[HN Gopher] Honda conducts successful launch and landing of expe...
___________________________________________________________________
Honda conducts successful launch and landing of experimental
reusable rocket
Author : LorenDB
Score : 1247 points
Date : 2025-06-17 15:02 UTC (1 days 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.
| inemesitaffia wrote:
| mm is mille X mille.
|
| As in thousand
| 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!
| schiffern wrote:
| The spelling "tonne" is only used in countries where
| there might be ambiguity with the short ton. For the rest
| of the world, "ton" (abbreviation: t) is the metric ton.
| Technically it's classified as a "Non-SI unit that is
| accepted for use with SI," like litres or degrees
| Celsius.
|
| Source is the official SI brochure:
| https://www.bipm.org/en/publications/si-brochure/
| frereubu wrote:
| Thanks - TIL.
| 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.
| noobermin wrote:
| I thought people in astro already use Mg, why would it be
| confused with milligrams?
| stingrae wrote:
| Blue Origin New Shepard 75k kg
| somedude895 wrote:
| Isn't the Electron already considered a small rocket? What
| could a rocket that's half the weight of my car even carry?
| azernik wrote:
| It's considered a really small _orbital_ rocket. This demo
| vehicle is preparation for a suborbital vehicle, those can be
| much smaller.
| 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.
| imtringued wrote:
| Starship has exactly the opposite development strategy to
| what made the Falcon 9 so successful. Calling a complete
| change in process and philosophy "boring" appears to be
| hubris.
|
| Falcon 9 didn't have three versions of which two were
| obsolete. Falcon 9 didn't put optional goals on the
| critical path, which are now delaying and preventing
| commercial launches.
| inemesitaffia wrote:
| Falcon had multiple versions and upper stage reusability
| was planned too.
| 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.
| bumby wrote:
| It would be nice to hear the contrary perspectives that
| lead to downvotes. From my perspective, the advice
| dynamic is very clear. There was relatively little
| investment and private customer engagement with SpaceX
| until large government contracts were secured. The risk
| was just too high for any org except the government to
| bear, until the tech matured.
| inemesitaffia wrote:
| SpaceX didn't get government money to develop
| reusability.
|
| It cost them more than Falcon 9 development.
|
| Same with Starlink.
|
| This isn't Concorde
| panick21_ wrote:
| Honda is not running this as a commercial rocket. This
| seems more like a test platform. Or a way to train
| engineers.
|
| SpaceX invested in reusability long before they had any
| idea about their own launch services.
|
| > Its not that they where / not able to quickly get the
| same tech going. They simply have less market
|
| BlueOrigin has been trying for nearly as long as SpaceX and
| have infinite money and don't care about market. Apparently
| having lots of money doesn't make you able to 'quickly get
| the same tech'.
|
| RocketLab was to small and had to first grow the company in
| other ways. And the CEO initially didn't believe in large
| rockets. And their own efforts of re-usability, despite
| excellent engeeners didn't pan out to 'quickly get the same
| tech'.
|
| Arianespace had enough market in theory, they just didn't
| want to invest money. And now that they do, they are
| completely failing at at 'quickly getting the same tech'
| despite them getting lots and lots of money. More money in
| fact then SpaceX used to develop the Falcon 9 initially.
| And at best they get some demonstrators out of it.
|
| ULA has invested many billions in their next generation
| rockets, and they were absolutely not confident that they
| could 'quickly get the same tech'.
|
| Tons of money flowed into the rocket business, specially if
| you include Blue. Japan, India, Europe, China and US market
| have all ramped up investment. And nobody has replicated
| what SpaceX did more then 10 years ago.
|
| So as far as I can tell, there is exactly 0 evidence that
| people who can invest money can replicate the technology
| and the operations.
|
| > partially because they used a lot of the public funds to
| just throw shit at the wall
|
| The used all their costumers rockets to do tests after they
| had performed the service. Some of those rockets were
| bought by 'the public'. And the first reflown rockets
| didn't carry public payloads. Other companies could have
| done the same with not that much investment, they just
| didn't care to.
|
| What result SpaceX caring less, is because they were
| already so good at building rockets that even their non-
| reusable rockets were cheaper then anybody else, even with
| reusable tech like legs attached. Falcon 9 was so much
| better then anything else that even without re-usabiltiy
| they were profitable.
|
| Their business didn't depend on re-usability. I don't think
| the other rocket companies could even imagine something
| like that to be possible.
| inemesitaffia wrote:
| Public funds?
|
| Where's the money?
| 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.
| ambicapter wrote:
| > Because they couldn't do unmanned tests
|
| Why not? Certainly not for technical reasons, the shuttle
| had automatic landing capability (which was never used,
| purely from the pilot's preference).
| RataNova wrote:
| Amazing (and kind of frustrating) how many decades it took
| for the industry to circle back to those more pragmatic
| ideas
| bluGill wrote:
| Politicians don't like boring pragmatic ideas, they like
| cutting edge new things. You see it all over. Building a
| fancy building when a boring box would do. Building
| expensive trains when a cheap bus would do as well.
| Investing in cutting edge tech of all types when the
| existing technology already works perfectly and we have
| no reason to think the new will be better. Don't get me
| wrong, there is a time and place for fancy buildings,
| trains, and cutting edge technology, but politics often
| invests in the above when there is no reason to think
| they have a place just because it looks good.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| See, for example: 4-minute mile
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| I don't know how relevant that is. That's something that
| can be done by an individual, training for something
| slightly slower than 4 minutes and pushing through to
| achieve a time that onlookers might not have expected.
|
| The real friction in building a reusable rocket isn't the
| engineering, it's setting "let's build a reusable rocket"
| as a design goal, and getting a whole bunch of engineers
| and a whole bunch of dollars to start on that goal.
|
| You have to start with a whiteboard sketch and board-room
| presentation that shows it's achievable, and then send the
| engineers out to refine the sketch into something worth
| funding, and then work for months or years to build a
| rocket that would be a disaster if it's not achievable.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| >Proof of concept. It's a lot easier to do something, if
| you know it can be done.
|
| This.
|
| What I wanted to emphasize was how, after Bannister
| finally broke through the 4-minute barrier, many others
| did it soon after: 3 more in 1954; 4 in 1955; 3 in 1956;
| 5 in 1957; 4 in 1958.
|
| List: https://imgur.com/a/UadE3xa
| 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.
| bluGill wrote:
| Remember "hunt for Red October" - the novel is old, but
| there was one scene where they were doing this type of
| simulation on a super computer. A basic phone can do that
| same calculations in under a second today.
| 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.
| hinkley wrote:
| I learned a couple of years ago that the people in the
| sixties did in fact 3d print, but they did it via
| electroplating and wax. It took weeks to print a Saturn V
| rocket bell because they had to build up something like
| 5mm of material onto the outside of the bell after
| carving the channels into the outer surface of the inner
| bell and then packing them with wax.
| 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...
