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HTV-5 On Its Way To the ISS
nojayuk writes: There's another launcher delivering cargo to the ISS apart from US and Russian vehicles, and it's Japanese. The fifth Koutonori (White Stork) cargo vehicle was successfully launched today at from pad 2 of the Yoshinobu Launch Complex at Tanegashima south of Tokyo at 11:50:49 UTC, carrying over 5 tonnes of food, spare parts and scientific equipment to the ISS in a pressurised cabin and an external racking system. This is the fifth successful launch in a row for the Japanese H2B launcher. The Koutonoris have carried over 20 tonnes of cargo in total to the ISS, more than double the amount of SpaceX's six successful CRS resupply flights.
the USA is Portugal in the race to the New (Space) World.
Maybe you forgot that we landed a sensor and manipulator packed dune buggy on mars? Or that probe that just surveyed the Pluto system and is heading to the Kuiper belt? Or the Opportunity rover that's been active on Mars for over ten years and is still chugging along? Oh ... all of that on a severely reduced budget.
No, it's just that the USA does the hard stuff. We just don't do the space equivalent of cargo hauling.
The cost per launch is around 15 Billion yen, $121m USD.
The Falcon 9 by comparison has a launch cost of $57 million.
Yea, but with the falcon you have to launch two of them to get one to the space station... (Grin).
Look, Personally I like their approach over Space-X's. Build a reliable platform, even if it's more expensive. Gain experience with the technology and the launch process then start to pare down your costs by looking for your cheaper ways to do parts of your already working system. Space-X has an "all or nothing" approach where they are cutting costs up front and trying to push the technology at the same time. Space X struggles with reliability and will suffer more front loaded failures because they are pushing the technology AND costs, AND reliability at the same time.
Basically, you need to concentrate on ONE major advancement at a time to have a high probability of success and Space-X is pushing more than one advancement (arguably they are trying to advance on three fronts). The Japanese know this, Musk doesn't. Musk has divided his attention between multiple interesting things and will struggle to master all of them at once, the Japanese are concentrating on but one thing at a time and will eventually surpass Musk and Space-X in all areas, and will suffer less catastrophic failures in the process.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
That the amount of cargo transported is higher in less launches is irrelevant. The falcon heavy achieves a Les than 1k dollars per pound to Leo cost. I have been unable to easily find a similar number for the koutonori. Anyone here know how it stacks up? That's a more critical number.
Silence is a state of mime.
Falcon 9 is 17 successful from 19 launches and only 1 of those was a catastrophic failure, the other was a T-2 abort. The H2B is only on it's 5th launch so we don't know if it is as reliable or not yet.
There's no indication the H2 is safer or more reliable than Falcon.