that. If
| some of them burn up it is just money since there won't be
| astronauts riding it until it is perfected.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Bezos wants to do satellite internet just like spaceX, owns
| a rocket company, but is still going to buy rides on 3rd
| party non-reusable rockets
| bumby wrote:
| > _they used a lot of the public funds to just throw shit
| at the wall, and see what sticks._
|
| This is where I think the business acumen came into play.
| Because the govt is self-insured, it allowed SpaceX to pass
| the high risk off to the taxpayer. Once the tech matured,
| the risk was low enough to be palatable for private
| industry use.
|
| And FWIW, I don't mean that as disparaging to SpaceX, just
| an acknowledgment of the risk dynamics.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Also psychology and politics kept people from following the
| easy path.
|
| The Space Shuttle was wrong in so many ways, not least that
| it was a "pickup truck" as opposed to a dedicated manned
| vehicle (with appropriate safety features) or a dedicated
| cargo vehicle. Because they couldn't do unmanned tests they
| were stuck with the barely reusable thermal tiles and
| couldn't replace them with something easier to reuse (or
| safer!)
|
| Attempts at second generation reusable vehicles failed
| because rather than "solving reuse" they were all about
| single-stage to orbit (SSTO) [2] and aerospike engines and
| exotic composite materials that burned up the
| money/complexity/risk/technology budgets.
|
| There was a report that came out towards the end of the SDI
| [3] phase that pointed out the path that SpaceX followed with
| Dragon 9 where you could make rather ordinary rockets and
| reuse the first stage but expend the second because the first
| stage is most of the expense. They thought psychology and
| politics would preclude that and that people would be seduced
| by SSTO, aerospikes, composites, etc.
|
| Funny though out of all the design studies NASA did for the
| Shuttle and for heavy lift vehicles inspired by the O'Neill
| colony idea, there was a sketch of a "fly back booster" based
| on the Saturn V that would have basically been "Super Heavy"
| that was considered in 1979 that, retrospectively, could have
| given us Starship by 1990 or so. But no, we were committed to
| the Space Shuttle because boy the Soviet Union was
| intimidated by our willingness and ability to spend on
| senseless boondoggles!
|
| [1] The first few times the shuttle went up they were afraid
| the tiles would get damaged and something like the Columbia
| accident would happen, they made some minor changes to get
| them to stick better and stopped worrying, at least in
| public. It took 100 launches for a failure mode than affects
| 1% of launches to actually happen.
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-stage-to-orbit
|
| [3]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defense_Initiative
| (which would have required much cheaper launch)
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| > The Space Shuttle was wrong in so many ways, not least
| that it was a "pickup truck" as opposed to a dedicated
| manned vehicle (with appropriate safety features) or a
| dedicated cargo vehicle.
|
| I wonder what the STS system would have been like if the
| DoD's cross-range requirement hadn't been imposed.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| That too... And the whole boondoggle about launching from
| Vandenberg that never happened. That bit about it being
| "dual use" though helped in the "intimidate the Soviet
| Union" department.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| I enjoy the theory that the Space Shuttle fulfilled its
| mission as an economic weapon w/ respect to Buran.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Well it did, but if you look at health care or
| infrastructure you'll see that the U.S. can intimidate
| anybody except maybe the Chinese when it comes to
| spending money.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| See, for example: 4-minute mile
| odo1242 wrote:
| I mean, it's mostly that we've decided to try to do it
| nowadays. Problems tend to get easier when we put hundreds of
| thousands of hours of work into them. It wasn't in the scope of
| the original rocket projects because if it was, we probably
| would never have launched them.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Because there's a bigger market for space cargo
|
| I wouldn't say anything has fundamentally changed in the rocket
| coordination tech itself, just the private sector being able to
| rationalize the cost of the trials with ROI
| xeromal wrote:
| SpaceX showed it was possible and also a crappy place to work
| means those knowledgeable people go work elsewhere for less
| work and more money.
|
| inb4 blue origin / DC-X did it first
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Actually, the DC-X did it first, in 1993. The DC-X was the
| first vertical rocket landing, Blue Origin was the first
| vertical landing of a rocket that went to space, and SpaceX
| was the first vertical landing of an orbital rocket.
|
| This Honda landing neither went to space nor was orbital, so
| it was a similar test to the DC-X test.
| LorenDB wrote:
| Actually, retropeopulsive landing was demonstrated during
| the Apollo program, both on the moon with the LM and with
| LM trainers on the earth. Those systems were human
| controlled, of course.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Crappy for 10% amazing for 90%, somewhat better than the
| 80/20 70/30 seen by most F500s.
| MattRix wrote:
| I imagine they mean crappy as in really poor work life
| balance.
| treis wrote:
| This doesn't feel like that much of an accomplishment
| relatively speaking. It's a smallish rocket that went up and
| down. Very far away from landing something 100 times heavier
| from orbit.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Nobody is propulsively landing anything from orbit yet.
| (Dragon is supposedly capable of it, as a backup if the
| chutes fail, but has never done so.)
| xixixao wrote:
| Starship is already pretty much there (almost-orbit and
| water splash)
| lupusreal wrote:
| They've had three failures since those earlier successes,
| and while I expect they'll get it eventually I wouldn't
| count them as doing it yet.