| hinkley wrote:
| With the block 3 design they have hardened all of the
| surfaces within the bottom skirt on the rocket so the
| blowback during reignition can't melt anything. And the
| flanges on the turbopump exhaust exist to facilitate
| redesign and inspection of the system. Once they know the
| exact shape they need they can construct a single pipe
| with two flanges instead of three pipes with six. Flanges
| make bigger failure points than a solid pipe due to the
| seals.
| 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.
| madamelic wrote:
| Could also be that SpaceX cracked it then other companies
| began poaching the engineers and the other companies
| started getting tips on how to address the hardest
| problems.
| markdown wrote:
| Investors. Investors finally realised that it could be
| done.
|
| I'm sure engineers and science-fiction writers have known
| for a long time that it could be done.
| nottorp wrote:
| Even "Musk realized it could be done". He had a few good
| ideas. Or pushed for a few good ideas until they were put
| in practice.
|
| Unfortunately then he stopped taking his dried frog pills
| and look where he is now...
| voidUpdate wrote:
| Did Musk realize it could be done, or did he pay some
| engineers to realise it could be done?
| nottorp wrote:
| ... pay and convince people to give him money to pay ...
|
| I still think he had some merit in the past.
| panick21_ wrote:
| Musk from the beginning realize to reduce the price, he
| would have to solve re-usabilitly. So he and the company
| from the beginning was focused on re-usability. He didn't
| just say 'this is what we are gone do'. As the company
| grew and solved initial problems of launch, they slowly
| figured out the best way to do it. And Musk as CEO was
| deeply involved from the beginning and and involved in
| all decisions.
| 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.
| carabiner wrote:
| It is not easy. ESA and China are still working to catch up to
| Grasshopper. Other US companies like ULA, Astra, RocketLab are
| still struggling.
| RataNova wrote:
| I think it's not easy per se, but way more achievable for a
| well-funded team than it was 20 years ago
| 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.
| dumdedum123 wrote:
| Exactly. People in this place. Sigh.
| tzs wrote:
| On the outside. Based on my experiences with Japanese vs
| American cars I'd not be surprised if they are bigger on the
| inside. :-)
|
| Seriously, when I bought a Civic in 1989, I looked at both the
| smaller Japanese cars (Civic, Sentra, Corolla) and bigger
| American cars. I'm tall and big and had trouble fitting
| comfortably in the American cars. No problem in the Japanese
| cars.
|
| Next time I was car shopping, sometime around 1999, I decided
| to take a look at SUVs which had become pretty popular by then.
| Again I tried the American ones. They were very large--and very
| cramped inside. Then I tried a Honda CR-V. It was way smaller
| than the American SUVs but just as with the Civic there was
| plenty of room.
|
| It struck me as absurd. How the heck are car companies of
| Japan, a country whose people average over 2" (5 cm) shorter
| than Americans and weigh about 2/3 what Americans weigh, so
| much better than American car companies at making cars that can
| fit tall fat Americans?
| 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
| _joel wrote:
| Pretty certain he didn't land that one as well though :)
| 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.
| hyperbrainer wrote:
| The water also serves the purpose of reducing reflecting
| acoustic energy.
| 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.
| ggreer wrote:
| Hydrogen engines aren't always pink. The exhaust color
| depends on the ratio of oxidizer to fuel. The Space
| Shuttle's main engines were hydrolox, but their exhaust
| had almost no pink/red.
|
| It's hard to say for sure, but I lean towards Honda's
| rocket using hydrogen. Honda has experience with it. They
| use hydrogen in their fuel cell vehicles, and their press
| release from 2021 mentions using hydrogen for rockets.[1]
|
| I'm pretty sure both fuel and oxidizer are cryogenic,
| because when the rocket lands it vents from several areas
| (most likely separate tanks). That would rule out ethanol
| or methanol as the fuel.
|
| I don't see any secondary exhaust from a gas generator,
| and staged combustion would be something to brag about
| (and much higher thrust), so my guess is that it's an
| expander cycle. Expander cycle engines require a fuel
| that boils easily, so it would have to be fueled by
| propane, methane, or hydrogen. I don't think it's
| propane, as the only propane/lox rocket I've seen has
| orange exhaust.[2] If Honda poached some engineers from
| Mitsubishi, I could see them going with a hydrolox
| expander cycle, as that's what the H family of rockets
| use.
|
| The only thing that doesn't line up with hydrogen is the
| low thrust given the propellant consumption. Based on the
| claimed wet/dry mass (1,312kg/900kg), they used at most
| 412kg of propellant. Flight duration was 56.6 seconds, so
| that's an average of 7.28kg of propellant per second. If
| the stated wet/dry mass is correct and the rocket used up
| all of its fuel, then the rocket's thrust was around 13kN
| at the start and around 7kN near the end. Let's say it
| averaged 10kN. Force equals mass flow rate times exhaust
| velocity. So 10kN divided by 7.28kg/sec is 1.374 km/s.
| Divide by standard Earth gravity and you get 140 seconds,
| which is pathetic for a rocket. It could be that they
| only used a small fraction of the available propellant,
| or they had a poor nozzle design, or the engine was
| throttled very low and was therefore less efficient. If
| we assume the test flight only used 40% of the available
| propellant, then we'd get a flow rate of 2.9kg/sec and a
| specific impulse of 352 seconds. But that sort of
| assumption can be used to come up with any Isp.
|
| Still, I think it's using either hydrogen or methane as
| fuel. Nothing else fits with the video.
|
| 1. https://global.honda/en/newsroom/news/2021/c210930beng
| .html
|
| 2. Here's a video of Isar Aerospace's Spectrum rocket,
| which uses propane/lox:
| https://x.com/isaraerospace/status/1906418985173758236
| perihelions wrote:
| > _" my guess is that it's an expander cycle"_
|
| It could simply be pressure-fed. No turbopump at all--
| just a helium tank.
|
| You have a preference for assuming sophistication, but
| this is a one-off inexpensive test article with trivial
| performance needs. My guess is that they'd made the
| simplest engineering choices possible at every turn.
| 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?
| peterlada wrote:
| And under the French cost is an _African_ swallow.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Oh jeez, how many football fields is that?
| Someone wrote:
| Let's see. 2 cm of grass on top of, say, 10 cm of earth
| would make the height of a football field 12cm. That
| would make it as high as about 50 football fields.
| 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
| xarope wrote:
| there are giraffes that are 6m tall?!?
| adrian_b wrote:
| It is said that many males exceed 5.5 m in height.
|
| A record height for a giraffe in a UK zoo was 5.8 m, but
| the tip of his horns was said to have reached close to
| 6.1 m.
|
| So 6 m is about in this ballpark.
| 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.
| xarope wrote:
| I'm a bit confused, most cars aren't more than 3m in
| length. This rocket is 6.3m.
|
| Or are there really SUVs which are > 6m in length?
| la_oveja wrote:
| the mentioned suvs are 5.7m and 5.6m long, respectively
| xarope wrote:
| wow, and I thought F350s were big
| cyxxon wrote:
| Huh? Even in Europe most cars are longer than 4m (a VW
| Golf is 4.28m for example).
| numpad0 wrote:
| Current gen Prius is about 4.5m in length, 1.8m in width,
| 1.5m in height. "Slightly under 5 x 2 x 1.5m" has been
| the standard size of a sedan for past few decades.
