Japan’s new space truck is also a temporary space lab, just worked first time

Japan’s Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is celebrating after its new cargo carrier docked at the International Space Station. The new vehicle is called the “HTV-X” and launched on JAXA’s own H3 Launch Vehicle last Sunday. It docked at the ISS on Thursday, after the space station’s robotic arm captured it and guided it …

[Pascal Monett]

"just worked first time"

That's something that His Muskiness has never heard.

[Flocke Kroes]

Re: "just worked first time"

Crew Dragon vs Starliner?

[I ain't Spartacus]

Re: "just worked first time"

FlockeKroes,

How dare you! Staliner is the finest spacecraft known to man! It has flown 2 missions, both 100% successfully. Both went up, both came back down, without exploding. And how could Boeing be expected to know that there was high humidity and salt water at Cape Kennedy that would corrode their valves?

[PB90210]

Re: "just worked first time"

Haven't Boeing heard of these new-fangled transistors?

I hear they are going to be all the rage in the next 20 years

[teacherboy]

Re: "just worked first time"

They've barely heard of redundant AOA sensors for MCAS.

[segfault188]

Re: "just worked first time"

Staliner is the finest spacecraft known to man!

Staliner must be the Russian copy of Starliner, like Buran vs Shuttle. Except in this case it wouldn't be something worth copying.

[I ain't Spartacus]

Re: "just worked first time"

Staliner

Oopsie! That was an unfortuante typo.

Although Boing might be grateful for the ability to airbrush the two Starliner flights from history...

I still can't believe that they used valves that would suffer from salt corrosion, that were going to be sitting around on the pads at Cape Kennedy. Have nonen of the buggers ever been to Florida?

I suppose I can sort of understand the clusterfuck with the thruster clusters. They took space-proven hardware and used it in a different way. I know an engineer who's always complaining that on every job he's the one in the meetings saying, "guys you need some cooling!". And he's always the guy that nobody listens to, until the product craps-out in the field, because it inevitably overheats, as soon as the temperature goes above the controlled conditions of the test lab.

[Oneman2Many]

Re: "just worked first time"

I guess you had a memory wipe ?

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: "just worked first time"

While funny, it's not true. HTV-X is an evolution of a successful design and so very likely would succeed. Just as with new designs of Falcon 9, which also have succeeded on first launch.

[bombastic bob]

Re: "just worked first time"

It's more fun to set off a few fireworks beforehand to CELEBRATE the REAL launch [which seems to be working extremely well].

I hope JAXA gets a man-rated system next. "3rd source" for orbital launching of meatbags.

[Anonymous Custard]

A Friday Smile

Mt. FUJI – a laser-based attitude measurement experiment;

I know what it actually is referring to, but that one made me smile with the mental image of some grumpy Japanese getting zapped repeatedly until he cheered up...

And even the naming is so very Japanese.

(For background reference, I work for a Japanese company and know several such grumpy colleagues).

[bombastic bob]

Re: A Friday Smile

I worked at the American division for a Japanese mega-corp back in the 90's. The only grumpy guy was the HR manager, until I did some specific IT work for their department...

[Doctor Evil]

Re: A Friday Smile

And then ... they were all grumpy?

[Oneman2Many]

Exciting to see more options for space exploration.

And meanwhile Honda continues developing their reusable rocket,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPiLE9ALTDE

[The Organ Grinder's Monkey]

There's a bit of me that'd like to see each of these cargo flights at least try to snag a big of space junk to take down with it when its time comes. I know that's actually massively harder to do than to say, but still...

[John Brown (no body)]

Unfortunately, most of the space junk, especially the larger ones worth trying to catch, are in entirely different orbits to the ISS and so very costly in fuel to chase down.

[Ashentaine]

Also we can't exactly verify the structural integrity of all that space junk, so trying to just grab the stuff and drag it out of its orbit has a possibility of causing it to break up into smaller pieces, and those pieces ending up in more dangerous flight paths.

[bombastic bob]

/me imagines ground based lasers that vaporize a chunk off of space junk and gives it a 'nudge' into a more ideal orbit for subsequent removal

bonus points if they can mount the lasers on the heads of sharks... Yeah, baby, YEAH!

[Dwarf]

Nice work

Well done to all involved.

I wonder how they approached project management and technical delivery of this programme ?

I'm fairly sure it won't be using Agile or Vibe coding.