|
| Besides SpaceX, its also being worked on by Rocket Lab,
| Stoke, maybe Blue Origin, and too many Chinese companies
| to count.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| They've been working on this (in cooperation with JAXA (Japan's
| NASA)) since 2021.
| rvnx wrote:
| We now have realistic simulators like:
| http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/ -> (it's free and open-source:
| https://github.com/orbitersim/orbiter )
|
| so now the main problem is building the hardware, there are a
| lot of solutions for the software part.
|
| Before there were no general-purpose simulators, and barely
| usable computers (2 MHz computer with 2 KB of memory...), so
| all you could do was hardcoding the path and use rather
| constrained algorithms.
| roshdodd wrote:
| I don't think this was the cause. Advanced simulation
| capabilities have existed for many decades in the industry.
| Many if not most of those tools are not publicly available.
|
| I think there is also a distinction to be made between
| offline (engineering) and onboard computing resources. While
| onboard computers have been constrained in the past, control
| algorithms are typically simple to implement. Most of the
| heavy lifting (design & optimization of algorithms) is done
| in the R&D phase using HPC equipment.
| nine_k wrote:
| You can now buy vastly more computing power and do fancy
| fluid dynmaics, etc thanks to GPUs. 20 years ago it was
| much more expensive to procure, and much harder to find
| expertise. 30 years ago, I suppose, the field was even less
| mature, and limited to the few HPC installations and in-
| house bespoke software.
|
| Mass-produced hardware drove prices down, and availability
| way up, in many industries: motors, analog electronics,
| computers, solar panels, lithium batteries, various
| sensors, etc. Maybe reusable rockets, enabled by all that,
| are going to follow a similar trajectory as air
| transportation.
| chasil wrote:
| If we are going to be specific, 64-bit ARM (in the form
| of AArch64) arrived in 2011.
|
| It would seem to me that Intel and AMD were not friendly
| to custom designs at that time, and MIPS was not
| significantly evolving.
|
| A fast, low-power CPU that can access more than 4gb and
| is friendly to customization seems to me to be a recent
| development.
| morganherlocker wrote:
| > so now the main problem is building the hardware, there are
| a lot of solutions for the software part.
|
| While cool and all, this type of sim is a tiny, tiny slice of
| the software stack, and not the most difficult by a long
| shot. For one, you need software to control the actual
| hardware, that runs on said hardware's specific CPU(s) stack
| AND in sim (making an off the shelf sim a lot less useful).
| Orbital/newtonian physics are not trivial to implement, but
| they are relatively simple compared to the software that
| handles integration with physical components, telemetry,
| command, alerting, path optimization, etc. etc. The phrase
| "reality has a surprising amount of detail" applies here - it
| takes a lot of software to model complex hardware correctly,
| and even more to control it safely.
| rvnx wrote:
| Certainly not a trivial problem I totally agree, but still
| significantly easier than Von Braun with his paper
| calculations.
| rsynnott wrote:
| I mean, it's been around as a concept since at least the 50s,
| but there was quite a lot of scepticism that it was worth the
| cost (this would only have been reinforced by the Shuttle,
| whose 'reusable' engines were a bit of a disaster)
| advisedwang wrote:
| I don't know the answer, but some possibilities beyond CPU
| capabilities include:
|
| * Better motors for gimballing
|
| * Launch-thrust engines that throttle down low enough and
| preciesly enough for landing
|
| * Better materials to handle stress for flip over manover etc
| without added weight
|
| * More accurate position sensors
|
| * Better understanding and simulation of aerodynamics to
| develop body shape and write control algorithms.
| hwillis wrote:
| Electrical engineer: motors and sensors are not really any
| better- motors have gotten more efficient and sensors have
| gotten cheaper, but gold standard sensors like ring laser
| gyroscopes have existed since the 60s.
|
| > Launch-thrust engines that throttle down low enough and
| preciesly enough for landing
|
| In large part this is due to improved simulation- spaceX made
| their own software:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozrvfRHvYHA&t=119s
|
| Experimentation was also a large factor- pintle injectors
| have been around for a long time, but were not used in
| production rockets until SpaceX (who moved from a single
| pintle to an annular ring). Pintle injectors are very good
| for throttling.
|
| > Better materials to handle stress for flip over manover etc
| without added weight
|
| We're still using the same materials- good ol inconel and
| aluminum. However 3d printing has made a pretty big
| difference in engines.
|
| More rockets use carbon fiber, but that isn't _new_ exactly
| and the main parts are still the same variety of aluminum
| etc. Titanium has become more common, but is still pretty
| specialized- the increased availability was probably the
| biggest factor but improved cutting toolings (alloys and
| coatings) and tools (bigger, faster, less vibration) have
| also made a big difference.
| roshdodd wrote:
| As someone who actively works in the field, it was a
| culmination of:
|
| - Advances in rocket engine design & tech to enable deep
| throttling
|
| - Control algorithms for propulsive landing maturing (Google
| "Lars Blackmore", "GFOLD", "Mars Landing", and work through the
| references)
|
| - Forward thinking and risk-taking by SpaceX to further develop
| tech demonstrated by earlier efforts (DC-X, Mars Landing, etc.)
|
| Modern simulation and sensor capabilities helped, but were not
| the major enabling factors.
| bumby wrote:
| Can you elaborate on the advances in deep throttling?
| 93po wrote:
| Also didnt spacex do reuse without throttling and only
| having on/off?
| timschmidt wrote:
| No. SpaceX's Merlin engines use a single
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pintle_injector which has
| excellent throttling capabilities.