| 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).
| kryptiskt wrote:
| Japan holds the record for the smallest rocket to reach
| orbit with the SS-520, which put a cubesat into orbit in
| 2018.
|
| Its dimensions according to Wikipedia:
|
| Height - 31 feet (9.54 meters)
|
| Weight - 2.9 tons (2.6 metric tons)
|
| Diameter - 20 inches (52 centimeters)
|
| Payload to Low-Earth Orbit - ~9 lbs (4 kg)
| muziq wrote:
| I believe they can do 140kg to 800km, but #5 was only 4kg
| to a 180km x 1800km orbit..
| MrSkelter wrote:
| It's harder to land shorter vehicles. If you can land a
| short one the taller ones are easier.
| gpm wrote:
| There's a hobbyist ~1m orbital hop vehicle:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SH3lR2GLgT0
|
| Pretty sure that, or some other hobbyist project, is going
| to take the prize for "smallest".
| mr_toad wrote:
| The important thing about Starhopper was that it had a
| Raptor engine. And the Falcon 1 had a Merlin engine. They
| were testing with the engines they intended to put into
| orbit. Blue Origin are also going with orbital class
| engines.
|
| I doubt that this rocket has an engine intended for orbit?
| So it makes me wonder how serious this program is.
| 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.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Thanks, that seems more like it...
|
| > HondaZhuan Yong Zai Shi Yong Xing roketsutoShi Yan She
| Bei
|
| > Honda dedicated reusable rocket experiment facility
|
| yup
| close04 wrote:
| In this video [0] at the 50-51s mark you can see the
| rocket landing just meters away from what looks like the
| 4 metal standoffs it took off from.
|
| [0] https://www.linkedin.com/embed/feed/update/urn:li:ugc
| Post:73...
| Kye wrote:
| I can't tell whether you're agreeing or disagreeing, or
| something else. You said exactly what I said in response
| to the comment where I said it. Can you clarify?
| CMay wrote:
| I don't think they moved or were taken. It appeared that the
| rocket took off from the corner of the pad and landed in the
| center, with one camera angle for the corner launch and one
| camera angle for the central landing. So, I assume the risers
| are still exactly where they were, they're just outside of
| the camera frame.
|
| If you look at the landing shot, you can see that towards the
| corner are some markings for previous risers which were used
| for previous launches (or markings for future risers for
| future launches). The risers it launched from this time are
| just in a different corner.
| 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...
| ofalkaed wrote:
| In Japan, full scale (aka life size) is an extreme?
| ethbr1 wrote:
| No, imagining a 20.4 m robot in the first place and then
| animating 229+ episodes about it.
| viewtransform wrote:
| Bonsai rockets.
| 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
| bee_rider wrote:
| Hondas at least used to (I haven't kept up) have that great
| cheap/reliable car reputation... "the Honda of rockets" has a
| good ring to it I think, haha.
| zharknado wrote:
| "Sure, your rocket's reusable, but can it go 300k miles on
| the original engine?"
| perilunar wrote:
| 300k miles is only about 12 low earth orbits, so easily
| achievable by a second stage booster (though it's going
| to be coasting for most of it). Not so easy for a booster
| though.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Really once the rocket is in space, the joke kinda falls
| apart; frictionless vacuum and all that.
| blt wrote:
| Awaiting the rocket engine equivalent of the K20.
| hajhatten wrote:
| They still are, they're still references in
| durability/quality for motorcycles as well (together with
| the other Japanese manufacturers).
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| And the Civic should be towing a small boat with a Honda
| outboard motor. :)
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| And a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_HA-420_HondaJet
| circling in the air, and filming from up there :-)
| Intermernet wrote:
| Asimo robot mowing the lawn :-)
| hajhatten wrote:
| On a self-balancing motorcycle
| 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.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| Agreed, it brings the story home. What I most like about this
| news is that Honda has joined Blue Origin and SpaceX in
| demonstrating a complete "hop" (all though my all time favorite
| is the "ring of fire" video SpaceX did.)
|
| But it also illustrates that I've seen in the Bay Area time and
| time again, which is that once you demonstrate that something
| is doable (as SpaceX has) It opens the way for other capital to
| create competitive systems.
|
| At Google, where I worked for a few years, it was interesting
| to see how Google's understanding of search (publicly
| disclosed), and the infrastructure to host it (kept secret)
| kept it comfortably ahead of competitors until the design space
| was exhausted. At which point Google stopped moving forward and
| everyone else asymptotically approached their level of
| understanding and mastery.
|
| I see the same thing happening to SpaceX. As other firms master
| the art of the reusable booster, SpaceX's grasp on the launch
| services market weakens. Just as Google's grasp of the search
| market weakens. Or Sun's grasp of the server market weakened.
| When it becomes possible to buy launch services from another
| vendor which are comparable (not necessarily cheaper, just
| comparable) without the baggage of the damage Elon has done,
| SpaceX will be in a tougher spot.
|
| It also helps me to understand just how much SpaceX needs
| Starship in order to stay on top of the market.
|
| Some folks will no doubt see this as casting shade on SpaceX, I
| assure you it is not. What SpaceX's engineering teams have
| accomplished remains amazing and they deserve their success. It
| is just someone who has been through a number of technology
| curves noting how similar the they play out over their
| lifetimes.
|
| Having witnessed first hand how DEC felt that Sun's "toy
| computers" would never eclipse DEC in the Server business, and
| watched as United Launch Alliance dismissed Falcon 9 as
| something that would never seriously challenge their
| capabilities, it feels almost prophetic to watch SpaceX's
| competitors emerge.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Don't forget Ballmer dissing the iPad.
|
| I also won't forget the marketing department at the camera
| company I worked at, dismissing the iPhone, when it first
| came out (it ended up eating their lunch).
| josh2600 wrote:
| I always think about blackberry's internal design teams
| telling the ceo that the iPhone was fake, then getting one
| and seeing that it was a small logic board with a giant
| battery.
|
| RIM got so completely smoked with their ten year
| development cycles. It's amazing if that they still have a
| business today to be honest.
| stefanfisk wrote:
| Where can I read more about the design team believing
| that the iPhone was fake?
| gwid0n wrote:
| https://www.amazon.com/Losing-Signal-Extraordinary-
| Spectacul...
|
| There's also an entertaining movie based on this book, a
| rare business film that is more about failure than
| success.
| Aaronstotle wrote:
| And one of the main characters is played by Glen Howard
| (Dennis for the Always Sunny Fans). He does a good job of
| playing psychopaths.
| nicolaslegland wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2047623
| bbarnett wrote:
| One thing this comment is missing, is data rates.
|
| At the time, data was mondo expensive. Everyone was stuck
| low-bandwidth. Then when the iphone launched, Jobs +
| Apple did an exclusive with Cingular/AT&T. The talk at
| the time, was it was a bidding war -- they all wanted the
| iphone on their network first.
|
| That exclusive opened the door to a phone manufacturer,
| for the first time, negotiating bandwidth, new data plans
| and more. RIM didn't have a lot of software that was high
| bandwidth, because the carriers wouldn't even _allow_ it
| before Apple broke that hold.
