Japan launches a new upgraded version of its HTV cargo freighter
Japan today (October 26th in Japan) successfully launched to ISS a new upgraded version of its HTV cargo freighter, its H3 rocket lifting off from its Tanegashima spaceport in southern Japan.
The HTV-X1 carries more than freight. After its cargo is unloaded at ISS it will spend an additional three months flying independently in orbit, where engineers will conduct three additional experiments. JAXA, Japan’s space agency, hopes it can market HTV-X1 for use by the commercial space stations presently being developed. It is also marketing it as a potential orbital capsule that others can use for in-space manufacturing.
This was only the third launch by Japan in 2025, so there is no change to the 2025 leader board:
138 SpaceX
64 China
13 Russia
13 Rocket Lab
SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 138 to 106.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Japan today (October 26th in Japan) successfully launched to ISS a new upgraded version of its HTV cargo freighter, its H3 rocket lifting off from its Tanegashima spaceport in southern Japan.
The HTV-X1 carries more than freight. After its cargo is unloaded at ISS it will spend an additional three months flying independently in orbit, where engineers will conduct three additional experiments. JAXA, Japan’s space agency, hopes it can market HTV-X1 for use by the commercial space stations presently being developed. It is also marketing it as a potential orbital capsule that others can use for in-space manufacturing.
This was only the third launch by Japan in 2025, so there is no change to the 2025 leader board:
138 SpaceX
64 China
13 Russia
13 Rocket Lab
SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 138 to 106.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Back in the 1970’s it was posited that on-orbit manufacturing would take place in dedicated space stations. The market will eventually demand such sources of supply, but the current trend seems to be reusable capsules for short-term production. Good for exploring market and methods, but brings a high marginal cost to goods.
A shuttle payload full of products might be what VC guys need to see.
Space factories should have come before RLV construction.
However wonky STS was—it had downmass that Falcon/Dragon couldn’t touch.
You have to get products in people’s hands.
Once that happens-THEN you will see private investment blossom.
It might be that the best RLVs can exist only with materials made in a microgravity environment to start with.
I always thought the Shuttle’s return payload capability was among the more impressive specs. These day, anyone can push stuff uphill, but 16 tons down is nothing to sneeze at. And up to seven people, which I don’t think any operational vehicle can do.
Blair Ivey,
Marginal cost depends upon a lot of factors. One-and-done small re-entry capsules, for example, are vastly cheaper than a crewed space station of any size. A robot space station designed for production runs of tons rather than pounds might be better – especially if the vehicles that transport the raw materials up and finished product back down are reusable. But small capsules can be made reusable too, so larger scale doesn’t necessarily translate to lower marginal cost.
A lot would depend upon the cost, mass, volume and durability of the production equipment involved. The larger any of these numbers are, the more the economics would seem to favor robot space stations. Only having to launch heavy, bulky production equipment once would definitely beat having to launch even miniaturized versions repeatedly as would be necessary with the small-capsule-only approach.
Different products may also yield different optimization points on this spectrum of infrastructure approaches. The coming decade should see a lot of such questions answered for particular products or product categories.
Agree that Shuttle’s 16 tons of potential downmass was impressive, though I’m not sure it ever came close to actually returning that large a load.
And, for people of my generation, it also instantly brings to mind a certain song by the late Tennessee Ernie Ford.
Jeff Wright,
I don’t know why you keep insisting that space manufacturing should have preceded the advent of reusable vehicles as the opposite is what has actually happened – and quite correctly so. Perhaps this notion is of a piece with a lot of your other nostalgic laments for 1960s-era/Soviet-era tech that has come and – deservedly – gone and, even more so, for 1960s-era concepts that were never implemented. I can only analogize this to someone who thinks the era of wood and fabric biplanes was the apex of aircraft technology and that it has all been downhill since 1925.
Perhaps space-made materials will someday allow even better reusable vehicles to be built, though I find that unlikely, especially absent any hint as to what such materials might be. The reusable vehicles we already have were sufficient to get the space manufacturing ball rolling. The upcoming next generation of such will be still better even absent any created-in-space unobtanium.
My stance has nothing to do with nostalgia (the sharp noses and wings of early designs would certainly have melted).
I remember hearing about how Nautilus X concept guru Mark Holderman happened to visit some type of petroleum expo where part of a platform was re-created—and how blown away he was.