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| They do throttle, and quite low compared to other
| comparable engines, but they still cannot throttle an
| engine below 1 TWR when the stage is near empty. Meaning
| that they cannot hover a stage, either the engine is on
| and the stage is accelerating upwards, or it's off and
| it's accelerating downwards. (And you cannot rapidly turn
| engines on and off.)
|
| So they need to "hoverslam", that is, arrive at the
| landing pad rapidly decelerating so that their altitude
| hits zero just as their speed hits zero. This was thought
| to be very hard, but I don't think SpaceX has lost a
| stage due to estimation failure there. It helps that
| there is significant throttle range and fairly rapid
| throttle response on the engines, so they can have some
| slack. (Plan to decelerate at 2.5g for the last ~20s or
| so, with the ability to do anything between ~1.5g to 4g,
| so you can adjust throttle based on measured landing
| speed.)
|
| Their Superheavy has more engines, allowing them to bring
| the TWR below 1, enabling hovering.
| hwillis wrote:
| Not in industry, but: rockets can be like 90% fuel by
| weight. All engines on 105% can lift the rocket, so if you
| want to land while the tanks are nearly empty you need to
| be able to get to less than 1/10th of your thrust. Turning
| off engines only gets you so far- the Space Shuttle engine
| could throttle between 67% and 109% of rated power but if
| you only have 1/3 engines on you can only get as low as 22%
| power.
|
| One major reason for this is the mixing plate at the top of
| the combustor. Fuel and oxygen are distributed to tiny
| nozzles which mix together. The better the mixing, the more
| stable the burn. If you get unstable burning -eg
| momentarily better mixing in one area- it will cause a
| pressure disturbance which will further alter the burning
| power in different areas of the combustion chamber. At low
| throttle, this can be enough to cause the engine to turn
| off entirely.
|
| Fluid simulations have made a huge difference. It's now
| possible to throttle engines down to 5% because mixing is
| much more stable (manufacturing improvements in the nozzles
| have also helped) and combustion is more protected from
| pressure variations.
|
| The extra stability also just makes it easier to control a
| rocket period. Less thrust variation to confuse with drag
| properties, less bouncing, better sensor data.
| bumby wrote:
| So I'm assuming the simulations lead to better controls
| software and/or mechanical nozzle designs? Similar to how
| CFD leads to more efficient vehicle aerodynamics?
|
| I guess I'm trying to connect the dots on how a
| simulation improves the actual vehicle dynamics.
| hwillis wrote:
| There is some improvement in vehicle control, but the
| biggest impact was _inside_ the engine. Controlling the
| vehicle at transonic speeds benefits a lot from
| simulation- control inversion is an example. When grid
| find pass the sound barrier, the flow through the holes
| of the grid becomes choked off by shockwaves, and the fin
| starts acting like it was solid and sideways. Since it 's
| effectively pointed 90 degrees off, it acts like its
| reversed. Knowing when, how intensely, and how turning
| affects that is important. Simulation also helps you find
| unexpected places where flows may unexpectedly become
| super/subsonic and cause torque. Experimenting at these
| speeds is... hard.
|
| Simulation inside the engine can find resonances, show
| where shockwaves propagate, and show you how to build
| injectors (pressure, spray etc) so they are less affected
| by the path of reflections. Optimizing things like that
| smoothly along a range of velocities and pressures
| without a computer is not very feasible, and you need a
| minimum of computing power before you start converging to
| accurate results. The unpredictability of turbulence
| means low-resolution simulations will behave very
| differently.
| Out_of_Characte wrote:
| the poster above was very conservative in his metrics and
| throtteling requirements.
|
| Modern pressure vessels can reach 5% empty mass, thats a
| factor of 20
|
| Rockets have stages, a good approximate is to stage half
| your rocket to get rid of the most empty mass. This also
| means your first stage has to have double the thrust to
| lift itself and its stage. Now you're at a factor of 40
| just to hover.
|
| Now you actually have to take off, usually around 1.2 to
| 1.4 thrust to weight.
|
| So a more realistic scenario means your rocket engine has
| to throttle down to exactly 2% power while the laval
| nozzle is optimised for takeoff thrust only.
| briandw wrote:
| Rocket engines struggle to throttle down to low levels due
| to combustion instability, injector dynamics, and turbopump
| limitations. Here are some stats on minimum throttle
| levels:
|
| SpaceX Merlin 1D: ~40% Rocketdyne F-1 (Saturn V): ~70%
| Space Shuttle Main Engine (RS-25): ~67% Blue Origin BE-4:
| ~20-25%
|
| Falcon 9 does the "hover slam" where they have to turn off
| the engine exactly at touch down, or the rocket starts to
| go back up again. Throttle is too high for the weight of
| the booster at that point in flight.
| czbond wrote:
| @roshdodd - Is there a modern reference/book that covers the
| design of such systems?
| softfalcon wrote:
| > Google "Lars Blackmore", "GFOLD", "Mars Landing", and
| work through the references
|
| They linked details to look into in their original post.
| hinkley wrote:
| I recall hearing SpaceX cite manufacturing improvements as
| well. How do you feel about materials science and the ability
| to source parts not made of unobtanium?