|
| So suddenly here's this new phone, with an exclusive, and
| with actual usable web browsing with a usable data plan
| price.... and RIM still begging for that.
|
| (Obviously RIM still could have caught up if they didn't
| drop the ball, but this was a big shift in the market)
| someuser2345 wrote:
| To be fair, a lot of the iPhone's first demo _was_ faked.
| testing22321 wrote:
| Even the CEO of United Launch Aliance said public ally
| the SpaceX raptor 3 was fake.
|
| They are so far ahead even their biggest competitor can't
| comprehend what they're doing.
| gpm wrote:
| > What I most like about this news is that Honda has joined
| Blue Origin and SpaceX in demonstrating a complete "hop
|
| The list is longer than that! The earliest hop was probably
| by McDonnell Douglas in 1993
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_QQDY7PYc8
| ohitsdom wrote:
| Thank you for posting this. DC-X was ground-breaking.
| Masten also had Xombie in 2010.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01FcUEjwDkk
| avmich wrote:
| Northrop Grumman Lunar Landet Challenge was before 2010.
| Works of e.g. Armadillo Aerospace...
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| I literally applied to work at McDonnell Douglas when I
| heard about DC-X! It went against my choice to NOT work for
| a defense contractor, but it was a really cool project.
| They were amenable to hiring me but a program manager told
| me in confidence that the project had lost support because
| the Strategic Defense Initiative's cancellation meant there
| was no money to continue the project. The demo flights were
| the last deliverable in the contract and after that the
| project was dead. It made me sad.
| pantulis wrote:
| Can't help but recognize the level of awesomeness. For me
| "deliverable" means a software project, a presentation
| deck, whatever. These guys delivered a rocket.
| perihelions wrote:
| Landspace, 10 km --
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dNFknayVDU
|
| Deep Blue, several km, hard landing --
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-g26Zt15lo
|
| iSpace, 0.3 km --
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKCH9ElmmZA
|
| CASC, 12 km -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55iVjGuf_sE
| (their 75 km attempt in January failed, and doesn't have a
| public video)
|
| Space Epoch, 2.5 km, hard landing --
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTQK1kDpbw4
| perilunar wrote:
| And the earliest rocket _landings_ would have been the
| various lunar landers in the 1960s.
| kortilla wrote:
| Is this meaningful without it being orbital?
| iancmceachern wrote:
| We were sending stuff into orbit far before we could
| reliably, reusabley, land a rocket on its tail.
| biscottigelato wrote:
| Recovering and reusing something that went up and down
|
| And something that went orbital at supersonic speed
|
| Is not even remotely the same universe
|
| McDonell Douglas have done up and down since 1992
|
| SpaceX is the only entity that have recovered and reused
| any rocket parts after sending payloads orbital
|
| Wake me up when someone have done even a test that
| resembles orbital recovery
|
| Until then all the EDS in here has zero power over
| reality
| joelwilliamson wrote:
| > SpaceX is the only entity that have recovered and
| reused any rocket parts after sending payloads orbital
|
| This is not true. Say what you will about the Shuttle,
| but they definitely recovered and reused rocket parts
| from both the boosters and the orbiter.
| kortilla wrote:
| It's the combination of the two that's challenging
| though. The force of a first stage boosting an upper
| stage to orbit is a lot different than a carnival ride
| style single stage apogee ride.
| mr_toad wrote:
| The commercial market is almost entirely for satellites,
| and by definition that means putting them in orbit.
| brianpan wrote:
| Once you know it's doable, even a Berklee College of Music
| grad can do it. :D
|
| BPS.space https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SH3lR2GLgT0
| amelius wrote:
| A rocket has a lot in common with a pipe organ, from an
| aerodynamics viewpoint.
| dirkc wrote:
| Now I am imagining a future where rockets mount different
| pipe organs so they make distinct sounds when coming back
| to land
| dbbr wrote:
| Organpunk.
| amelius wrote:
| Sooner rather than later you can buy this stuff on
| AliExpress.
| bigiain wrote:
| > When it becomes possible to buy launch services from
| another vendor which are comparable (not necessarily cheaper,
| just comparable) without the baggage of the damage Elon has
| done, SpaceX will be in a tougher spot.
|
| And I suspect that's doubly true for launch customers outside
| the US.
| bbarnett wrote:
| I hate to derail into the political, but that's already
| been done so I'll input an alternate viewpoint.
|
| Most people I know in Canada, don't _currently_ think
| poorly of Elon. Note the conditional, _currently_. They
| think poorly of Trump, and the entire republican party for
| talking about, and allowing Trump to talk about annexation.
| (For example, congress purposefully extending all of Trump
| 's emergency executive orders for the rest of the year,
| when they'd normally need 90 days + review of congress)
|
| However this isn't about US "team" politics, where even
| your news talks about "red states" and "blue states". This
| is simply about "Is this thing good or bad for Canada".
|
| For example, while tariffs are seen as just plain dumb,
| they're not seen as hostile to Canada, just a shift in US
| policy. It's the _speed_ of tariff change that 's the
| biggest concern. Put another way, most of the world has no
| idea or cares for US "team" politics, and frankly we don't
| understand or even know what drives most US political
| discussion. It all seems like senseless drivel.
|
| Now to be fair, I'm sure anyone peering in at any political
| argument from outside, ends up with this feeling. If you've
| even been visiting a friend, and their family gets into an
| argument, it's just embarrassing and often laden with
| decades of back-history, for which you have no context or
| understanding.
|
| Couple that with the fact that Canada has multiple
| political parties, not just two, especially at the
| provincial level. This means we're more accustomed to
| people working with those they normally do not want to, in
| order to find a cooperative means to an end. You can see
| cases in the past where a minority government/party remains
| in power, by the support of a _separatist_ party. Yes,
| sometimes people wanting to _separate_ from the country,
| vote with you and work with you on key topics.
|
| And this sort of logic is quite true for most European
| nations too.
|
| So not only do those arguments the US seems to have with in
| its team dynamic seem super weird (only two often
| completely opposite viewpoints, with no compromise), we
| don't "get" all the historical chuff that comes along with
| those arguments.
|
| So back to Elon. Was Canada upset at Elon? Yes just as
| Canada was, and is still upset at the entire US. But
| there's upset, and then there's _upset_. And from what I
| see here, that has faded against Musk.
|
| After all, none of the US "team" arguments meant anything
| to Canada. We were _extremely massively upset_ at Trump and
| those in Congress for not reigning him in about annexation.
| The rest?
|
| Well that's internal US strife, which we don't even
| understand. For context, all the layoffs in your government
| via Musk seemed excessive, but the concept of trying to
| save money seemed good. Then there was all this undertone
| of "oh, but he's doing it for evil reasons", with reasons
| no foreigner could even understand without decades of
| thinking in terms of "team politics".
|
| This is a bit of a blather, but I guess I'm trying to say
| that don't count on internal US team politics being the
| same viewpoint that other countries will have.
