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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.
Got it..
in the race to the New (Space) World.
Damn Nips with their cheap Walkmen and super-efficient cargo spacecraft..Unamerican!!!
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.
Both the linked article, as well as wikipedia seem to agree that the spelling is incorrect.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-II_Transfer_Vehicle
It's "Kounotori" not "Koutonori", you illiterate cunts.
..."the Japanese are concentrating on but one thing at a time and will eventually surpass Musk and Space-X in all areas"...
The first rocket in the H2 series flew almost a year before the Falcon 9 v1.0's initial launch and had the benefit of a larger budget, decades more of development (factoring in the first-hand technological expertise gained from earlier rocket models like the H1), and, as a government-initiated project, a much bigger license to fail. Moreover the Falcon 9 also had to satisfy the demands of at least three different markets, NASA and the military besides the usual commercial launch customers.
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.
Agreed. The more players the better, and the more solutions the better. This is seen in SpaceX's return capacity and in the H2B's seriously wide footprint meaning it can carry items to orbit that won't physically fit on the Falcon 9. Each launch system has its place and if SpaceX makes the costs cheaper we all benefit.
Some American person in the above comments is even going into complicated details of cost, maintenance, reuse, cost per tonne etc. just to prove that there is _something_ the Japanese aren't the best and most successful at. Hilarious.
The European Space Agency has sent a few deliveries to ISS too using its hugely successful Ariane 5 launcher and a robot delivery vehicle
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Virtually serving coffee
I'm constantly dismayed when terms get misused to the point that they lose their original meaning, but the culprits are usually people wanting to use words they don't quite understand to look smarter than they are. Your sentence "Hayabusa 2 is carrying [...] an IED meant to blow a hole [...]" is an example - do you actually know what the "I" in "IED" stands for? Hint: if it's carefully designed, it's not improvised.
Sadly, most things called IEDs aren't particularly improvised either, they're just "ED"s - or as they used to call them, "bombs".
> So your defensive response was a kind of Woosh and you still don't understand.
You might as well quit. If you gave your daughter for him to marry her, he would say "why are you insulting the United States of America"?
People on defensive don't want any kind of talk.