Japanese Shuttle has Successful Test Flight

spacecomputer writes "First test flight of scaled-down version of Hope-X is a success! They have additional test flights in the coming week, but have no funding to proceed beyond the test stage."

Comments

Re:It's happened before...

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My impression is that America's 70's-era, pork-laden shuttle has been the LEAST economical way to get into space for quite a while. Japan can hardly make that worse.

The shuttle's government anyway, so it doesn't respond to reality the way the auto industry had to when Japanese imports took off. (It'd be real nice, but I don't see this kicking Yankee political pride enough to make it happen.)

There are lots of folks trying to make it in the space launch business, many with government subsidies, and not that much stuff that needs to be launched. I wish 'em the best, but I don't see how the Japanese could make money doing this. And their government is also BIG on pork...