|
| And most of this isn't a knock against the US. For example,
| as I've said above, does the average American understand
| what drives the dynamic between the Bloc Quebecois, their
| desire for Quebec independance, while also supporting
| Canada in parallel? Or the fact that we have a separatist
| party in our federal parliament? I assure you, no Wikipedia
| article or summary will get you even close to viewing this
| dynamic from a Canadian viewpoint.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > At Google, where I worked for a few years, it was
| interesting to see how Google's understanding of search
| (publicly disclosed), and the infrastructure to host it (kept
| secret) kept it comfortably ahead of competitors until the
| design space was exhausted. At which point Google stopped
| moving forward and everyone else asymptotically approached
| their level of understanding and mastery.
|
| This is the "markets mature and commodify over time" thing.
|
| What companies are supposed to do in those cases are one of
| two things. One, keep investing the money into the market or
| related ones so you keep having an advantage. Or two, if
| there is nothing relevant and adjacent to productively invest
| in, return it to shareholders as dividends or share buybacks
| so they can invest it in some other unrelated market.
|
| But space seems like it would be the first one big time
| because of the amount of stuff that still has yet to be
| developed. Starlink was an obvious example of something in
| that nature, and then it's going to be things like "put
| datacenters in orbit so you can use solar without worrying
| about clouds or nighttime" and "build robots that can do
| semi-autonomous work in places far enough away for both human
| presence and round trip latency to be an inconvenience" etc.
|
| We'd be living in Star Trek by the time they'd run out of
| something more to do.
| palata wrote:
| > We'd be living in Star Trek by the time they'd run out of
| something more to do.
|
| Chances are that we will be living on the consequence of
| the end of fossil fuels and the rise of climate change long
| before that, though.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| The end of fossil fuels seem pretty boring. The _worst
| case_ is that you replace them with nuclear, which has
| costs on par with fossil fuels to begin with. If we 're
| lucky some kind of cheap scalable energy storage tech is
| developed and then energy costs _less_ than it did
| historically.
| palata wrote:
| > The worst case is that you replace them with nuclear
|
| Not remotely the worst case. How do you expect to power
| all the ships needed for globalisation with nuclear
| power? What about planes? Can a rocket take off with a
| nuclear engine?
|
| Fossil fuels account for 80% of the energy we use,
| electricity merely 20%. A whole lot of those 80% come
| from use-cases that were built around fossil fuels (how
| do you make plastic and all the materials that depend on
| it with nuclear energy?), and we don't (yet) have a way
| to replace that with something else. Try to power a ship
| with electricity...
|
| Hydrogen, you say? We would need a lot more energy to
| produce enough hydrogen to replace oil. So we're going
| from "we don't have a way to compensate for the lack of
| oil" with "our solution is to not only compensate, but
| actually produce more energy than what oil was giving
| us".
|
| All that while currently living a mass extinction and
| having already missed the reasonable objectives for
| global warming. So we have a few decades to get there,
| and what we have seen in the last few decades is that all
| we have achieved is making the problem worse.
| zizee wrote:
| There are many nuclear powered ships. If the decision is
| between nuclear proliferation, or the end of the global
| economy, I'm betting we'll choose the former.
|
| If you have enough electricity, you can manufacture
| avgas, methane and whatever other fuels you need for
| aerospace.
| palata wrote:
| > There are many nuclear powered ships
|
| What's the ratio of nuclear-powered big ships vs non-
| nuclear-powered big ships?
|
| > If you have enough electricity
|
| We're talking about moving our current electricity
| production entirely out of fossil fuels (because we
| produce a lot of electricity with them), then multiplying
| that production by 5, and at this point we're only
| producing the same amount of energy as today. But of
| course that's not enough, because we then need to use a
| lot of that energy to produce what's needed to replace
| oil, e.g. hydrogen.
|
| We currently need what... 10-15 years to build a nuclear
| power plant? We're talking about building _multiple
| orders of magnitudes_ more of them in a few decades,
| together with the electrical network and of course
| everything that needs to be re-engineered now that they
| can 't run with oil anymore. And we're currently using
| oil for a reason: it's super dense, there is nothing more
| convenient.
|
| And what value does it add? Nothing. It's just for
| _replacing_ what currently works. Who will pay for that?
| Where will the money come from?
|
| And this has to be done in a context where geopolitical
| instability will grow every year (because it is a fact:
| our access to abundant fossil fuel is coming to an end;
| Europe has seen it since 2007). And of course in a
| context where we are not remotely thinking about doing
| it. In the last decades, we as a society have actually
| kept accelerating in the opposite direction.
|
| How realistic do you think your scenario is, really?
| AlessandroF6587 wrote:
| Some reference material that can be helpful
| https://www.tesla.com/blog/master-plan-part-3
| bluGill wrote:
| > We currently need what... 10-15 years to build a
| nuclear power plant
|
| Part of this is we don't build a lot of them and so are
| not good at it. If we set out to build hundreds of them
| per year we could do that, and costs would go down.
|
| >And what value does it add? Nothing. It's just for
| replacing what currently works. Who will pay for that?
| Where will the money come from?
|
| That is not an issue. A quick search says that ships have
| a lifetime to 20-30 years after which they are replaced.
| Sure there are a few antiques older than that, but for
| the vast majority of ships the owner will pay to replace
| it in 20-30 years anyway. Oil is not going to run out on
| a single day, it will be a process of years which is
| plenty of time for normal processes to work.
|
| I don't favor nuclear in general, but for large ships it
| remains the only thing I know of that makes sense.
| (synthetic fuels are expensive, and solar/wind needs more
| space than a ship to deliver the power a ship wants).
| numpad0 wrote:
| It doesn't take much time or effort to build nuclear
| powered anything if you were not concerned with bunch of
| turbojet Boeing planes circling above you. It takes
| centuries if you were.
| orbifold wrote:
| It is possibly to create synthetic fuel from coal. For
| usecases that absolutely require fuel we would be able to
| synthetically create it.
| palata wrote:
| It's not a question of what use-cases _theoretically_
| require fossil fuels. The whole problem is the scale.
|
| We have to find a replacement for oil and get it to the
| scale of oil in a fraction of the time we had to get
| where we are now with oil. And getting there with oil was
| easier, because oil is extremely convenient.
|
| It's a bit like saying "we need to rewrite the Linux
| kernel with a new language that we are yet to invent, and
| it has to reach feature-parity in 5 years". Sure,
| theoretically we know how to create a new language and
| how to write a kernel, but can we do both in 5 years?
| Ever heard of e.g. Fuchsia? And they didn't try to invent
| a language for it.
| bluGill wrote:
| The Germans were able to transition from oil to synthetic
| fuels while in the middle of WWII. South Africa used the
| same to provide their energy for decades when the world
| prevented them from getting oil. We know from those
| experiences that synthetic fuels scale.
|
| We also know from experience that synthetic fuels are
| around 5 times more expensive than oil, and so only
| niches are willing to pay for it if oil is an
| alternative.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Yes. With enough energy you can make anything.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Population is crashing too fast for that to happen.
| panick21_ wrote:
| I think you are to optimistic, what you say is true in
| principle, but it will take much longer. Vertical landing
| isn't really the technical challenge. Many small vehicles
| have demonstrated this over the years, including before
| SpaceX.
