HTV-5 On Its Way To the ISS 87
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.
Re:So, Japan is winning the new space race... (Score:5, Funny)
Of course they're working hard on their launch capabilities. How else are they going to get their giant mecha into space?
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Time for a dance off!
Re:So, Japan is winning the new space race... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:So, Japan is winning the new space race... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Bet you would get lower insurance rates using the Japanese product also. I guess it all depends on priorities. Quick and dirty, or slow and steady...
Hey! Hold on a second! Is this some tortoise/hare parable thing going on here?
Re:So, Japan is winning the new space race... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Falcon 9's 19th launch had the catastrophic failure... That we are this far into the program and THEN have a failure says something.... (Not to mention that there have been a lot of partial failures of this system, where components failed to function as intended and ONE partial failure where only one payload of two got delivered as intended. )
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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
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dude you have no idea how many corners they cut. example 1: they had a strut fail at 20% of the design strength. that absolutely does not happen with the big boys - this shows an unbelievable amount of sloppiness in their supply chain. so now they're going to test every strut. okay, what's going to fail next time? example 2: they cut corners whenever possible. they use non-space-rated parts everywhere to save money, on the basis that it's only going to be in space for two weeks anyway, so what difference do
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The supplier, also supplies ULA and O-ATK. The issue is not theirs, but the fact that a certified company, failed.
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So, because NASA had two catastrophic failures SpaceX is cutting corners? Nice try. Seats don't need to be "Space rated". Many internal components don't need to be "space rated" as long as the external components protect them sufficiently by being "space rated". You're barking up the wrong tree.
As for the strut, do you really think there are no components that slip through the cracks at the "big boys"? Have you ever actually built anything? Infant mortality happens; it's a fact of life. That doesn't
Re:So, Japan is winning the new space race... (Score:5, Insightful)
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They did have a partial failure in launch 4. The primary payload was still delivered, though.
If I had to choose which of the two was going to loft me into orbit, I'd choose the F-9. Five launches just isn't a long enough track record to have any idea what you're dealing with.
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It may not be *enough* data to determine if it's safe, but there is *indications* that the H2 system is reliable. The Falcon, on the other hand, has had it's share of issues.
3. First attempt was scrubbed AFTER engine start, second attempt was successful.
4. Engine failure on Boost, lower than intended orbit left half of the payload stranded.
6. New Design First flown with booster recovery option, recovery system fails.
7. Had an in flight fire in the Booster.
8. USAF evaluation failed on safety grounds ba
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Besides flight 4 and 19, the only thing on your list that's at all meaningful is the fire on flight 7, and even then... a success is a success. The fact that you can have problems like engine-outs and still make it to orbit is a point in favor of the design.
Every time they've had an engine out on H-2, the flight is over. This is the third iteration for that rocket family, and the first two both had failures.
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And Space X is on it's second version of the Falcon 9 AND has had failures while the H2B has had none, yet..
Look, the question was abut there being an "indication" that H2 is safer than Falcon (look up about 5 messages ago). An indication exists in the perfect reliability record of the H2B verses the less than reliable Falcon 9 V1.1, which was the point in my response. I'm not claiming we have proof, only that there IS some *indication* that H2B is safer and more reliable given it's PERFECT (albeit short
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"Yea, but with the falcon you have to launch two of them to get one to the space station... (Grin)."
Thereby still saving money with the Falcon.
Unfair comparison (Score:2)
..."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
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"the Japanese are concentrating on but one thing at a time and will eventually surpass Musk and Space-X in all areas" -- no they won't and here's why: The Japanese have had the second or third largest economy for how long? And been one of the most technologically advanced nations in the world for how long? Almost for longer than Musk has been alive. And what have they done in Space -- essentially nothing noteworthy. They don't care. I had high hopes for them in the 80's -- technological superpower on
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Competition makes everything better.
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The Falcon 9 by comparison has a launch cost of $57 million.
NASA paid $1.6 billion for 12 launches, that's a lot more than $57 million per launch. And those 12 launches included 2 test launches.
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Thats because NASA was buying into a company that didn't have the capability at the time and knew they would be funding development. And they were specifying what the rockets needed to be capable of. SpaceX represents to NASA an additional way of getting to space and an opportunity to apply commercial pressure to the existing suppliers. Future contracts for launches will most likely be at a significantly lower rate.
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On top of that, in
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You cannot add in the cost of the Dragon when calculating the launch cost of a launching system. The Dragon is essentially cargo in this instance. It wouldn't be there if it wasn't necessary to dock with the ISS, in the same way I haven't counted the cost of the HTV transfer vehicle in the cost of the H2B launch system.
It also isn't really relevant what NASA paid SpaceX for the contract. An Iphone doesn't cost $700 but customers still pay that. In the end the launch costs is somewhere south of the $60m
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NASA paid $1.6 billion for 12 launches, that's a lot more than $57 million per launch.
Then you said
Thats because NASA was buying into a company that didn't have the capability at the time and knew they would be funding development.
So, I replied
In the end the cost for a supply mission is $90 million for Falcon 9 v1.1 plus the cost of using Dragon: I doubt it will ever be significantly less than the actual $133.3 million.
And now you say
You cannot add in the cost of the Dragon when calculating the launch cost of a launching system.
Why not? Because it doesn't suit the mantra that SpaceX is so cheaper than the alternatives? The cost of a resupply mission will never be cheaper than what it is now, let alone near to the famous $57 million, and the fact that the contract was prolonged for an undisclosed price proves this. That's a fact.
It also isn't really relevant what NASA paid SpaceX for the contract. An Iphone doesn't cost $700 but customers still pay that. In the end the launch costs is somewhere south of the $60m private customer cost.