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| Many of the hardest problems facing rocket engines are
| about temperature, heat and thermal density, not structural
| strength.
|
| This means that 3d-printed copper (alloy) is an amazing
| process and material for them. You can build the kind of
| structurally integrated cooling channels that the people
| building rockets in the 60's could only dream about, and
| it's not a gold-plated part that required a million labor
| hours to build, it's something you can just print
| overnight.
| floxy wrote:
| I don't know how representative it is, but this photo seems
| impressive:
|
| https://www.voxelmatters.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2024/08/Spac...
| giarc wrote:
| >Forward thinking and risk-taking by SpaceX to further
| develop tech demonstrated by earlier efforts (DC-X, Mars
| Landing, etc.)
|
| Is this basically a technical way of saying "people realized
| it could be done"? Like the 4 minute mile, once it was done
| once, many people accomplished the same feat soon after. The
| realization that it was possible changed people's perception.
| starik36 wrote:
| I don't know about easy. Today we have exactly 1 proven
| reusable orbital class family of rockets: Falcon. And even at
| that Falcon 9 only recovers 1st stage and the fairings. And
| Falcon Heavy has never recovered the center stage.
|
| There might be more in a year or two (New Glenn, Neutron,
| Starship, a Chinese one), but for now, I would call it
| extremely difficult, not easy.
| didibus wrote:
| Someone proved that there is market demand which could make it
| profitable.
|
| In the past, there was not much reasons to go into space,
| commercially, so who would have paid for it? But today there
| are many more use-cases for sending things to space that are
| willing to pay for the service.
| jessriedel wrote:
| The premise of this question is wrong, and it's super
| disappointing that everyone is giving answers as if it's
| correct. The Honda test rocket only went to an altitude of 300
| meters. It's been possible to propulsively land rockets from
| such low altitudes for decades, e.g., McDonnell Douglas DC-X
| test in 1996. (And ofc, if you're just talking about re-use for
| any landing method, the space shuttle first reused the solid
| rockets and the orbiter in 1981.)
|
| Reusable, propulsively landed stages for rockets capable of
| putting payloads into Earth orbit is stupendously harder. The
| speeds involved are like 10-100x higher than these little hops.
| The first stages of Falcon 9 and Starship are still the only
| rockets that have achieved that. Electron has only re-used a
| single engine.
| Avshalom wrote:
| It's always been easy. People just didn't think it made much
| sense. The thing about reusability is that it seriously cuts
| down on your payload.
|
| I mean for/example the Apollo lander was a tail landing rocket
| and lunar landing is way fucking harder because a thick
| atmosphere gives you some room for error.
| numpad0 wrote:
| It's not hard-hard to build _recoverable_ rockets, but it 's
| hard to _make money_ launching _reusable_ rockets that _goes to
| space_. This one is not going to space, not making money, and
| not clear if it 's reusable.
|
| Most launch suppliers just make rockets single-use and write it
| off because it's not like you're launching weekly. Who knows
| how much it costs in labor and parts to refurbish landed
| rockets, it's probably cheaper to just keep making new ones.
|
| ^ you know what to say in response to this; we're all in the
| process of finding out which one is more correct.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| What is the point of making a recoverable rocket if not to
| reuse it (or at least reuse substantial components)?
| numpad0 wrote:
| Exactly why the rest of the world isn't jumping into it.
| $THEY are still skeptical of airplane style rapid reuse, so
| much so that vehicles with zero reusability like Mitsubishi
| H3 are still being designed from clean sheet.
| tzury wrote:
| so now any company can get its own TLD? that's cool.
| kube-system wrote:
| Brand TLDs became a thing in 2012 under ICANNs New gTLD Program
| dsp wrote:
| There was an opportunity to apply over a decade ago. The plan
| is to open another window for applications next year.
| tzury wrote:
| Now I see, there is a whole list of them out there
|
| https://icannwiki.org/New_gTLD_Brand_Applications
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| I've only seen it used by companies that cannot get out of
| their own way.
|
| Instead of news.honda.com (their actual domain) or
| hondanews.com (actual domain, redirect from before, all owned
| by them, also has news) or honda.global (makes sense, but
| nothing there) or honda.com/news (makes sense, but nothing
| there) they go waste money on a new gTLD. So we have
| global.honda/en/newsroom/. .
|
| At least they're using it: https://domainmetadata.com/list-of-
| all-honda-domains
| acheron wrote:
| On one hand, it ruins DNS, but on the other hand, it makes
| ICANN a lot of money.
| criddell wrote:
| How does it ruin DNS?
| hinkley wrote:
| Ford, Mercedes and Apple all own /8 address blocks. I thought
| IBM used to own one as well but they must have given it up.