|
| The challenge with orbital booster reuse is getting them
| threw the atmosphere intact and ready to land and then be
| reused quickly. And do that while being optimized enough to
| carry payload. That is the actual challenge. And that's just
| the first, then you need to build everything to be able to do
| this 5-10 times.
|
| Only one other company then SpaceX has achieved getting a
| booster back at all, and that was by dropping it into an
| ocean. RocketLab, and they so far as I know have never
| reflown a complete booster. BlueOrigin has never landed a
| complete booster. ULA and Arianespace aren't close.
|
| Honda in particular is not a launch competitor and is very
| unlikely to be one in the future. Japan already has a pet
| rocket that they support that has low launch rates. Honda
| isn't just isn't a competitor in the launch sector, and I
| don't think they are even planning that.
|
| BlueOrigin might emerge as a competitor, but its nothing like
| Sun (sun was profitable in the first year). BlueOrigin simply
| has an infinite money glitch, that almost no other company in
| history had. The amount of money BlueOrigin spent in the last
| 10 year is actually unbelievable, they at times had the same
| amount of people as SpaceX, while having near 0 revenue. By
| any rational evaluation BlueOrigin is completely non-viable
| as a company, any they are burning billions per year.
|
| RocketLab will likely be a real competitor eventually, but
| they are pretty clearly positioning themselves at being Nr.2,
| not aiming for flight rates nearly in SpaceX territory. And
| they have a lot of technical risk left to clear.
|
| At the moment SpaceX is moving forward faster then anybody
| else is catching up. Falcon 9/Falcon Heavy still run loops
| around everybody and nobody will challenge it for another 10
| years at least, and that's assuming Falcon 9 operations don't
| improve.
|
| Starship isn't needed for the launch market, but for their
| own constellation.
| djaychela wrote:
| >nobody will challenge it for another 10 years at least,
| and that's assuming Falcon 9 operations don't improve.
|
| I think the timeline is very difficult to predict here.
| We've seen countless companies who are leading in
| technologies who when others see it can be done... -know-
| it can be done so then can do it. Like the 4 minute mile.
|
| I know it's not simple and no-one else is near SpaceX at
| the moment, but to ignore reusability has become an
| extinction-level event for launch providers. Some will
| learn from the 'break it and learn quickly' mentality that
| SpaceX followed for getting F9 to reliable reusability and
| there will be more competition.
|
| Second-stage re-use is clearly the next phase and that's
| what Starship is targeting (plus massive capacity). I don't
| know if it scales to smaller rockets, but if it does (and
| we know that it's physically possible as some of the
| Starship second-stages have made it back kinda-alive), then
| it will be revolutionary.
|
| Look at the lead that Tesla has thrown away in the EV
| market. I remember seeing an interview with Elon Musk
| talking about BYD EVs - "Yes, but look at their car, it's a
| joke"... to now having better tech in some ways than Tesla,
| and an up-to-date product line which looks way better than
| the staid models that Tesla is producing. Only the charging
| infra is keeping them ahead in terms of overall usability -
| and at some point that will be a solved problem for
| disparate third-party charging providers.
|
| Cybertruck is a child-like anomaly which is not a mass
| seller. The M3 and MY are dated, and the robotaxi is merely
| a rehash of those stylistically (as well as completely the
| wrong thing to be making in terms of the market it's
| supposed to serve, IMO). I have read that Tesla is stuck in
| a rut, and their line-up looks like it. The 'highland'
| refresh and model y are both sticking-plaster makeovers.
|
| When I ask my (mid 20s) kids if they'd buy a Kia EV3, a BYD
| Dolphin Surf or a Tesla, it's the Kia or the BYD. They look
| like cool cars, not something that a 50 year old (me!)
| would like (I prefer the EV3 if I had a choice). I know
| this is a bit off topic, but I'm just trying to illustrate
| that it's easy to think you're unassailable, and then the
| competition not only catches up, but overtakes. And
| timelines are impossible to predict to that scale, IMO.
| panick21_ wrote:
| > but to ignore reusability has become an extinction-
| level event for launch providers
|
| But it hasn't, that's just a fact. Neither ULA, nor
| Arianespace, nor Russia have gone extinct or embraced
| reuse to any degree at all. Same goes for India and
| Japan. Because this market simply doesn't operate like
| typical markets.
|
| ULA and Arianespace have lots of orders. There a complex
| reason for this, but its still just a reality. Neither
| Russia or India have made major investments in reusable
| rockets. China to some degree does but we have little
| insight.
|
| The only competitors are all new companies that had no
| position in the market before.
|
| > Like the 4 minute mile.
|
| No amount of believe makes it just happen. You can't just
| work a bit harder and get there incrementally. That's not
| how rockets work. Its not like running at all. Runners
| already existed, they just needed to incrementally
| improve a little bit, believe can help with that.
|
| But if you don't have the necessary rocket engine or
| architecture, you can't just incrementally improve to get
| to the goal. You need to redo the whole architecture from
| the ground up. No amount of testing and believe turns
| Ariane 5 into a Falcon 9 competitor. And that's going to
| cost billions even if everything goes well.
|
| That's why non of the existing competitors have done it.
| Its new potential competitors coming up that work on it.
|
| > Some will learn from the 'break it and learn quickly'
| mentality that SpaceX followed for getting F9 to reliable
| reusability and there will be more competition.
|
| That mentality is almost 20 years old and nobody has
| embraced it in the same way. There are many reasons for
| this that I could get into. But its far more then simply
| a shift in mentality. If your fundamentals are wrong, no
| amount of mentality shift changes anything.
|
| And even if you embrace that mentality, its still a 10
| year journey, see Stoke Space for example.
|
| And many companies that had that mentality have gone
| bust, see ABL and others.
|
| > Look at the lead that Tesla has thrown away in the EV
| market.
|
| Tesla lead wasn't really technological. They never had
| battery technology better then what many other companies
| can produce. Except maybe their packs, were a bit better
| in the beginning, but that's about it and that wasn't a
| huge engineering lift to replicate.
|
| What made them get a lead is the complete believe in the
| concept, and their ability to raise enough money to make
| it happen on a large scale, plus proving there is demand.
|
| Also I think drawing parallels between car industry and
| space industry isn't really relevant at all.
| elteto wrote:
| Maintaining access to space is a national security
| priority for states so they will always subsidize their
| own launch providers. Russia is not going to shut down
| Roscosmos and launch everything with SpaceX (and they
| also can't even if they wanted to). That's the reason
| those companies are still around. In the case of ULA the
| US government maintains two launch providers available by
| means of Assured Access to Space directives. That's ULA
| and SpaceX share the US government's space market.
|
| But all national launch providers use to supplement their
| income with commercial launches and SpaceX has completely
| sucked the air out of the room in that regard. It's now
| more expensive for all these countries to keep these
| programs operational.
| schiffern wrote:
| >once you demonstrate that something is doable (as SpaceX
| has) It opens the way for other capital to create competitive
| systems.
|
| In the abstract I agree, but there's zero chance Honda is
| getting into the orbital launch business. This is a
| recruiting stunt (and probably to help push for a bailout
| from Japan), not a real product. >buy launch
| services from another vendor... without the baggage of the
| damage Elon has done
|
| This misjudges what their customers care about.
|
| Can anyone point to a single launch contract cancelled
| because of "baggage?" Big media would no doubt gleefully
| shout that story from the hilltops, but I haven't seen it.
| >it feels almost prophetic to watch SpaceX's competitors
| emerge.
|
| Prophesy, but also a healthy dose of wish fulfillment.
|
| All Goliaths eventually fall, but they have an annoying
| tendency of not doing so on the timelines we might hope for.
| Just look at Microsoft in the 90s.
| duxup wrote:
| Such a smooth takeoff and landing all by by itself. I remember
| watching old sci-fi shows and the rocket would do that and I
| always thought "that doesn't make any sense". Now it does.