Even with Elon’s help—many investors will always see space as profitable only in terms of communications….and even that looks to be threatened down the road:
https://medium.com/@brandontbrasson/neutrino-e65bcafc9a69
As much as many hate government—it has a place:
https://townhall.com/columnists/marklewis/2025/10/26/governmentnecessary-and-intolerant-n2665473
Securing resources and transportation I see as vital as Defense. I think Uncle Sam should in fact push orbital manufacturing.
Right now, neutrino-comm seems a long way out. That might change quickly.
Were I a petroleum-guru, I might wonder if the large tanks of oil I have might double as those water-filled detectors all the pointy-heads in cosmology are enamored with.
Where some space-advocates hoped space-based solar power would finally get the god-tier financing the energy sector enjoys behind the space sector—-it may very well be the case that the black gold guys find a way to take comm away from spaceflight.
If that happens (unlikely, I know)—spaceflight craters. In that environment, reusable LVs are WORTHLESS.
Why?
Because if all you need a a weathersat or mil-sat every once and awhile, the ULA model works perfectly well. Expendability is a plus here instead of a minus….otherwise folks will still want lower SpaceX launch costs for the handful of satellite launches that remain—and that might not be enough to keep the doors open.
American off-shoring has done great damage.
I could see spacelaunch itself being thought of as something from the buggy whip days—with some wiseacre suit making cracks.
That may not stop Europe or China, which will support spaceflight for its own sake without regard as to the bottom line (exploration, prestige, etc.)—but I can easily see American spaceflight going the way of textile mills if manufacturing isn’t stressed and NASA starved.
That Ayn Rand garbage will have come home to roost for good.
“. . . the buggy whip days—with some wiseacre suit making cracks.”
I like the callback.
Blair Ivey wrote: “Back in the 1970’s it was posited that on-orbit manufacturing would take place in dedicated space stations. The market will eventually demand such sources of supply, but the current trend seems to be reusable capsules for short-term production. Good for exploring market and methods, but brings a high marginal cost to goods.”
Back in the 1990s, I pondered the advantages and disadvantages of dedicated unmanned manufacturing satellites vs one-shot or reusable reentry satellites similar to the modern capsules, such as Varda’s. It had seemed to me that a satellite or space station dedicated to one product would need a large annual production rate in order for the facility and operational costs to break even, possibly even continuous manufacturing, where the next raw materials delivery arrives shortly after the last manufacturing batch is loaded and undocked for reentry. Problems ensue if the automatic machinery malfunctions.
Manned orbital manufacturing is inherently expensive and would be best when combined with other activities requiring man’s attention for the (hopefully majority) time when the manufacturing facility does not need personal attention.
I agree with Blair Ivey that the reusable capsules are best for exploring new materials or methods. For each batch of product, the mass of the manufacturing facility has to be launched along with the raw materials. The more permanently orbiting manufacturing facility is best after optimization has been worked out by using the reusable capsules. Enough optimization so that the permanent facility does not become obsolete before it has paid for itself. Like all free market economic endeavors, space entrepreneurs have to be wary that someone else will build a better mousetrap.
These are the early days of commercial space operations. Innovations, improvements, and optimizations are more easily developed than in the more mature industries. Where the money is to be made is still in flux, but we already know that communications are important for our modern world. I wonder how humanity ever managed before the homing pigeon.
That Ann Rand garbage involves letting the parasites wither on the vine while the productive move forward. I can understand why you dislike it with welfare cases like Marshal being abandoned.
The ends of the spectrum are the free market and the slave market. Your choice is sad.
I seem to remember smoke signals/fires atop hills could transmit messages—but it requires serious minded folks.
Today’s tech is about how to get out of working.
That might result in technical advances—but that mindset can undermine society.
Where tech-brahs love to talk about disruption—WWII was won via logistics. That level of commitment requires Eisenhowers, not Elons.
ISS is larger than everything save VAST’s largest concepts—and there we still got little back. Some looked at space laboratories as pathfinders, not production.
One problem is that if you ask private money for support—they will turn around and ask “what does NASA think about this?”
And vice-versa.
Elon may not make friends, but he can get things moving—but even he pales in comparison to a Rickover—who was closer to Mike Griffin.
Manufacturing in space is actually something I want military money behind. Rickover never had to prostitute himself in front of that punk Mark Cuban on Shark Tank.
And speaking of the powers that be—-it looks like some are getting a taste of their own medicine:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=S92fTz_-kQE
While a part of me wants to cheer at management getting a taste of its own medicine…sometimes businesses also have to be unpleasant.
AI worries me in that it is one more way for academics to get into power behind the scene.