| miyuru wrote:
| I use dns.google pretty often, very useful when implemented
| correctly.
| cududa wrote:
| Initially wanted to say I'm impressed they got it on the first
| launch
|
| But, couldn't specifically tell if this was indeed the first
| launch or not, and perhaps there were some private failures
| before - anyone know?
| pwarner wrote:
| If I was Japan I'd be interested in some of the "one time use"
| use cases as well given the current geopolitical state of
| affairs.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Any reusable rocket is also an expendable rocket with slightly
| better payload.
| lupusreal wrote:
| JAXA is pretty well set up with expendable launchers already,
| built by Mitsubishi. The "geopolitical" state of affairs isn't
| threatening their ability to put stuff into orbit, Japan
| doesn't rely on America/Russia/China/etc for that.
| numpad0 wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3Fk3XdQFMo
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgaGUb1GAEo
| walterbell wrote:
| One small step for Japan, one big step for space industry
| competition.
| echelon wrote:
| Please! We need lots of competition in this space. I hope Japan
| develops a burgeoning private space industry.
| mbowcut2 wrote:
| I read this as "pirate space industry" and got real excited.
| adikulkarni11 wrote:
| The most reliable rocket
| LightBug1 wrote:
| Yay Honda ... competition!
|
| I want the NSX edition.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/shorts/v00pN4FyfuM
| perihelions wrote:
| I think there's about 5 or 6 private startups on the brink of
| attempting orbital booster landings within the next few months.
| This... is at least a decade behind that, if they're serious.
|
| Note that they don't appear to have an orbital engine yet--this
| thing's far too small, it has to be some kind of one-off for this
| demo flight. Most of the competition leaped directly to testing
| an engine they were developing for orbital launches, in their
| suborbital hops.
| wood_spirit wrote:
| It's not clear that they need to take so long to catch up.
|
| It's like a four minute mile. Now we've seen reusable rockets
| work, everybody builds them and nobody says it won't work?
| nine_k wrote:
| I assume this rocket is not a part of some orbital program.
| It's more like the SpaceX's Hopper [1], intended to test the
| control algorithms and such.
|
| A booster / orbital vehicle, when it appears, should have very
| different characteristics. I can even imagine that some kind of
| compatibility standard may arise, allowing to stack custom
| orbital vehicles to reusable boosters, much like the
| standardized buses for smaller satellites that exist today.
|
| [1]: https://starship-spacex.fandom.com/wiki/Starhopper
| perihelions wrote:
| > _" competition leaped directly to testing an engine they
| were developing for orbital launches"_
|
| SpaceX' Starhopper was an orbital Raptor engine. The *test
| vehicle* wasn't orbital, but, it's testing the in-development
| orbital engine and associated plumbing under flight
| conditions (which is useful, because... well you can see the
| various ways Starhopper failed at the start). Likewise,
| Grasshopper before that, in 2012-3, was a single Merlin
| engine (the Falcon 9 has, eponymously, 9).
|
| SpaceX never flew a suborbital hop with anything other than
| an engine intended for orbital flight.
|
| I think if Honda had an orbital-class reusable engine at the
| hardware stage, that'd be flying _that_ to test it as much as
| possible. I 'm not aware of any of the competitors doing
| otherwise. This is signalling they don't (yet?) have one.
|
| edit: Or LandSpace, whose 10 km suborbital hop last year flew
| one of the methane engines their orbital vehicle has nine of.
| nine_k wrote:
| From the press release: <<Honda rocket research is still in
| the fundamental research phase, and no decisions have been
| made regarding commercialization of these rocket
| technologies>>. It also has no mention of the engine used.
| Honda indeed appear to not have an engine worth noticing
| yet.
| financypants wrote:
| Those japanese rockets are much smaller compared to our big
| american sized rockets
| pmdulaney wrote:
| Even the longest journey begins with a single step.
| throaway920181 wrote:
| I think they were making a dick joke.
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| Specifically a South Park reference.
| mac3n wrote:
| ...looking forward to my rocket-powered Honda Fit!
|
| "you meet the nicest people on a Honda"
| <https://www.vintag.es/2017/09/you-meet-nicest-people-on-hond...>
|
| I don't know what kind of people you meet on that other, better-
| known, reusable rocket company.
| pmdulaney wrote:
| Congratulations to our friends in Japan!
| jonplackett wrote:
| No-one thought to make a video of this momentous occasion?
| Electricniko wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0jjxqpC0aY
| _joel wrote:
| > reaching an altitude of 271.4 m
|
| I wonder if BPS .pace got further with his solid fuel thrust
| vectoring? Mustn't be far off that if not.
| https://bps.space/products/signal-r2
| markedathome wrote:
| Using a Class N rocket motor, the High Steaks rocket reached
| about 8500m, earlier this year. I think Joe abandoned the
| thrust vector control for control surfaces within the fins to
| stabilise rotation.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UX7NJLYyb4
| 3ds wrote:
| Here is the video which they should have put in the post:
|
| https://global.honda/content/dam/site/global-en/topics-new/c...
| djaychela wrote:
| For some reason the landing of that reminded me of the Eagle
| from Space:1999 - there was something different in the
| ballistics of it compared to SpaceX and Blue Origin. Fantastic
| to see, thanks for the video link.