It is relevant, unless you want to compare apples to oranges. Other vectors include insurance and services in the total cost, when SpaceX says $61 million does
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Sorry I think we are talking at cross purposes. You are focussing on the cost to NASA, which is fair enough, and you were looking at the total cost of the system including transfer vehicle. I was only looking at the cost of the launch system on a current per launch cost, excluding any additional customer specific costs. I wasn't actually talking about the cost of a resupply mission as that will always be more expensive because of the transfer vehicle, if nothing else.
Vega costs 22 million euro for the ro
Re:the USA is Portugal (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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>> 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?
You're doing it wrong, son.
Portugal is not in so good a shape now, but they were the first explorers from Europe 1,000 years after the Vikings. They had a motto: "To navigate is needed, to live is not needed."
Come to think, this could be applied to a lot of people nowadays... O.o
Saying the USA is like Portugal is a compliment. But, yes, it could mean the U
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Saying the USA is like Portugal is a compliment. But, yes, it could mean the USA stagnated.
well i didn't say that, you responded to the wrong comment.
Re: the USA is Portugal (Score:2)
Why be defensive when it's not even appropriate? The New World wasn't explored by today's PIIGS Portugal; it was explored by Portugal, the ambitious, sea-faring, colonizing superpower.
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SpaceX is a company, not a country; also, the USA, even with its flagging space ambition and reduced budget, was home country to the Opportunity rover on the Mars, the New Horizon that gave Pluto a selfie, and private space initiatives, of which, of course, SpaceX is most accomplished. Also, a lot of the fundamental or applied research that space exploration benefits from is coming out of the USA.
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Portugal fans need to relax. Interchange "Portugal" with any nation that isn't heavily invested in space exploration. It was meant to insult the US, not Portugal.
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I think that despite my and some other responses, you still misunderstand what turkeydance above you probably meant. IMO he clearly referred to Portugal's former glory, because of the temporal reference to the 'race to the New World'. So it's not that anybody 'needs to relax'; it's you who need to understand that there exists another interpretation of what turkeydance wrote, and it'll give you a whole different perspective.
You and those who upvoted you are the ones who 'need to relax', because you interpret
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You and those who upvoted you are the ones who 'need to relax', because you interpreted the comparison to Portugal as if it was compared to Romania or something, meaning the US is backwards. But again, I don't think it's the correct interpretation.
No one gives a sh*t about Portugal, in the context of this topic. I know you'd like to think this conversation is all about P but the bottom line is no one cares. P is an -insert 2nd world nation here- place filler.
We know P was a world power 400-500 years ago is irrelevant. We all had world history in grade school. We are very proud of P for achieving that. Good for them. We get it. But completely off topic and irrelevant to this conversation.
.
Re: the USA is Portugal (Score:2)
I don't think it was meant as a placeholder of a 2nd rate country. I think it was meant as a leading country of the World, which Portugal was when the New World was discovered. So it was actually a compliment. So your defensive response was a kind of Woosh and you still don't understand. I agree it's not about Portugal but it doesn't mean you interpreted the root post correctly.
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I think it was meant as a leading country of the World, which Portugal was when the New World was discovered. So it was actually a compliment.
the level of your derangement is impressive.
Re:the USA is Portugal (Score:4, Informative)
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... [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.
What IED? (Score:2)
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
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Number of NASA asteroid material return missions, zero.
What, are we comparing dicks here? Quick, name the only country to have sent a probe to fly by or land on every planet. Or every body that was ever considered a planet, if you prefer.
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Cool! Legal drugs in spaaaaace!
Important number missing (Score:3, Insightful)
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Fortunately, they haven't lost half their launches. At the moment, I believe, they've got about a 90% success rate. The Japanese rocket carried about 20% more than the Space-X Falcon for twice the cost.
Hopefully, the Japanese will finish the Centrifuge Accommodation Module [wikipedia.org] and send it up there...
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Uh...I believe the "company" in question is JAXA [wikipedia.org]--the Japanese equivalent of NASA. That's like saying that the National Weather Service gets heavy tax "incentives" for predicting the weather. They're a government organization.
About the only thing Space-X got--which I believe saved their bacon [theverge.com]--was a contract from NASA to send supplies to ISS. Of course, so did Orbital Sciences [wikipedia.org].
Or is you one of them "big gubmint"-types who thinks the gubmint should be doing everything?
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falcon heavy has not achieved anything yet
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Which launch of the Falcon Heavy achieved a cost of $1000/lb?
The last Falcon 9 launch blew up due to dodgy parts...
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Those costs are based on reusing parts of the launch vehicle.
That hasn't quite worked out with the Falcon 9 tests.
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That figure is 2 1/2 years old
The Falcon Heavy has never flown and it's launch demo date has been pushed from 2015 to some time in 2016
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Re:Important number missing (Score:4, Insightful)
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Not completely. There are items that the H2B is the only rocket that can carry them as they are physically too large for the Falcon or other lifters. Cost per pound becomes irrelevant if you can't make your item fit on the smaller launchers.
The Falcon 9 is 3.66m in diameter the H2B is 5.2m sometimes that is going to make all the difference.
kouNoTori (Score:1)
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
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While we're making corrections...
from pad 2 of the Yoshinobu Launch Complex at Tanegashima south of Tokyo
for very loose definitions of the word "south". The island housing the launch site is just south of Kyushu island, which is decidedly west-southwest of Tokyo.
there's room for several players to be successful (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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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.
The other other launcher (Score:2)
The European Space Agency has sent a few deliveries to ISS too [wikipedia.org] using its hugely successful Ariane 5 launcher and a robot delivery vehicle [esa.int]
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