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| Should have cleaned the lens of the first cam. Second cam
| cutting in at about 50 seconds in was perfect.
| vzaliva wrote:
| This video is so much like in the old black and white sci-fi
| movies!
| dumdedum123 wrote:
| Aw. It didn't even do a "real" hop. The engines stayed on all
| the time.
|
| For the first real hop see Xombie circa 2010.
| 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...
| toephu2 wrote:
| How do you visit just the domain though? e.g., I try to visit
| ".ferrari" and it doesn't work in Chrome
| 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.
| dmix wrote:
| He did say "orbital booster recovery" which is 160,000
| meters. Honda reached 300 meters which is about the
| height of a tall skyscraper
| rasz wrote:
| Here an amateur doing it all on its own
| https://youtu.be/SH3lR2GLgT0
| 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?
| perilunar wrote:
| The flight was a lot longer than 300 ms !
| 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.)
| xarope wrote:
| someone mentioned it was the liquid propellant being vented:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44303132
| inemesitaffia wrote:
| Mitsubishi makes cars, planes and rockets.
|
| Now Honda does
| 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
| throwaway422432 wrote:
| And also the engine for the insanely dominant McLaren MP4/4.
| tzs wrote:
| Honda occasionally does things that don't have any immediately
| obvious connection to what most people think of when they think
| "Honda".
|
| For example "Honda Discovers Gene Which Improves Regeneration
| Ability in Rice" [1].
|
| [1]
| https://global.honda/en/newsroom/news/2005/c050809a-eng.html
| 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...
| tonyhart7 wrote:
| 60 mill is a chump change for multinational companies, but
| idk. people not used to type global.brand like honda did
|
| it feels weird seeing no .com at the end of it
| wodenokoto wrote:
| I don't really think ownership of these top-level domains
| is about getting end-users to type .honda or .disney, it's
| more about ensuring end-users don't end up at porn.honda or
| naked.disney/characters
| morkalork wrote:
| I can tell you there are some registrars where they sell
| more .xxx and .sucks domains to SMBs, defensively, than
| to actual porn or troll sites. I guess just flat out
| buying a tld is _a_ solution to the never ending
| extortion racket
| 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.
| sleepy_keita wrote:
| No, it was just the name of the person who started the
| company. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soichiro_Honda Lots of
| Japanese companies are like this. See also Toyota.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| That name didn't pop out of nowhere. It still has meaning
| beyond the brand. I'm wholly unconvinced that the only
| possible meaning is referring to that one company.
| nottorp wrote:
| I'll raise you Procter & Gamble.
|
| Doesn't look like it has a deep meaning does it? I'm
| thinking that's how the Honda name looks to a Japanese.
|
| The one major Japanese company whose name does have a
| deep meaning - that I know of - is Mazda, which is
| explicitly derived from Ahura Mazda.
| glandium wrote:
| Mazda also comes from the founder's name:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jujiro_Matsuda
| MangoToupe wrote:
| > Doesn't look like it has a deep meaning does it?
|
| Like, to a non-english speaker? Because it looks loaded
| with meaning to me. Would you think that all instances of
| the word "morgan" refer to the bank "jp morgan"? Do you
| think that people who gamble are referring to the company
| you brought up? Why would you just give a top level
| domain name to a single company? No company is that
| interesting by itself. Hence, my question.
|
| But maybe I'm just weird when it comes to language.
|
| Anyway, I'll wait for a japanese person to fill me in ig
| --I can google where a name comes from, but this doesn't
| answer how it's actually perceived by someone who speaks
| the language.
| nottorp wrote:
| I'm not a native speaker. But I've read and communicated
| enough in English to see Procter & Gamble as just two
| names.
| thfuran wrote:
| Neither are anything like common as names (at least in
| the US. Maybe there's loads of them running around
| London), and both are words in common use. Johnson &
| Johnson seems like a much better example for that.
| LeonM wrote:
| > See also Toyota.
|
| Toyota's founder is Kiichiro Toyoda (with a 'd'), and the
| company was originally named Toyoda, named after the
| founder. It was later changed to Toyota because it looked
| better in Katakana script (8 brush strokes, which is a
| lucky number), and it had a better meaning in Japanese.
| Apparently Toyoda is a farmer's name, and the company did
| not want to be associated with farming.
|
| Similarly, Mazda comes from it's founder's name Matsuda,
| but was changed to Mazda when the first wheeled vehicles
| were produced (Mazda-Go). The official claim from Mazda is
| that it was named after Ahura Mazda, a God, but it is
| widely speculated that the name change was done to make it
| more appealing for international markets. I don't speak
| Japanese, but I have seen several videos on social media
| where the Japanese still pronounce Mazda as Matsuda.
| numpad0 wrote:
| English and Japanese pronunciations never line up well
| which complicates communications, so people tweak
| spelling all the time. Toyota or Mazda or muRata is all
| about that. Matsuda was always matsuda in Japanese but
| spelling it as Mazda skips whole ordeal about matt-sudah
| or mar-TSOO-dah. Mazda is just short and close enough.
| Isuzu unfortunately has the yee-zoo-zoo problem, it's
| more like "iszh" but it won't roll on any tongue and
| there isn't much that they can do about it now.
|
| "main farm", "rich farm", "pine farm", "bell tree", "sun
| field", "river cape", "fifty bells", it's all just
| surnames. Nothing particularly more awe inspiring than
| any regular surnames would be.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| I love this (meaningless) phrase: > a
| country known for its rich traditions and cultural heritage
|
| Are there any countries that do not have "rich traditions and
| cultural heritage"? (Let's ask ChatGPT to "delve" into
| that...)
| echoangle wrote:
| The US maybe? I wouldn't say the US has rich traditions and
| cultural heritage, they are too young for that.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| Native Americans?
| prmoustache wrote:
| But their traditions and cultural heritage has been
| mostly erased and not followed by the the colons.
| voidUpdate wrote:
| I mean, there are a lot of traditions in the US.
| Thanksgiving, 4th of july, groundhog day, all the random
| things little towns do.
| prmoustache wrote:
| I think it still pales compared to its neighbours like
| Mexico who have also been born through colonization.
|
| But maybe that's because USA has a tendency to make
| everything a super commercial event which gives us that
| idea.