| darrelld wrote:
| I'm accustomed to seeing large plumes of chemicals coming out
| the other end in my minds eye when I think about rocket
| launches. This looks "clean" coming out the exhaust.
|
| Why is that? Is it due to the nature of chemicals it uses?
| fogh1 wrote:
| Basically yes, other rockets might burn chemicals that create
| more soot. This one seemingly doesn't.
| nine_k wrote:
| Soot means carbon-rich fuel, like RP1, and a very fuel-rich
| mix. Most launches I ever saw had basically zero soot, and a
| clean exhaust of a well-balanced fuel / oxidizer mix.
|
| Military rockets, and solid-fuel boosters like the kind the
| Shuttles used to use, indeed produce very visible exhaust,
| because they use heavy fuels, and sometimes heavier
| oxidizers, like nitric acid. This is because they need to be
| in the fueled state for a long time, ready to launch in
| seconds; this excludes more efficient but finicky cryogenic
| fuels used by large commercial rockets.
|
| The large plumes that you usually see the first few seconds
| when a rocket is blasting off a launch pad are mostly water
| vapor. The launch pad would be destroyed by the exhaust were
| it not cooled during the launch by large amounts of water,
| which gets evaporated instead of the concrete.
| ggreer wrote:
| Several reasons. It's filmed in daylight, so any flame or
| exhaust will be less visible. The rocket engine is much
| smaller than anything that would go on an orbital booster, so
| there's less exhaust than what'd you see for an orbital
| launch. Also it's looks like it's a hydrolox rocket (using
| liquid hydrogen and oxygen as fuel), which has the least
| visible flame. The combustion product is almost entirely
| water vapor. Methalox (methane + liquid oxygen) is the next
| cleanest, which emits water, CO2, and a little bit of soot.
| Kerolox (RP-1 and oxygen) is the most common propellant used
| today, and it emits a significant amount of soot.
|
| Solid boosters put out the most visible exhaust, as burning
| APCP[1] emits solid particles of metal oxides. Also some
| rockets (mostly Russian, Chinese, and Indian) use
| unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine + dinitrogen tetroxide, which
| emits a reddish-orange exhaust. Both compounds are toxic, as
| is the exhaust.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonium_perchlorate_composi
| te...
| perihelions wrote:
| I doubt it's hydrogen, because the color looks off (blue,
| rather than pink), and because it'd be a poor fit for a
| small R&D project. They're not optimizing for performance-
| at-all-costs on this.
|
| Ethanol/oxygen is my guess. Blue, and also very little
| soot.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Probably methalox I think. It's the trendy prop mix most
| reusable programs are settling on because it doesn't coke
| up engines like kerosene and is easier to model in
| computers, and doesn't cause metallurgical problems like
| hydrogen while being much more dense. Alcohol isn't
| impossible but seems unlikely to me because that's not
| what you'd want for the full scale rocket they're
| presumably working towards.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Most civilian rockets have solid strap-on boosters(actual
| technical term) that emit the signature thick white smokes,
| as well as leave contrails at high speeds. Neither would be
| visible for non-solid rockets at low speeds.
| whitehexagon wrote:
| Great clean video link thanks, but I cant work out the scale,
| first it looks like a toy rocket, then from the distance shot
| it looks huge, like spaceX huge, and then landing it looks
| quite small again, especially with the lawn sprinklers.
|
| But an impressively smooth landing regardless, and I would
| imagine maybe harder the smaller the rocket is.
| tw04 wrote:
| > successfully landed its 6.3-metre (20.6-foot) experimental
| reusable launch vehicle
|
| From another article.
| hbrav wrote:
| Or in natural units: three very tall men stood on top of
| one another, wearing a top hat.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| It's not a rocket, but three men in a trench coat?
| lowestprimate wrote:
| How many bananas?
| ryandrake wrote:
| Oh jeez, how many football fields is that?
| RattlesnakeJake wrote:
| Are all three men wearing individual top hats, or does
| one cover all of them?
| imzadi wrote:
| About the height of a giraffe
| voxic11 wrote:
| Its like half the size of a Trident missile.
| gnatolf wrote:
| Which inexplicably isn't know for soft landings
| hnburnsy wrote:
| >6.3 m in length, 85 cm in diameter, 900 kg dry weight/1,312
| kg wet weight
| ricardobeat wrote:
| That's just a tad longer than a north-american SUV
| (Escalade, Navigator) standing on it's back. Accurate to
| say it's a car-sized rocket.
| perihelions wrote:
| It's much smaller than other suborbital hop vehicles. If it's
| 6.3 meters, the smallest Starhopper was 18 meters; Blue
| Shepherd 19 m; China's Hyperbola-2Y 17 m; the Zhuque-3 VTVL
| test vehicle 18.3 m. Also the Grasshopper from 2012 was 32 m
| and even 1993's DC-X was 12 m.
| SECProto wrote:
| > It's much smaller than other suborbital hop vehicles.
|
| You likely weren't being exhaustive in your listing, but I
| first started watching aerospace development with Armadillo
| Aerospace, and some of their rockets were much smaller.
