
Momo-3 is Japan's first private rocket to reach space - aerophilic
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/05/04/business/tech/momo-3-becomes-first-privately-developed-japanese-rocket-reach-outer-space/#.XM-C3BYpDYU
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jpatokal
Since the name of founder Takafumi Horie may not ring many bells outside a
Japanese audience, let's just say he's a colorful character:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takafumi_Horie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takafumi_Horie)

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ihccobirotih

      The veracity of the suspicions aside, many smelled conspiracy given the timing of the action. It was seen as a political move by defenders of the status quo to punish Horie for daring to challenge them, and to discredit him and the business practices he had come to represent, which Horie's opponents considered distasteful and "un-Japanese".
    

I mean, considering we have been hearing a lot of stories about karoshi & the
pervasive seniority culture lately, I think I am siding on his side a lot
more, given that even people feels like the yakuza did a much better job at
welfare _sometimes_.

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SiempreViernes
So do you assert that both the district court and the supreme court were part
of a conspiracy to discredit an entrepreneur? Or merely that the prosecutor
got an accurate tip-off from some hostile party?

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hrktb
Not completely sharing the GP's point of view, but I also think there is more
than meets the eyes.

It could be a combination of most players in the field being in an illegal
state in some way or another (not by accident, just that fraud is the norm)
and they decided to enforce the rules on one specific company at a strategic
time, while the rest of the industry hums along unscratched.

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Causality1
"Go straight up until you leave the atmosphere and then fall down" is a
radically different proposition than reaching orbit. You could lift an
unprotected human being to space with a 700kg rocket. Getting him to orbit
would require a 9,000kg rocket.

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walrus01
Yes, exactly, amateurs have gone well above 100km (62.5 miles).

[https://rocketry.wordpress.com/2014/08/18/amateur-rocket-
tea...](https://rocketry.wordpress.com/2014/08/18/amateur-rocket-team-
launches-rocket-to-73-1-miles/)

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cyberfart
To be clear, only one amateur rocketry team (the one in the link) ever made it
to space.

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plugger
And to be honest a reasonable portion of that team was made up of aerospace
professionals. You kinda expect to win your local basketball comp if you have
a team with more than one NBA player slumming it for the love of the game.

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deepnotderp
Note that this was not an orbital flight but rather a sounding rocket.

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jcims
Japan has had sounding rockets for ~50 years. So this was the first privately
funded rocket to reach space or something?

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grenoire
Not sure if the title was changed, but yep. Sounds like it.

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walrus01
Getting to space for 8 minutes in a parabolic trajectory is not hard, it's the
7800-8200m/s delta v thrusting horizontally to achieve a real orbit that's
difficult. I've seen amateurs launching garage built rockets from the Nevada
desert hit 80km...

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tqkxzugoaupvwqr
Does the rocket drift away from the launchpad right after launch and for the
first couple of seconds, or is it an optical illusion? It appeared to me as if
the rocket was imbalanced until it gained enough speed.

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paparush
I also thought it had a lot of lateral movement.

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needle0
While this is awesome, I wonder why we hear a lot about businessmen who score
big then funneling their wealth into moonshot projects about space exploration
(Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Takafumi Horie, etc), but hardly ever
on medical science and life extension. To me that seems like a much more
urgent and personally relevant issue - I mean, without advancing the state of
the art on those fields, even those rich & powerful men are all going to be
dead in a mere 120 years. Why don't they seem to be doing much to address that
when they're in the rare position to be able to do so?

*Edit: Richard Branson of Virgin Group, not Charles Bronson.

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mc32
Do you mean Richard Branson rather than the actor known as Charles Bronson?

That said, lots of people are benefactors of health and medicine. Maybe they
don’t get the same notoriety, but maybe they weren’t looking for it either.

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needle0
Ack, you're right, Charles Bronson.

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faitswulff
Can anyone shed light on whatever is going on with the audio in the video? It
sounds vaguely like counting if the counting were done by some sort of creepy
bunny cartoon.

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Arnavion
It's Hatsune Miku, a synthesized computer voice.

[https://blog.piapro.net/2019/04/z1904231-1.html](https://blog.piapro.net/2019/04/z1904231-1.html)

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kache_
Never change, japan

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b_tterc_p
She does “hologram” concerts.

[https://www.google.com/amp/s/arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/04/...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/04/waving-
glow-sticks-at-hologram-anime-pop-stars-our-night-with-hatsune-miku/%3famp=1)

Not real holograms but interesting still. Apparently some ARkit stuff recently

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eatonphil
The article's title is more clear; this is about a space company.

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JMTQp8lwXL
Perhaps biased, but my initial thought when I see the word "launch" (without
context, such as this title) is a software product launch of some kind.

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eastWestMath
Maybe you should specify “aerospace”...

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ecpottinger
Drats, I was hoping the anime "Rocket Girls" would move to real life.

