Honda conducts successful launch and landing of experimental reusable rocket

This is a tiny rocket going up 300ms and coming back down. Happy for them but they're a long way from any utility ( and a decade+ behind other companies )

Which companies have this capability besides SpaceX and Blue Origin? More competition is always welcome.

I think the DC-X program did this first in the 90s. It ran into funding issues and it turns out there isn't a ton of value in reusable rockets that only go a few hundred feet (although more advanced applications are potentially worthwhile)

Rocket Labs, Stoke Space, Deep Blue, Landspace, Space Pioneer, iSpace, Galactic. (The last five are Chinese startups).

Rocket Labs has recovered (not reflown) several orbital boosters, and the rest are within 1-2 years of orbital booster recovery attempts.

It's not a difficult problem. It's just Newtonian mechanics plus control theory. You only need a lot of funding and then just do it (of course build a simulator first).

maybe that's the hard part, and scaling isn't.

This right here is the quintessential hackernews comment

Pure HN distilled

Starting small, gradually scaling up. What a concept!

Congratulations, you found the most obvious negative thing to say. Good for you?

So the correct answer is "nobody else has the capability"

I'll be thrilled when someone does! Competition is great! But let's do it via technological progress, not through abuse of the english language.

Here an amateur doing it all on its own https://youtu.be/SH3lR2GLgT0

He did say “orbital booster recovery” which is 160,000 meters. Honda reached 300 meters which is about the height of a tall skyscraper

The flight was a lot longer than 300 ms !