| Their largest one was still shorter than the dc-x.
|
| http://www.astronautix.com/q/quad.html
| throwaway562if1 wrote:
| Electron is an 18m orbital delivery rocket (14.5m+payload
| without the optional third stage).
| MrSkelter wrote:
| It's harder to land shorter vehicles. If you can land a
| short one the taller ones are easier.
| api_or_ipa wrote:
| Watching the video, when the rocket lifted-off, it stood on a
| couple small risers. When it landed, the risers were gone. Did
| someone run out there and grab them?
| Kye wrote:
| I think the landing spot is different from where it took off
| from. The trees in the landing shot weren't there in the
| takeoff shot.
| sprkv5 wrote:
| the lift off spot is at the edge of the launch pad, whereas
| the landing spot is at the center of the launch pad.
|
| [edit] the camera angle and the camera height from the
| ground is different as well between the lift off and
| landing.
| Kye wrote:
| Taking another look, I see four little rectangles that
| seem to match the risers close to the camera at the
| landing, but far from the rocket. I think they may have
| actually retracted. That would be neat.
|
| It makes more sense than someone going out and grabbing
| them during the short flight. Those things would need to
| be sturdy and attached to not melt or blow away during
| the launch, and they would be hot.
|
| edit: If you open up the first image on the submission
| and look to the left of the crane, you can see what look
| like the risers. They do seem to come out of the ground.
| You can see the same trees as the landing shot.
|
| edit: I didn't realize the page had more videos under the
| Download button. I was wrong about the rectangles, but
| you can definitely see it's landing in a different spot
| in the onboard video (#3). You can still see the risers
| when it lands.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| It may not have landed on the same pad it took off from.
| feoren wrote:
| Despite the other comments, the landing spot is clearly the
| same as where it took off. Take a screenshot at 0:09 and one
| at 0:48 and you can see that it's most certainly the same
| pad. The camera has moved slightly to the left on the
| landing, that's all.
|
| Someone must have run out and grabbed the risers.
| Kye wrote:
| >> _" Despite the other comments, the landing spot is
| clearly the same as where it took off."_
|
| Nope.
|
| https://global.honda/en/topics/2025/c_2025-06-17ceng/image_
| d...
|
| Video three and four _clearly_ show it lands a little bit
| away from the risers. Same pad, but only 1 /2 comments--not
| mine--suggested it was a different pad.
| numpad0 wrote:
| This is Taiki site, so either within the circular pad at
| (42.500394123580, 143.43589082745), or maybe from the end
| of 08R to neighboring Interstellar Tech pad area?
|
| 1: https://maps.app.goo.gl/BhfWBSBWgPQaa64g7
| Kye wrote:
| I thought that at first when I went looking for it, but
| the pad in the video from the rocket's perspective is an
| octagon. It's more consistent with this: https://www.goog
| le.com/maps/search/honda/@42.5442372,143.493...
|
| The surrounding features are a match.
| mbowcut2 wrote:
| It's interesting how I couldn't tell whether the rocket was 1m
| tall or 10m tall in this video. Turns out it's actually 6m tall
| per the link.
| gessha wrote:
| Japan continuing their legacy of minituriazing everything
| they develop. \s
| sciencesama wrote:
| You need some manga
| ethbr1 wrote:
| They play at either extreme.
|
| https://thegaijinghost.com/blog/japan-life-sized-gundam-
| thro...
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| In the first shot on the pad, I thought "oh, it's a slightly
| oversized model rocket" and then when it cut I realized it
| was quite a bit bigger.
| neodypsis wrote:
| What is the steam cloud for after landing?
| 420official wrote:
| It's liquid propellant being vented, the fuel is under
| extreme pressure so when its released it immediately expands
| to a gas. I don't know that Honda has said what their
| propellant is, but it's probably liquid hydrogen and liquid
| oxygen.
| vFunct wrote:
| The feet landing extension reminds me of the Delta Clipper DC-X
| rocket, the first reusable VTOL rocket from 30+ years ago:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wv9n9Casp1o
|
| I wonder if that's the optimal design for VTOL rocket landers?
| Or is that more particular to smaller lighter rockets and
| eventually you need heavier duty options for bigger rockets?
|
| Also the DC-X was eventually intended to be single-stage-to-
| orbit (SSTO). Do any of these reusable rockets plan on being
| SSTO? Whether from Space-X/Blue Origin or this or the Chinese
| ones? SSTO is where you're going to dramatically change the
| economics of rockets, as you now only have to worry about
| refueling when launching satellites, instead of using an
| expendable second stage..
| almosthere wrote:
| They should have totally had a Civic in the background and a
| guy mowing the lawn near the sprinkler.
| bozhark wrote:
| Generational engine ad Needs some F1
| wiseowise wrote:
| Amazing. Looks like cartoons I saw when I was a child, expect
| now it is in real life. Surreal.
| redbell wrote:
| From the second 22 to 44, I really couldn't tell if the rocket
| is ascending or descending :)
|
| Also, I believe it would have been a historical moment if they
| filmed the entire staff watching the event from the control
| room.
| Aeolun wrote:
| They can't put the video first. This is Japan. First have to
| strongly declaim how safe they were being with a 6m rocket.
