NASA might replace space shuttles with Japanese cargo spacecraft

It seems that NASA is considering a Japanese spacecraft to serve as a replacement for their aging space shuttlers:

Such a deal would be the biggest in Japan’s 50-year space development history, the paper added.

The H-2 Transfer Vehicle (HTV), which costs about 14 billion yen ($131 million) each, is being developed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and domestic companies including Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd and Mitsubishi Electric Corp, the Yomiuri said.

Behind the move is NASA’s concern that the retirement of its space shuttles in 2010 will make it difficult for the U.S. to fulfill its responsibilities to deliver water, food and materials for scientific experiments to the International Space Station, the paper said.

9 comments - What do you think? Posted by James - July 21, 2008 at 7:54 am

Categories: Technology Tags: jaxa, nasa, space shuttle

yhap

Sound good. It’s better to concentrate to go out to the outer space more than fighting with neighbors in the tiny planet. Someday, when we encounter with a brutal creature of the outer space, we will be able to unite ourselves as human being.

Rob

And if those aliens are anything like the Zentradi from Macross, that means we have a bona fide reason to eject some of our pop stars into space.

Then again, that might just piss the aliens off even more.

Yen

NASA might replace space shuttles with Japanese Mobile Suit…
http://chirimotsumoreba.net Jordan

Very cool.
Kitty

Those Toto toilets aren’t going to work in space!
James

i wouldn’t be surprised if those japanese spacecraft turn into Mobile Suits
looks like Gundams will rule the future
Lana

I hope it works out. Sounds real neat!
helical

Judging from the illustration, this doesn’t look reusable at all.
I have to wonder if this craft is at all involved in the atmospheric reentry process, since if it isn’t then they would need something else separately (compounding costs) which can bring stuff back.
Though, I wonder if the aim is to drive down unit costs by mass production rather than making only a few high-performance craft like the Space Shuttle.
http://www.victorymanual.com Alex

Mitsubishi? I hope they’ve got a better safety track record on their extraterrestrial vehicles than their earthbound ones. Yikes!

http://www.zf.ro/articol_12932/mitsubishi_motors_falls_on_700_000_car_recall_plan.html

http://www.motortrader.com/18991/JAPANESE-POLICE-RAID-MITSUBISH.ehtml

They actually had a “secret file” to stuff 8 years of complaints in to hide from shareholders.

NASA might replace space shuttles with Japanese cargo spacecraft

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