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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.
WTF? Since when does SpaceX count as all-or-nothing? They built a rocket using a largely simple and proven design (RP1/LOX), using modern materials and techniques granted but no reason to believe it was risky. The only real up-front cost cutting was telling areospace suppliers to go f*sk themselves when their prices where outrageous (OK, that has probably led to lots of delays, but no explosions).
From a tech standpoint, the F9/FH is basically complete, no more advances; well, the full throttle F9 has yet to be launched, but after that its basically only tweaks (due to having to revamp everything), no more tech advances unless they add a 3rd stage.
For reliability, not sure what you mean here. Never heard of them pushing much beyond adding some redundancy. The F9 seems to be a rather reliable launcher all told, not as reliable as the best, but still very good.
Costs only seem to be going up. Their only real plan to lower costs for the F9 line is to land and find out how they can refly them. Granted they do save by reusing the same tech over and over, but that only cuts into performance not reliability.
If you wanted to point out three things SpaceX was pushing you should have said reusable rockets, Dragon capsules, and Raptor engines, along with whatever side projects contribute to those.
I'm a bit surprised by some posters talking like a success for the Japanese somehow hurts spacex or vice versa. It's good to have lots of redundancy.
As to costs, even if the Japanese launcher can match or beat spacex costs, spacex has one thing no one else even the Russians have. That's return cargo capability. For research purposes this is a big deal.