| ghxst wrote:
| Big congratulations to the engineers! Also had no idea that
| .honda is a TLD that's really cool.
| throaway920181 wrote:
| For anyone else that's curious, it turns out there are a TON of
| company-specific TLDs.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_dom...
| leesec wrote:
| This is a tiny rocket going up 300ms and coming back down. Happy
| for them but they're a long way from any utility ( and a decade+
| behind other companies )
| throaway920181 wrote:
| Which companies have this capability besides SpaceX and Blue
| Origin? More competition is always welcome.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| I think the DC-X program did this first in the 90s. It ran
| into funding issues and it turns out there isn't a ton of
| value in reusable rockets that only go a few hundred feet
| (although more advanced applications are potentially
| worthwhile)
| perihelions wrote:
| Rocket Labs, Stoke Space, Deep Blue, Landspace, Space
| Pioneer, iSpace, Galactic. (The last five are Chinese
| startups).
|
| Rocket Labs has recovered (not reflown) several orbital
| boosters, and the rest are within 1-2 years of orbital
| booster recovery attempts.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| So the correct answer is "nobody else has the capability"
|
| I'll be thrilled when someone does! Competition is great!
| But let's do it via technological progress, not through
| abuse of the english language.
| amelius wrote:
| It's not a difficult problem. It's just Newtonian mechanics
| plus control theory. You only need a lot of funding and then
| just do it (of course build a simulator first).
| markhahn wrote:
| maybe that's the hard part, and scaling isn't.
| alexathrowawa9 wrote:
| This right here is the quintessential hackernews comment
|
| Pure HN distilled
| jethronethro wrote:
| Starting small, gradually scaling up. What a concept!
| hluska wrote:
| Congratulations, you found the most obvious negative thing to
| say. Good for you?
| artursapek wrote:
| Honda has a TLD????
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| I wouldn't have expected Honda to enter this space.
|
| Why the huge release of steam from the top of the rocket at the
| end? Release of heat that builds up during the descent? (Though
| it's not depending that fast, so it wouldn't be heat from
| atmospheric friction.)
| DisjointedHunt wrote:
| Remember Asimo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASIMO
|
| I'd really like to see them scale this up commercially quicker
| than they did with the humanoid robot they built well ahead of
| many others.
| atdaemon wrote:
| vtec kicked in!
| dangoodmanUT wrote:
| HONDA???
| ricardobeat wrote:
| Honda has historically invested heavily in R&D. They are
| robotics pioneers, have made jet skis, power tools, sell a
| commercial jet [1], and are responsible for the engine powering
| the winner (RB) of the last four F1 championships,
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_HA-420_HondaJet
| kapildev wrote:
| First time I saw a domain named `honda`. On further research [1],
| I see that many companies have Top Level Domains of their name.
| Why did IANA/ICANN allow TLDs of company's names?
|
| [1]: https://data.iana.org/TLD/tlds-alpha-by-domain.txt
| busymom0 wrote:
| Before the video even launched (it took a few seconds to load
| while I stared at the address bar), that's exactly what I was
| wondering too.
| mkw5053 wrote:
| Years ago, I worked for Neustar [1], and they were trying to
| sell .<brand> domains to everyone. Looks like they finally got
| at least one customer.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neustar
| gertrunde wrote:
| Money mostly.
|
| $185,000 application fee to apply for a new gTLD, plus maybe
| some auctions for gTLDs that multiple entities wanted, resulted
| in just under $60 million for ICANN.[2]
|
| Apparently Google and Amazon were the most prolific appliers,
| with 101 and 76 applications respectively.[3]
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICANN#TLD_expansion_and_concer...
|
| [2]
| https://www.theregister.com/2015/04/17/icann_gltd_auction_mo...
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_top-
| level_domain#Expan...
| MangoToupe wrote:
| I don't know japanese or japanese culture, but it's possible
| this word extends beyond branding. cf https://venere.it/en/the-
| meaning-and-history-of-the-name-hon...
|
| Notably:
|
| > The name "Honda" has its roots in Japan, a country known for
| its rich traditions and cultural heritage. In Japanese, the
| name is written as Ben Tian , which can be broken down into two
| characters: Ben ("hon") meaning "origin" or "root" and Tian
| ("da" or "ta") meaning "rice field" or "paddy field." The
| combination of these characters conveys a sense of familial
| roots or origin tied to agricultural land, which was
| historically significant in Japan's agrarian society.
|
| > Traditionally, Japanese surnames like Honda were often linked
| to geographic locations or land ownership, reflecting the
| agricultural lifestyle of early Japan. Thus, the name Honda
| could have been used to denote a family that owned or worked on
| rice fields, marking them as stewards of the land.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| I might as well ask here though this is probably a bit off topic:
| for smaller rockets why are catapults not used? Seems like it
| could save a bit on fuel and maybe even a stage.
| leoxiong wrote:
| There are companies in that space.
|
| https://www.spinlaunch.com/
| tonyhart7 wrote:
| its not really high in the atmosphere but its a good start
|
| finally SpaceX got competition
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(page generated 2025-06-17 23:00 UTC)