Honda says growing expectations of a “data system in outer space” are going to increase the demand for rockets to launch satellites. So, the Japanese automaker quietly built one and tested it successfully.
Japan’s second-largest carmaker, Honda, has successfully tested an experimental reusable space rocket on the nothern Japanese island of Hokkaido, the company said in a surprise announcement.
“The test was completed successfully, the first time Honda landed a rocket after reaching an altitude of nearly 300 meters (1,000 feet),” the company said in a statement on Tuesday.
The carmaker aims to achieve suborbital space flight in 2029. In 2021, Honda said it was studying space technologies such as reusable rockets but made no announcements prior to Tuesday’s test
About time. Took the market long enough. Bloody hell, it’s like capitalism literally handed Musk this business on a golden platter.
Just wait until they add VTEC to it
Was that a sonic boom? Nah, rev limiter!
I expect we’ll see SpaceX rockets with VTEC stickers trying to masquerade as performance rockets.
This must terrify Musk and his SpaceX
It pleases me.
I doubt that. Spacex is miles ahead of the rest and they have bigger plans.
Sure they would rather have a monopoly on cheap rockets for as long as possible but they have always known people would be trying to catch them up
rivaling their … 8 year old technology
not a fan of musk but spacex seriously leapfrogged everyone in the 2010s
They really did! Starship could be a similar leap, if it pans out. It would be an incredible jump in launch capacity and a dramatic drop in price.
Modern rockets have only been a thing for 70 years. 8 years is nothing. That would be like saying Rivian or Tesla can’t compete with Ford because they haven’t been making cars as long. Tesla didn’t have to spend a decade making the Model A or T before it figured out how to make cars effectively. Honda will also be able to spend less time making it to orbit than SpaceX did.
Down voted because you didnt immediately talk shit about someone. We all hate musk but it doesnt mean we have to claim it for every post.
from what I’ve heard musk and the HR head is basically destroying spacex from the inside?
i dislike their upper management but i still appreciate what the people there do, and think what they’re doing is incredible
lemmy doesn’t seem to like nuance unfortunately
Oh shit dont mention something good someone done! People might get their undies all in a twist.
only to seemingly all turn into a shit show.
He’s a shit show, but SpaceX is still doing great. They have more launches per year than any other company or country. While they’ve had multiple launches explode recently, that’s their newer larger rocket where they’re still working out kinks.
If they can’t get that into shape eventually it could be a problem for the company, but their smaller rocket has a great record, reusable, a fraction of the cost of any other launch provider. Right now they’re the only game in town for the U.S. getting to the ISS.
I’d love to see Musk ousted, and more importantly to see real competition from other private launch providers. But don’t let Musk hate color your view of reality.
Fair enough, though he builds all his personal image on completely associating his whole being with the companies he runs. Apparently he is even the chief engineer of spaceX probably because he wants to feel like Tony Stark. It is hard to trust a company where he names him self the chief engineer because that means he can enforce stupid decisions only because it sounds cool to him. Then once in a while he comes up with ridiculous stuff like donating his sperm for the mars mission or stuff like this:
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/spacex-musk-safety/
https://aflcio.org/sites/default/files/2025-04/Memo on Elon Musk OSHA cases_.pdf
https://tech.yahoo.com/science/articles/elon-musk-told-spacex-workers-181406484.html
Otherwise kudos to all the great engineers who work there but I am not optimistic unless he lessens his influence there.
Just because you want something to be true doesn’t make it so.
or the other way around
Altitude of 300m …. This is older than 8 years, this corresponds to the first SpaceX tests …. I don’t see that level of historical detail, but Wikipedia lists a milestone of a recovered falcon 9 after launch to orbit. Hondas technology is somewhere over 15 years old …. And the article doesn’t say whether it’s comparable size or power, so no.
Honda’s thing is still epic but you could probably even compare it to delta clipper, from 30 years ago or so
I agree. SpaceX is probably not going anywhere anytime soon.
Honda landing rockets, VW getting fully automated vans to drive safely on roads, xAI burning through 1b monthly. Not a good time to be a musk, I guess.
Do you have a link for the vw cars? Can’t seem to find anything concrete
German magazine Golem reported it today
Thank you! Hope my German is still good enough to read it
He has so much money he could lose a billion dollars every month and still have billions left in 2055.
“OK, so, I want a Honda Civic, but for up and down instead of forwards and backwards.”
Unironically, yes.
If Honda can make a rocket as reliable and cheap as a Civic, relatively, we all win.
I didn’t know Honda made sex toys.
Hitachi could make a reusable rocket, you just gotta wipe the sticky off it between flights
Honda sex toys are reliable and has been married for 100 years
This is the best news I’ve heard all day. Go Honda! Fuck Musk!
