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Honda conducts successful launch and landing of experimental reusable rocket

(global.honda)
1355 points LorenDB | 2 comments | 17 Jun 25 15:02 UTC | HN request time: 0.538s | source
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3ds ◴[17 Jun 25 17:14 UTC] No.44301389[source]▶
Here is the video which they should have put in the post:

https://global.honda/content/dam/site/global-en/topics-new/c...

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whitehexagon ◴[17 Jun 25 18:00 UTC] No.44301924[source]▶
Great clean video link thanks, but I cant work out the scale, first it looks like a toy rocket, then from the distance shot it looks huge, like spaceX huge, and then landing it looks quite small again, especially with the lawn sprinklers.

But an impressively smooth landing regardless, and I would imagine maybe harder the smaller the rocket is.

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perihelions ◴[17 Jun 25 19:05 UTC] No.44302678[source]▶
It's much smaller than other suborbital hop vehicles. If it's 6.3 meters, the smallest Starhopper was 18 meters; Blue Shepherd 19 m; China's Hyperbola-2Y 17 m; the Zhuque-3 VTVL test vehicle 18.3 m. Also the Grasshopper from 2012 was 32 m and even 1993's DC-X was 12 m.
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throwaway562if1 ◴[17 Jun 25 20:41 UTC] No.44303703[source]▶
Electron is an 18m orbital delivery rocket (14.5m+payload without the optional third stage).
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1. kryptiskt ◴[17 Jun 25 23:31 UTC] No.44305091[source]▶
Japan holds the record for the smallest rocket to reach orbit with the SS-520, which put a cubesat into orbit in 2018.

Its dimensions according to Wikipedia:

Height – 31 feet (9.54 meters)

Weight – 2.9 tons (2.6 metric tons)

Diameter – 20 inches (52 centimeters)

Payload to Low-Earth Orbit – ~9 lbs (4 kg)

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2. muziq ◴[18 Jun 25 18:26 UTC] No.44312190[source]▶
I believe they can do 140kg to 800km, but #5 was only 4kg to a 180km x 1800km orbit..