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:Vacuum?

[Zelet]

Buzz Lightyear had wings.... and they worked in space. I don't think you know what you are talking about.

It's happened before...

[foistboinder]

It's just of matter of time before low cost, high quality shuttles with great fuel economy become available. This is just the kick in the pants that the American shuttle industry needs to start being innovative.

Re:It's happened before...

[0x69]

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...

Okey...

[FroMan]

Okey, when are they going to make the one for Dr. Evil, as evidently they can make one for Mini Me?

oh dear

[jonnyfish]

I just hope this doesn't somehow involve space tentacles.

could japan step in for russia?

[!splut]

I seem to recall hearing that Russia was having big financial problems with their space program, and that if they didn't scrape up funding in some form, that it may adversely impact the long term construction plans for the ISS over the next few years.

Would the full size final version of this thinger be able to ferry big structural pieces or modules, in place of the Russian rockets? I get the impression that the it would be too small, which would suck.

what use?

[u19925]

what exactly are the usages of all these space shuttles, including the most successful of all, the US space shuttle program? The launch cost is way more than the traditional rocket. Most commercial usage of any space vehicle is to put satellites in orbit and space shuttle doesn't offer any benefits over traditional rocket.

Most of the manned mission to space has just resulted into exploring curiosity without any real scientific research (certainly not worth the cost).

It was ego that resulted in mission to moon. It was miscalculation of cost that resulted into US space shuttle (they thought that the reusability of space shuttle boosters will make it cheaper than traditional rockets). No wonder, during the time, space shuttle was developed, Europians overtook US in launching commercial satellites. Russian space shuttle Buran is a failure but their traditional rocket business is successful. ISS hasn't produced anything scientifically or technologically to justify the cost. The only scientific advantage of US shuttle program could be successful launch and subsequent repair/upgrade of Hubble space telescope. Excluding this, the manned space mission have been mostly wastage of public money.

Re:what use?

[david.given]

what exactly are the usages of all these space shuttles, including the most successful of all, the US space shuttle program?

The space shuttle is not successful. The space shuttle is an utter disaster. In fact, the space shuttle is, arguably, the worst thing that ever happened to the American space programme.

The problem is that the shuttle is trying to be both a man-rated lifter, a reusable lifter, and a heavy lifter, and as a result it does all three incredibly badly. It's a massive money pit that swallowed the American space station, SSTOs, the moon base, and any manned Mars missions...

Put it like this:

Space shuttle capacity: 6 people, 15 tonnes cargo; cost: $600M.

Soyuz capacity: 3 people, no cargo; cost: $60M.

Proton capacity: no people, 20 tonnes cargo; cost: $70M.

This means that you could replace a single shuttle launch with the Russian alternative, launch three seperate vehicles, and have over four hundred million dollars in change! With a single shuttle launch budget, you could put nearly two hundred tonnes into LEO --- or sixteen tonnes into GEO, and the shuttle can't do that at all.

Unfortunately, the shuttle is now become political, so noone's going to be able to get rid of it. It's going to hang around consuming more and more of NASA's budget, until eventually another one will blow up, and then NASA will be reorganised out of existence. Meanwhile, the Russians, the Japanese, the Chinese, the Pakistani, and basically anyone else with a clue (and alas, I don't live in such a country) will be using disposable launchers to maintain their space presence. The ISS will probably be kept up until the shuttle explosion, and then it'll be quietly evacuated and deorbited; but by then, there'll be other space stations, at least some of them privately funded.

funding???

[evacuate_the_bull]

With development costs likely to be astronomical, however, Japanese space officials are hoping to develop the vehicle in conjunction with their counterparts in Europe and elsewhere.

Japan previously worked on developing a space shuttle dubbed the Hope, but the project was frozen due to a lack of funds and other difficulties.

Japan has been trying 'government by construction' for years trying to revitalize their economy and have achieved the industrialized world's biggest national debt. So where are they getting the money for a space program?

Seriously, Japan just built an 11 mile long tunnel under Tokyo Bay in '97 that cost almost 11 billion dollars (1.44 trillion yen), yet no one uses it. Why? The toll is about $50. Does Japan really need a space program?

I'm not from Japan and I don't pretend to be infallible - these are my thoughts on the subject. If you live in Japan, what do you think? Also, there was a good article on Tokyo in last month's National Geographic, check it out in print if you can.

When will they learn

[WhiteChocolate42]

I seem to remember a series of documentaries from the 1950's or so, detailing Japan's experiments with rocketry. As I recall, the rockets inevitably crashed and caused a beast that had slept for centuries to awaken and wreak havoc on the poor locals, who were often so distrought that they failed to make their mouths sync up with their screams of terror. Must we repeat this tragedy? I think we've all had just about enough Raymond Burr.

Re:The ISS's lifeboat

[Lars T.]

Well, Nasa has stopped their ISS crew rescue vehicle program last year for cost reasons. See here.

Re:The ISS's lifeboat

[geoswan]

Well, Nasa has stopped their ISS crew rescue vehicle program last year for cost reasons. See here .

Thanks for the info. I found some additional information . There was some talk of using this gold-plated mini-shuttle as the rescue vehicle. Then this design was being worked on. Even though its budget was, as Lars pointed out, cut for 2002, they still test launched it as recently as December 2001. This link has some info on the use of the Soyuz as the rescue vehicle.

I hadn't realized that US budget decisions had cut the ISS back to a skeleton crew. Here is a press release from a US Senator commenting on a recently released independent review of the Space Station's Science programs.