Honda is the complete opposite of Leon Hitler and his Space X BS.
I like Honda, you can drive those cars into the ground, they just keep going.
Now if they can pull that off with a rocket…
Just make sure to point it the other way, first.
I love that space travel is becoming so democratized now.
It shouldn’t just be governments, it shouldn’t just be private companies, it should be anyone with the wherewithal to figure the technology out.
If your idea of ‘democratized’ is ‘now giant megacorps have comparable capital and assets to entire nation states’…
You have a very, very silly understanding of democracy.
Please explain to me how a giant mega corp is… democratic in nature.
You are describing cyberpunk style, hypercorporate techno-feudalism as democracy.
Democracy is one person, one vote.
Corporate governance structures can basically be boiled down to: one dollar, one vote, ie, oligarchy.
Yeah. Most of humanity has been propagandised into believing that corporations, which are run like dictatorships where < 1% are the majority shareholders who control the operation, are actually equivalent to “freedom” and “democracy”.
Clown world.
Is always going to take a massive amount of resources to get to space.
that’s where ride-sharing could come in.
Resources = wealth
Yes, exactly. Nobody is building and successfully launching a crewed mission to space from their garage. It will always be done by governments, companies, and the insanely rich.
But the question is – why?
In the end, it’s a huge investment of resources; you can’t cheat physics. There is a theoretical floor (and a much higher practical floor) for what you need to get out of Earth’s orbit. And frankly, there isn’t that much to do for you in space as a layperson (not talking about actual astronauts who are rather scientists) except flex on other people.
But the question is – why?
My honest belief is that somehow, spaceflight is good for the people in the US because it creates jobs:
Think of how the Space Race of the 1960s brought jobs all across America. On top of that, it inspired a generation of scientists.
Both are valuable for a society, especially for the US, where these kinds of jobs are especially desirable.
The problem in the US isn’t lack of jobs, it’s lack of pay, crippling debt and rising cost of living. People have trouble fitting all those jobs into their lives. Normal people are getting squeezed and social protections are weak. More jobs won’t fix it
For what it’s worth; the technology developed for space travel over the years has led to the development of many common everyday items. I agree that space travel itself might not be the best investment but I can appreciate how it pushes the envelope for new tech.
Here’s infograph from nasa website but things like scratch proof lenses, hand vacuums, jaws of life, LED lights, etc…
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/infographics/20-inventions-we-wouldnt-have-without-space-travel/
My argument wasn’t against space exploration in general, but rather the democratization of space travel as a commodity; as in as in we have already democratized it so far that the trophy wifes of billionaires can travel to space. I’m unsure of scientific advances that has brought and rather think this made someone money
That’s how airplanes were at first too. Eventually, once enough of the technology and engineering becomes finalized, everyday people can afford it.
With this technology we can use methane or hydrogen powered rockets, using only renewable resources, launch people from one side of the planet to the other in less than an hour.
Is this a good thing for the environment? It’s hard to say right now, it’s probably not great. Since the flights will be so short, maybe it’ll be better than the current air travel.
My original point was also that you’d need a real benefit compared to the currently available options. We did have faster air travel for a time with the Concorde (which looked a lot more like a spaceship than other aircrafts). It went away because it had a lot of downsides for only the advantage of being faster. Don’t get me wrong, I would have loved to use it one day just to witness it; but in the end, it doesn’t really matter if your trip takes slightly less time; keep in mind that it usually doesn’t start and end at an airport anyways, and this problem would be even bigger for space travel. So it isn’t really something for traveling on Earth. Which brings me back to the question what it would do for a layperson…
Apart from that, you need to time your departure and arrival with conditions on Earth, so while technically you could shorten that time drastically, you’d probably need to wait some months before you can take the trip.
frankly, there isn’t that much to do for you in space as a layperson
That you can think of. That doesn’t mean it isn’t worth exploring. Plenty of backyard scientists do some crazy innovation.
With the small detail that failures in your backyard are in general much less catastrophic compared to mishaps in space
That’s why the launching areas are typically huge areals where not many people live. On top of that, rockets are typically launched eastwards (due to earth’s rotation) and in coastal areas, so they fly the first few minutes over the ocean. Should something blow up, it does so over the sea, where it doesn’t matter too much.
Put some v-tec in it and it might actually works better.
The fuck?
Great first step but the vast majority of the work still needs to be done. There’s a big difference in getting 300m to the air and back and low earth orbit but Honda is an excellent candidate to get it done.
How is it a surprise? Honda has had this developing and has been building it for years.
Even if you didn’t read the article, the op helpfully included the first few lines, which say that although Honda had said they were studying rocket technology, they made no announcements about this launch until it had already occurred.
I understand that they made no announcement. I don’t understand how building a rocket could be kept secret.
