Japan’s H3 rocket successfully completes its fifth launch
Japan’s space agency JAXA early today successfully launched the sixth satellite in that country’s GPS-type constellation, its new H3 rocket lifting off from the Tanegashema spaceport in south Japan.
This was the rocket’s fifth launch, and the first for Japan this year. The link goes to the JAXA live stream, cued to T-30 seconds. Though it now also provides English translation, JAXA still insists on having an announcer count off every second, several minutes prior to and after launch, something that is incredibly annoying and distracting, and entirely unnecessary.
The 2025 launch race:
14 SpaceX
6 China
1 Blue Origin
1 India
1 Japan
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
Japan’s space agency JAXA early today successfully launched the sixth satellite in that country’s GPS-type constellation, its new H3 rocket lifting off from the Tanegashema spaceport in south Japan.
This was the rocket’s fifth launch, and the first for Japan this year. The link goes to the JAXA live stream, cued to T-30 seconds. Though it now also provides English translation, JAXA still insists on having an announcer count off every second, several minutes prior to and after launch, something that is incredibly annoying and distracting, and entirely unnecessary.
The 2025 launch race:
14 SpaceX
6 China
1 Blue Origin
1 India
1 Japan
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
Heartily second your annoyance at the seemingly endless countdown. I haven’t watched all that many JAXA webcasts, but I don’t recall this particular verbal annoyance being a feature of any previous such. If this is, indeed, some mid-level JAXA bureaucrat’s recent innovation one can only hope he sees fit to commit honorable seppuku before the next launch webcast.
Dick Eagleson: This absurd and annoying verbal countdown has been routine for at least all of the H3 launches as well as the last few H2B launches. Before that JAXA didn’t provide a live stream as far as I can remember.
In other words, they haven’t a clue.
I seem to remember an article where there were discussions about docking port designs—where folks from Japan constantly re-did everything.
Pageantry seems to play a role. I think it was Operation Whitecoat that did a more scientific type of research:
https://www.blueridgenow.com/story/news/2004/01/26/adventist-helped-biological-weapons-study/28146747007/
An interesting aside
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/when-apollo-went-japan-180974469/