A man is nothing without work—a sack of meat.
When I saw jobs end—I considered them as murder victims. GOP country clubs consider corporations as people—I consider jobs as personhood.
Again, I think Greens and some executives look at folks as problems—not resources.
Yes, there are spongers. But if I came into money—I would do more, not less.
We all should try to make a mark upon the world.
Sadly, that belief is falling away.
AI could liberate us—but it can’t stifle drive just as easily.
Thomas Sowell was wrong.
Culture matters.
Blast made the wrong link
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ozVb14bNwzQ
Jeff Wright,
You wrote: “Where tech-brahs love to talk about disruption—WWII was won via logistics. That level of commitment requires Eisenhowers, not Elons.”
I’ve heard half a dozen “WWII was won because of” stories, and all of them are good. I’m sticking with the code-breaking story rather than the proximity fuze story, because if the Japanese had taken Midway, Pearl Harbor would have been in serious trouble, and probably unusable, and fighting the war from the continent would have been difficult.
Eisenhower was more politician than logistician. I am reading a book on Patton, and Eisenhower put too much favor on Montgomery, who didn’t move fast enough, being more cautious, and not enough emphasis on Patton’s ability to race around an enemy and cut him off before he could regroup in force. Patton had his own logistics guy, who didn’t bother Patton with the details, he just stole as much fuel as he could to keep Patton’s army on the move. Patton would plan around the amount of fuel in his hands, which often meant smaller attacks with less backup than he would like.
Musk, like Trump, knows how to delegate. Let someone else handle the logistics, because that is what that guy is paid to do.
“ Some looked at space laboratories as pathfinders, not production.”
Finding a path is only useful if you let someone use it. Producers were not allowed to use Skylab, the Shuttle, or ISS. Now we have some commercial companies finding the paths for usable commercial space stations, and they cost significantly less than ISS or the Shuttle. They aren’t just finding paths, they are finding efficiencies. Other pathfinders are investigating manufacturing via reusable reentry capsules, which had been impractical under government-controlled space. Now the We the People are in control, we are beginning to get what W,e want.
“One problem is that if you ask private money for support—they will turn around and ask ‘what does NASA think about this?’”
That may have been true in the past, but I think scores of space startups are finding funding without investors bugging NASA for their thoughts on the project. NASA has a very different mindset on the methods of using space, and these methods are not so useful to commercial space.
“Elon may not make friends, but he can get things moving—but even he pales in comparison to a Rickover—who was closer to Mike Griffin.”
You may have that backwards. Rickover revolutionized the submarine portion of the Navy, but Musk has already revolutionized the launch industry, the commercial space industry, commercial manned space, and the communications industry. If (or maybe I should say “when”) he revolutionizes large-scale retanking in orbit, he will revolutionize the exploration and utilization of the entire solar system.
I think Rickover already pales in comparison with Musk.
“Manufacturing in space is actually something I want military money behind.”
Excellent choice. Then all we will get manufactured is what the military or government wants.
I want private money behind the vast majority of our activities in space so that the vast majority of what we get from space is what We the People want.
“When I saw jobs end—I considered them as murder victims.”
When I had my jobs end, I did not consider myself as a murder victim. Instead, I would find a new job. No coffins, just coffee and resumé’s.
“Thomas Sowell was wrong.”
I wouldn’t know, because you didn’t give a reference.
Edward,
You and I are pretty much on the same page anent space manufacturing.
Jeff Wright,
“My stance has nothing to do with nostalgia.”
Sure it does. Your invincible infatuation with Marshall, for example, is based on obdurate refusal to see the enfeebled and senescent mess it has become and imagining it to still be its von Braun-era self.
Interesting story about Holderman, though I’m entirely unable to see its relevance to the current discussion. You have a more-than-marginal tendency to, W.C. Fields-like, suddenly exclaim the equivalent of, “Ah look over there! A buffalo stampede!” Damfino why.
Many investors are like teen girls – always chasing after the latest fad. Communications is a well-established space-based business. When other such business sectors arise and prove themselves, the investors of limited vision will try to climb on-board, but the late arrivals never do as well as the more perspicacious early pioneers.
Sure, government has a place. No anarchists here. But fire has a place too. And, like government, it always bears watching lest it get out of control. From a political philosophy standpoint, you are a substantially uncritical advocate of government. That’s different. I’d analogize that to being a firebug.
