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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.
Of course they're working hard on their launch capabilities. How else are they going to get their giant mecha into space?
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it!
Japan's vehicle has the highest payload of any of the current launch systems but it is also a hugely expensive launch system. The cost per launch is around 15 Billion yen, $121m USD. They are currently developing the H3 as the successor to the H2B launch system with the primary target of reducing the cost by half.
The Falcon 9 by comparison has a launch cost of $57 million.
The Falcon 9 has a lift capacity of 13,000kg to LEO vs 16,500 for the H2B.
So it depends what race you are looking at.
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
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.
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.
There's no indication the H2 is safer or more reliable than Falcon.
At five launches the F-9 had a 100% success rate as well.
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.
JAXA is currently flying its second asteroid material return mission, Hayabusa 2. The first was not a total success but the craft did get to its target and return a capsule to Earth. Number of NASA asteroid material return missions, zero.
Hayabusa 2 is carrying a lander built by the French CNES and three smaller "hopping" landers as well as an IED meant to blow a hole in the asteroid's surface to expose fresh material for inspection and analysis.
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com...
There's a lot of difficult science to be done (tm GlaDOS) out in the solar system, we can't expect the US to do all of it.