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On February 3rd JAXA successfully launched a payload to orbit with the smallest rocket ever – 2.6 tons and less than 10 meters tall. The SS-520-5 takes a sounding rocket and adds a 3rd stage along with guidance and control hardware to orient the rocket prior to insertion.
I love you Scott, you’re one of the smartest people I’ve ever seen.
Scott – what do you think of cubesats? Do they all have to have the capability to de-orbit themselves these days? or are they likely contributors to the Kessler syndrome if they’re launched in large numbers?
Quick Question: Whilst solid rocket motors have traditionally been considered the “cheap” option – why are things like the Vega such niche players in the launch market?
Missing a golden opportunity to name a launch vehicle the “Pocket Rocket”.
SS-520? So a Soviet naming convention then?
Schutzstaffel-520-2 or what lol
Strap this on a VLS and i think you just got a new seaborne launch system
Imagine this as Amazon one day global delivery system.
Japan first satellite was launched by a sounding rocket in 1971.
Could an SM-3 Block IIA launch a tiny sat into orbit?
Interesting. Thanks for actual launch footage, I usually only see the animation.
American engineers: “how big can we make it?”
Japanese engineers: “how small can we make it?”
aww i love it when mr Manley compares real life to Kerbal hahaa
Your videos are gaining in views again, I see. That’s great!
*tazuki* たずき a tiger
is that correct ?
I was thinking about how similair the launch is to KSP and there it came, the KSP reference.
I’d like to see a comparison between this and Rocket Lab’s Electron in size and ability…
The japanese are exceptionally good at miniatuaturizing existing technologies!
Great times we are livin’
Hullo Scott. Could this design be weaponised?
You should make something along the lines of Project Thor, a kinetic bombardment satellite that was propose during the Cold War, in KSP
Nice. What is the initial TWR of that thing?
Useful if you forget your phone on earth👌
Loving that one person that disliked this video, so far.
hey Scott, neat video. Whats the lightest SRB rocket u can orbit in Kerbal?
Japanese launch the smallest rocket
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
世界最小のロケットでは無く、「人工衛星を打ち上げられる世界最小の宇宙ロケット」が正しい表現。
Could a rail gun shoot down a satellite?
They can fire a projectile at ~5000 Mph (I think)
Is that possible?
Maybe i should watch the video to the end before commenting..
you can easily put this on a plane
FH can send it to Pluto and near Pluto this can fire its engine to get into Pluto’s orbit!!
Japanese sure like their things small
In the 1990’s, I was very much into model rockets and even flew a few ‘High Powered’ rockets. I always asked myself, what’s the minimum sized rocket you can use to get to orbit and… there’s the answer!
You can launch things into space from your backyard with that thing.
I’m an expert at orienting my rocket for insertion. BLAST OFF!!!!!
So it’s literally a “rice rocket”! (many apologies but I couldn’t resist)
If you have to guess what caused any piece of space hardware to catastrophically fail, “frayed wiring” is a classic.
JAXA really don’t do a good job of publicising their stuff. >_
it should had been called the SS-420, so it would had gotten more attention
Yeah 2500kg rocket for a 4kg payload is a bit excessive, still cool though!
Hi Scot Manley cool 😎 video 🇬🇧❤️David
I got a question for you: what is the *simplest* orbital rocket/spacecraft ever?
Dude, this rocket weighs two Honda S2000s.
Could I do one of these in my backyard?
I wonder if the SS-520-5 or something derived from it could be used as part of a Mars sample return mission (as the rocket for launching a small amount of soil/rock back into Mars orbit)?
4:39 ‘real rockets’ … nothing fake about this one!
4:58 the still shot appears to show a yo-yo despin.
Quite an achievement! I can see where specialized cube-sats could be launched at (literally) a moment’s notice to measure just about anything and at a truly down-to-Earth cost! Something affordable that could put college class projects into orbit too.
way to go Jaxa, innovating once again
seems like nowadays when someone talks about rockets, there are space x and the others lol
How useful is a 4kg satelite?
Then again, how useful is a 1.x ton tesla…
Man, I need to get down to Kyushu to see a JAXA launch at some point.
On this kind of level I wonder if a space gun combo could make it much cheaper, as in launch a smaller rocket a couple miles up and then do the burn.
This is freaky. Just looked up the SS-520 half an hour ago wondering why I haven’t seen a video of it and then here we have it
Any idea what the cost of sending that cubesat to space?
So it can orbit a playstation console…
1:48 – Just like in Kerbal Space Program!
>video about a fascinating new LV for microsats
>every other sentence mentions the Falcon Heavy
The Musk hype is everywhere, indeed.
I can’t even launch my school bag into orbit
The one dislike is Elon Musk.
I wonder if they mounted this rocket on top of a lander and launch it on Falcon Heavy could it be used to return a sample from one of Jupiter’s moons or even Pluto?