Neutrino comm seems a long way out because it is. It may eventually have some role to play, especially over interplanetary, and even interstellar, distances. One could, for example, maintain constant touch, from Earth, with any human or automated facility located anywhere on any significant solar system body even if the Sun, Earth and the extraterrestrial body were all in the way along a point-to-point path.
Still light-speed-limited of course.
The idea that neutrino comm has any capability of suddenly replacing existing space-based comms – and, thus, rendering Musk a pauper – is just another goofy manifestation of your long-obviously serious case of Musk Derangement Syndrome.
In the first case, space-based comms are hardly the only things Elon does by way of creating wealth.
In the second case, barring the sudden advent of some significant crypto-physics, neutrino comm will never be available in iPhone-sized packages usable by humans. Batteries powerful enough to run teensy particle accelerators – should the latter such even be possible to construct – don’t exist and never will if they are to be based on chemical, and not nuclear, reactions.
Particle accelerators that produce neutrinos tend also to produce a lot of other energetic particles that no one with sense wants to have anywhere near one’s body – particularly one’s head. All the wowser hoo-raw nonsense from some years ago about cell phone radios producing brain tumors would actually be true about teensy particle accelerators. Sheesh.
Then there’s the problem of detecting the damned neutrinos if one doesn’t live inside an enormous tank of water or some other suitable liquid. If it was possible for neutronium to exist at room temperature and in the form of a few square inches of foil then one would have something that would make neutrino-based signals readable in a hand-held size format. Of course even that quite modest bit of neutronium would mass so much only a native of planet Krypton or the God Thor would be able to lift and use an “nPhone” built around it. Conveniently, they would also be immune to the extraneous particle accelerator radiation flux.
So, a comic book device usable only by comic book characters and only by some of even those. I don’t anticipate ever finding an “nPhone” under my Christmas tree.
“Securing resources and transportation I see as vital as Defense.”
Past US administrations/regimes have done an unimpressive job of securing resources. The current administration is doing its best to make up for past derelictions – in that respect as well as many others.
Transportation – by which I assume you meant space transportation – has been a signal realm of governmental failure. Fortunately, we have Elon to pull us out of that particular well.
But it’s not like government has been any great shakes at providing terrestrial transportation either. That’s especially true of Democrats who seem unaccountably enamored of 19th-century tech like railroads and fixed-rail urban mass transit.
Once again, it is Elon who is charting the way forward on terrestrial transportation – along with much else.
For the second time, neutrino comm is not going to send us back to the days of yore when space launches were rare and entirely expendable. SpaceX didn’t start out launching rockets in three figures per year, but reuse made launch cheaper even in the early days of F9. There is nothing – especially comic book comms tech – that is going to save ULA and the other dinosaurs of aerospace – your invincible nostalgia notwithstanding.
“American off-shoring has done great damage.”
It has. I fail to see the relevance of that observation to this discussion, however. It is certainly not a cudgel with which to beat Elon Musk. His industrial empire owes less to off-shoring than pretty much any other one could name.
The only neglect of manufacturing has come from the legacy primes. They all used to know how to do mass production – especially during WW2. But they’ve all long since lost the knack. Fortunately, Elon has resurrected respect for manufacturing and much of NewSpace and NewDef have followed suit. Elon has his Gigafactories hither and yon and Palmer Luckey is building Arsenal 1 in Ohio.
“That Ayn Rand garbage” is pretty much all that’s keeping the US in the game these days. Who is John Galt? He’s Elon Musk.
You also shouldn’t single out textile mills as a metaphor for industrial decline and off-shoring. There are actually some new US-based textile mills that are digital and robotic, though they run without benefit of many Norma Raes.
“I seem to remember smoke signals/fires atop hills could transmit messages—but it requires serious minded folks.”
They could. But the folks involved needed to be patient as well as serious-minded as the bandwidth of smoke signals and the Beacons of Gondor are unimpressive. The latter also required beaucoup maintenance and garrisoning for extremely infrequent use. No wonder Gondor was looking more than a tad down-at-heel by the time Denethor was in charge.
Today’s tech is about automating scut work of many kinds. Most of the skilled trades have nothing to worry about for quite some time yet, but office drones are another matter. But not all forms of work are particularly ennobling of the human spirit so perhaps it is simply that a better balance is in the process of being struck. In any case, it is generally those most enthused about government that seek ways to avoid work.
WW2 was won by technology, production, logistics, intelligence, strategy and tactics. All were essential. And the first three definitely required Elon – or, rather, his back-in-the-day approximations. One of these was Henry Ford. Another was Henry J. Kaiser. Ike played his part, but he was at the end of the pipeline.