| bluGill wrote:
| That is part of our culture heritage. People who want to
| claim the US doesn't have a rich culture are defining
| culture to exclude all culture in the US which is not
| fair. It isn't hard to see a lot of culture in the US if
| you look, but many people want to think there isn't any
| and so go out of their way not to see it.
| prmoustache wrote:
| I think culture and tradition are different things.
| Modern pop culture is not tradition for example.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Actually, America is one of the oldest continuously
| operating stable political systems in the world. (UK is
| older)
|
| For example, the US in its current form is older than
| China, which was taken over relatively recently by the
| CCP who are also actively destroying most vestiges of
| cultural heritage through forced migration and erasing of
| inconvenient history.
| skylurk wrote:
| Nevertheless, China has rich traditions and cultural
| heritage that go back millennia.
|
| Perhaps even the only place that can top Japan in this
| regard.
| latexr wrote:
| I agree that reads like a fluff meaningless sentence on the
| level of a high school student trying to reach the minimum
| word count, but to give it some benefit of the doubt, it
| does say "a country known for", not "a country which has".
| Most countries aren't _known for_ their traditions and
| cultural heritage. Ask a few random people to tell you
| about Japan VS, say, Estonia.
| fastball wrote:
| Why not? It is useful for the company, ICANN gets a bunch of
| money, and it is not hurting anyone else (in fact it arguably
| benefits everyone else by causing big players to be more likely
| to stick things under their TLDs rather than monopolizing more
| .coms and other public TLDs).
| thfuran wrote:
| If the big players decide to move their stuff to their own
| tld, they'll probably keep their old domains to redirect
| them.
| fastball wrote:
| For sure, but (very) maybe they won't buy as many new ones,
| e.g. when they release new products.
| 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/
| generalizations wrote:
| Short answer: you still need a complex vehicle to finish the
| orbit insertion after getting thrown, and now you have the
| added complexity of designing your (smaller) rocket to a)
| survive a massive g-force while being thrown and b) fit into
| the catapult sling. So far the tradeoffs haven't been worth it.
|
| Basically the only things we know of that can survive our spin
| launch systems is stuff like 'very crushable food supplies' or
| 'a giant lump of steel'.
| panick21_ wrote:
| So you save a bit of fuel but you need to invest 10-100s of
| millions into a ground infrastructure. And then you are limited
| to one launch site and limited in orbits you can reach.
|
| Then you still need to design a rocket. You still need a rocket
| engine and all the other parts of the rocket. So even best
| case, you only eliminate like 60% of the cost. Now you have to
| completely different engineering teams with little overlap in
| skills.
|
| You can only build tiny rockets. In order for your accelerator
| not to be just completely absurd in size and cost, your gone
| build a rocket in the 100-200kg range. For that you can maybe
| ask for like 5 million $. But SpaceX is already doing that at
| far lower cost. And you don't even have the same flexibility of
| costume orbital insertions as other small launchers do.
|
| Small launchers are a bad business, of the 100s of small launch
| companies, the only one that has had any success is RocketLab,
| other then them its a graveyard.
|
| It will be hard to impossible for your rocket to be reusable.
| So you need to build the rocket for sub-1million $ including
| the launch to compete.
|
| But then ... you need specifically designed sats that can
| handle the acceleration. So you need costumers to specifically
| design their sats to a complete different standard then for
| your competitors. And why would any costumers do this if you
| significantly cheaper then your competitor. Spinlaunch has
| started to develop its own rocket components that they hope to
| get other people to use.
|
| But there are many other potentially things on a sat that could
| break, so for most costumers its simply not an option.
|
| The industry has been moving to larger sats, the old idea of
| cubesats has gone and even small sats are regularly 200kg or
| more. So the market for anything below is pretty tiny, and the
| market for sats of less then 200kg that can handle 10000g is
| even smaller. And the market for 200kg sats that can handle
| 10000g and want to go into the specific orbit that you built
| your catapult for, is even smaller.
|
| If there were many 100s of launches available, just desperately
| looking a way to get sats to a specific orbit, it might be
| worth a discussion. But there just isn't.
|
| This kind of technology might make sense on the moon, if you
| want to bulk export something like ice.
| tonyhart7 wrote:
| its not really high in the atmosphere but its a good start
|
| finally SpaceX got competition
| smeeger wrote:
| first time ive seen a large corporation do something that
| indicated they were trying to enter the market that spacex
| created. i imagine honda entering the race is as big a deal for
| space exploration as when the first starship touched down
| guicen wrote:
| It's impressive that Honda pulled this off without much fanfare.
| While most headlines are about Tesla or SpaceX, Honda is quietly
| proving that serious engineering can come from unexpected places.
| I'm curious if they're planning to go beyond demos and into
| actual launch services.
| vucetica wrote:
| I understand that your comment is related to publicity that
| this event got, but I chuckled when I read that Honda is an
| unexpected source of serious engineering :)
| Daisywh wrote:
| I never thought I'd mention Honda and reusable rockets in the
| same sentence. But that's exactly what makes tech exciting. When
| a company you didn't expect does something bold and impressive,
| it changes how you see the whole field. Honda's long history of
| quiet, precise engineering might be just what space exploration
| needs more of right now.
| RataNova wrote:
| Sometimes it's the unexpected players who bring fresh
| perspectives
| methuselah_in wrote:
| I guess its healthy for the competition to exist. There will be
| more innovation moving forward. For Japanese it was long due.
| RataNova wrote:
| More players = more ideas, more pressure to improve
| methuselah_in wrote:
| Well isn't it good for innovation.
| RataNova wrote:
| I guess when you have decades of combustion, control, and
| automation know-how, this isn't such a stretch. Curious to see if
| they'll seriously push toward suborbital launches by 2029
| romain_batlle wrote:
| They might be able to replace their F1 electric engine part for
| 2026 with a jet engine. it will prevent it from not working in
| the middle of the straight.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| In a mature space launch economy, there is room for every
| combination of cost and capacity and timing (launch frequency).
| Like scooters and taxis and truck and trains and cargo ships,
| each has its place.
|
| Don't imagine because this rocket is a certain size or lift
| capacity, that it isn't serious. And, this was just an R&D
| technology test. Who knows where they'll go from here.
| ItCouldBeWorse wrote:
| Ah, the pioneer effect in full effect- as in - once its proven it
| can be done, many will do it, finding ever more surprising
| efficient solutions. And the irony is - sometimes, the guys who
| are the first - don't even know they are the first. The other
| team just has some marketing guy, lying through his teeth about
| the "progress" they have and what they can do. And some manager
| falls for that- and press-gangs some real engineers to "just-do-
| that-thing" - and suddenly you are all standalone USP without
| ever planing for it.
|
| Happened to the unreal team, who created the z-buffer reflections
| in the marble floor- because some other "engine" from around the
| world "could do that" - which ironically was a rendered non-real
| time image.
|
| To sum it up nicely the real innovators, are marketing gurus,
| lying with "pretend proof" forcing the competition to adapt.
| Thank you for coming to my TED-walk
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-06-18 23:01 UTC)