Please, Scott, add “orbital” in the title
You have just made angry a lot of casual rocket makers
If anyone was going to get the world record for making the smallest of something technical like an orbital class rocket, you’d expect it to be the Japanese.
Police officer: Sir, what is that in your car?
Me: An orbital capable rocket.
We need a banana in a stable orbit that will last until the next space-faring race develops on earth. Or, if that is too hard, just set one on the moon to just chill their.
do you think we will ever come to a point where these small launchers can be mass produced? It would be cool if instead of your school doing a time capsule, you do a space capsule.
These recent rocket launches reminds me of that Southpark pokemon episode where the Japanese executives praise the size of the American pecker and loathe their own tiny ones.
4:04 Ha! I’ve been doing that in KSP for ages! lol 🤪
Of course, going by JAXA’s official naming scheme, the orbital version of the SS-520 should really be called the _SSS-520,_ since it has three stages.
I actually noticed the launch because of the app “Next Spaceflight”. But what I think one can also see at that launch is that spaceX got the best live stream quality. They explain the payload, they have a nicer timeline than eg rocket labs, they have these info boxes about liftoff, startup, maxQ and they have a nice telemetry box. The music before the launch is fitting and the moderation is at top level. But as I havent seen all live streams from rocket launches, who do you think does it best right now?
I can’t even make a rocket in KSP that is that small, and they did it irl!
you can easily fit multiple of these in a 8’x8’x40′ ISO Container, and put those on the Space Shuttle.
btw, the auto-predict text says Space Core when I said space
SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE
A followup video explaining the guidance would be cool. I thought I read that the rocket fins spin stabilized it and then 40 some-odd little charges on the side fired in sync with the rotation to tip the rocket over to the correct orientation for the orbital insertion. That is, it sounded like the nozzle’s didn’t gimble. Would love to know more!
What is this? A rocket for ANTS?
).
(Where is the banana for scale? And why not do a KSP style SpaceX with payload of SS-520-5 challenge? First Real Life Rocket to orbit, recovery landing, back to orbit!
Between the Falcon Heavy and this little thing, deep space exploration programs should just start spamming light little satellites with cameras and other instruments in all directions!
At 10 meters long you can tow the SS-520 behind most SUVs let alone trucks. You could build a launch pad on a small trailer and have an orbital rocket you could launch anywhere. It seems like we’re getting to the point where a person could cheaply make orbit from their own backyard using off the shelf parts.
Not that it’s super important, but the launch site is Uchinoura, pronounced Oo-chi-no-oo-rah (with no emphasis on any syllable).
I live in the area, FYI (You can see terrible videos of an Epsilon launch I took from the same launch site).
Did they send a hot wheels car for the test flight?
Excellent platform for a kinetic kill vehicle, though.
Could this be used to send emergency supplies to ISS?
No wonder no one noticed .. IT’S BLOODY TINY!!!
falcon heavy + SS-520-5 = finally able to do the kerbal-level feat of getting to orbit, deorbiting, and then getting to orbit again!
Book in 2040: How The Japanese Took Over The Space Industry
How much does this cost? Can I afford my own satellite now?
Give it to the falt-earthers so they can check for themselves how much they are wrong
Trust Japan to make the most kawaii rocket~ 🤗
Just 3 days between the world’s smallest rocket and the world’s largest rocket.
Seems almost Kerbal scale.
Trust the Japanese to make everything tiny!
This is the Japanese engineering philosophy all over. Back in the 1980s, we were happy with our portable ghetto blasters which were far smaller than our home hi-fi units. The Japanese laughed, “You call that small?” Boom! they invent the Walkman.
The big question is how much does it cost
IT DOESN’T MATTER HOW BIG IT IS, IT’S HOW YOU USE IT
Right? ;o;
it would be cool if you made a video on JAXA’s history, or perhaps the history of other smaller space programs. I don’t really know barely anything JAXA has done
Looks and flies like the Estes rockets I flew as a kid. Of course, mine were…um… sub-orbital.
I like that they just use butcher paper for the third stage fairing.
“Japanese rocket so small, you Americans have such humongous bulbous rockets” – south park called it
One of the big arguments of flat earthers is that the big rockets are fake and CGI, because they lift off rather slowly (which is impossible in their heads) and the fast (real) ones can’t go high enough, so space must be fake.
I wonder what they are thinking now…
I’m glad you clarified with “made into orbit” because I was about to bust out a super condescending “I made a smaller one when I was 10.”
One closer to pizza delivery to the ISS.
The Japanese just really like their small and cute things. Now someone needs to anthropomorphize it. I need Rocket-Chan in my life.
So Scott, you’re telling me, in short, that this is basically the worlds largest model rocket.
They should have called it quark, because it’s smaller than the electron