“One problem is that if you ask private money for support—they will turn around and ask ‘what does NASA think about this?’ And vice-versa.”
Once upon a time, maybe. but not these days. Private money isn’t much interested in what NASA lifers think anymore. And NASA has never been much interested in what the private sector thought except for its coterie of legacy contractors. And what they have always thought is “we should get more money.”
“Elon may not make friends, but he can get things moving—but even he pales in comparison to a Rickover—who was closer to Mike Griffin.”
Yeesh – where to start?
Elon has made a lot of friends. You are not one of them and you don’t seem to know any of them, but your parochial disconnect is not based in reality.
Of course Elon has made a lot of enemies, too – all of them the correct ones.
Taking nothing away from Rickover, but he was a one-trick pony. It was a very good pony trick, to be sure, but only one. Matters could hardly have been otherwise given that he was career military. Elon has shown us lots of tricks – with more coming all the time.
Mike Griffin is probably the paradigmatic proof that a massive load of credentials is not synonymous with accomplishment or wisdom. He’s had some base hits, but no real home runs. And, unlike Elon, Griffin really is a master at alienating people.
“Thomas Sowell was wrong.”
About what – other than having a low initial opinion of Donald Trump?
“Culture matters.” It certainly does – something Sowell, among others, has been beating the drum about for decades. There are plenty of broken sub-cultures in the US besides the obvious such as those of inner cities. There are NASA, JPL, Goddard, Marshall and the legacy primes as well. Some of the forms of breakage are even the same across all of those named here – a desire to get something for nothing being foremost on that list.
john hare,
Amen, brother.
Edward,
It’s damned spooky how much we sometimes think, and even express ourselves, alike without reference to the other’s work until after we post.
A few further thoughts:
George Marshall is really more like Musk than Eisenhower. Both were/are geniuses that had/have the ability to build very large, very effective organizations that were/are best-in-class from modest starting points. Both were/are also good at “herding cats” and looked for direct reports with that same talent. Marshall had Ike. Elon has Shotwell. Elon herds the engineer “cats” and Shotwell herds all of the others.
I gave Rickover shorter shrift than he deserves. He actually had a fairly consequential Navy career before the whole nuclear power thing. In the 1930s, he was largely responsible for refitting the electrical and other systems of capital ships to withstand the firing of their own guns and to withstand battle damage. He never had a combatant command, but he certainly did more than his bit toward winning the then-coming war.
And post-war – ship systems wonk that he was – Rickover was first off the blocks about harnessing nuclear power for naval propulsion. And he was another of those guys who could scratch-build a high-quality, best-in-class organization to tackle a formidable scientific-technical challenge.
There is a pattern here.
And to your list of Musk accomplishments you could also add creating the modern electric vehicle industry, the utility-scale and residential-scale power storage industry, the virtual power plant industry, revolutionizing the tunnel boring industry, hugely advancing the AI state of the art, pioneering man-machine interfaces and rescuing free speech from the woke barbarians.
I also second your “no murder victims here” attitude towards being either tossed overboard or finding oneself in the water after the entire ship sinks anent employment. I’ve had both happen to me several times each. Never pleasant, but more like paper cuts than bullets.
Musk certainly did more for electric cars than anyone else–it worried me that it could be a distraction.
I lament how you look at MSFC guys as spongers. These aren’t baby mamas with kids by multiple fathers–I know some guys…they simply have been underfunded.
Sowell is best known to me as a purist–he and O’Rourke had different ideas as to how much culture matters in economics. Sowell didn’t think it mattered at all. Had he (and Mr. Eagleson) been correct, China would have collapsed right with the Soviets.
P.J. seems to be correct so far–in that China persists. That has to be cultural. Russians are most happy when miserable these days.
It is my opinion that had Marshall had real money, we could have had troops rockets long ago. I think ABMA deserved the largesse the USAF got instead.
My guys could easily could have gotten Explorer I off first. Ike wanted to let the Soviets set the precedent. Like Area 51, I think having real national money behind engineering is wise. Elon is a unicorn. He can do what he likes.
Dick Eagleson noted anent Musk accomplishments: ” . . . hugely advancing the AI state of the art, . . .”
I am not altogether sure this is an achievement. Sure, someone is going to advance the art, and better to have ‘friendly’ researchers, but I believe the labor market is near the limit of what level AI current society can accept. Maybe throttle back a bit, and allow people to catch up.