Honda’s grasshopper rocket successfully completes vertical take-off and landingHonda today successfully completed the first test of its own grasshopper prototype rocket, with the rocket reaching a height of 890 feet before landing vertically 56 seconds after launch.
I have embedded the video of the flight below.
Honda had announced this project back in 2021, but since then had published no updates of note. This flight indicates that project is real and is on going.
In 2021 the company said it was targeting the first orbital flights by 2030. Today’s update says it will be doing suborbital flights in 2029, which suggests the orbital flights will not occur in 2030.
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. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.
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
Honda today successfully completed the first test of its own grasshopper prototype rocket, with the rocket reaching a height of 890 feet before landing vertically 56 seconds after launch.
I have embedded the video of the flight below.
Honda had announced this project back in 2021, but since then had published no updates of note. This flight indicates that project is real and is on going.
In 2021 the company said it was targeting the first orbital flights by 2030. Today’s update says it will be doing suborbital flights in 2029, which suggests the orbital flights will not occur in 2030.
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. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. 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
No LUT… that’s what impressed me. Clean exhaust.
Rebirth of Black Arrow?
Nice. But, as seems to be usual for Japanese space efforts, moving forward quite slowly – taking a decade to do what SpaceX did at far larger scale in a bit over three years.
Dick Eagleson: In this case Honda is not moving that slowly, at least to this point. They announced this project in October 2021. Three and a half years later they fly for the first time.
I agree however that their future timeline is too relaxed. They should pick up the pace.
I wonder if there is some cultural reason behind this.
ESA’s problem comes from the fractious nature of the Continental powers.
Japan is the opposite.
I remember being in college with a man who bragged about their strength stemming from the fact that they were ONE people.
China is embarrassing them….which I find sad.
P.J. thought culture more important than economics.
“””P.J. thought culture more important than economics.””””
They are intertwined. The economic models are part of the development of the thought culture. Socialism leading to entitlement mentality for instance. Free enterprise attracting ambitious people. And so on.
Jeff Wright,
The Honda engines are apparently methalox so, even if they are run fuel-rich – which is usual practice – there wouldn’t be nearly as much soot as with kerolox.
Re: Japan vs. PRC. The latter certainly leads in space right now. On the other hand, Japan, even though it also has terminal demographics, is not in quite so bad a situation as that in which the PRC currently finds itself. The current PRC population – which is most probably somewhere between 1 and 1.2 billion rather than the 1.4 billion of conventional wisdom – will be halved by mid-century and the Han ethnicity will be all but gone by century’s end. The PRC’s demise will long precede that of the Chinese population, but, once in steep decline, the future for PRC space spectaculars doesn’t look good. The PRC economy is a house of cards which could fall to pieces at, literally, any moment. That makes the PRC economy one of the few things that’s actually in worse shape than its demographics.
Japan seems likely to outlast the PRC – and even China more broadly – by a considerable margin, though it is also on a slow road to extinction as are most of the European nations, especially Russia. In the 22nd century, the only two really populous countries of real consequence remaining on Earth are going to be the US and India.
If there is a cultural basis for Japan’s quite modest pace of progress in space-related matters it is probably its inexorably aging population. Oldsters are far less inclined than youngsters to be hard-chargers.
Robert Zimmerman,
It’s a bit tricky to directly compare this Honda project to, say, the SpaceX Falcon 9 as their development histories are quite different. The most favorable view of the Honda project – which was announced in 2021 and aims to achieve an initial booster recovery after an orbital mission in 2030 or 2031 – is that it is roughly on par with the SpaceX Falcon 9’s reusability development history. SpaceX announced the Falcon 9 project in 2005 and achieved its first booster recovery as part of an orbital launch mission ten years later in 2015.
But, of course, the Falcon 9 first flew, expendably, in 2010, only five years after its announcement and had chalked up quite a few launches between then and its first successful booster recovery in 2015.
The most directly comparable F9 test article was Grasshopper, which first hopped in late 2012 and eventually achieved a hop altitude roughly equivalent to that of Honda’s hopper about a year later. Two years after that the first successful in-service booster recovery was achieved.
Based on announcement dates vs. moderate-altitude hops, the Honda vehicle is well ahead of SpaceX’s historical pace. But F9 was already an operational vehicle at the time of such hops and the Honda vehicle is not. The gap between vehicle announcements is 16 years – 2005 vs 2021. The gap between first in-service booster recovery by both vehicles seems as though it will be comparable – 2015 vs 2030-31. So it is also reasonable to suggest that Japan started a decade and a half behind SpaceX and does not look to be making up any ground.
However one cares to view these matters, Japan is likely to have far smoother sailing as a society than will the PRC between now and 2030-31. Japan reached its economic stagnation point 30-ish years ago and has since figured out how to decline with relative grace. Part of that accommodation to the inevitable is tucking in tightly behind the US and “drafting” in its slipstream. The PRC is still under the mistaken impression that it can continue its former rates of economic growth indefinitely if it just makes some policy tweaks while continuing its delusional quest to surpass and replace the US as the consequential nation on Earth. Not gonna happen.
So Japan’s space efforts will continue their historical modest velocity while the PRC’s will suffer a hard stop that could come at any time.
I share the sense that Honda is not moving as fast as they could be, or should be (As Dick rightly points out, SpaceX did succeed in an orbital launch landing only two years after the Grasshopper tests, with considerably less in the way of resources than Honda has).
But man, did I ever enjoy watching this video. Loved watching those legs retract.
Richard M,
Yes, the Honda Hopper is certainly a lovely bit of kit. But that has been true of pretty much everything Honda has ever made from its immediately-post-WW2 get-go. The multi-cylinder high-revving engines with tiny displacements (50cc 3-cyl!) it built for its 1950s and 60s racing motorcycles were like Swiss watches compared to their competitors’ stuff.