Japan’s dream of becoming an independent power in space will take a great leap upward Feb. 1 with the launch of the first Japanese space rocket that doesn’t rely on U.S. technology.
The H-2 rocket, 10 years in the making at a cost to the government of more than $2.4 billion, will carry aloft an experimental re-entry vehicle. The squat, conical vehicle, put on display for foreign observers in December, was reminiscent of the U.S. Apollo capsules.
For Japan, it represents the first step toward building an unmanned space shuttle, which Japanese space officials hope to have aloft by the end of the decade.
The rocket that will carry the experimental vehicle aloft also represents the Japanese space industry’s dreams of becoming a player in the commercial satellite launch industry. An all-Japanese consortium of 74 companies that built the first H-2 recently formed Rocket System Corp. to commercialize the rocket.
In a post-Cold War world awash in surplus rockets, a late entry by Japan into the satellite launch game would make no economic sense. Japan-based launches from this remote southern island would cost at least 50 percent more per payload pound than the French-led European space consortium Arianespace, the world’s leader in commercial launches.
While U.S. companies competing for commercial business also cost more than the Europeans, whom they accuse of unfair government subsidies, all the advanced industrial powers are overpriced compared with the Chinese or Russians, who are itching to become major players in the commercial space industry.
But space has always been a game that has more to do with national pride and independence than economics, especially in Japan, where learning from the West in order to avoid Western domination has been an object of government policy since at least the Meiji revolution of the mid-19th Century.
“The Japanese mentality is that they don’t like to rely on other people,” said Bill Lai, a researcher who spent a year inside the Japanese space program while a graduate student at the University of California at San Diego. “Japan wants to have its own infrastructure-shuttle, platform, launch-so it can conduct its own experiments in space. Cooperation with the U.S. has not gone smoothly in the past,” he said.
“The commercial motive is not the main motive-neither for Japan, Ariane, the U.S. nor Russia, for that matter,” added Jean-Louis Claudon, the Asia-Pacific representative for Arianespace. “For Japan as for all of us, the idea is to have independent access to space.”
A successful H-2 will accomplish that task. It is nearly equal in lift capacity to Ariane’s fourth-generation rocket, which has become the workhorse for launching the world’s commercial satellites, with 58 percent of the business. H-2 also compares favorably with the U.S.-built Atlas and Proton rockets, and has twice the lift capacity of McDonnell Douglas’ Delta rocket, whose technology the Japanese licensed to build their previous rocket, the H-1.
The H-2, with four solid-fuel boosters attached, will be large enough to lift Japan’s unmanned shuttle, dubbed HOPE, into space when it gets off the drawing boards. Unlike the U.S., which is re-evaluating its commitments to space-based research, Japan remains intensely interested in the potential commercial uses of space. Spending on the Japanese space program is slated to rise 8 to 10 percent through the 1990s.
The H-2 also will have sufficient lift for sending aloft the current generation of communication and broadcasting satellites, which are growing in number and size and account for the largest share of the commercial launch industry.
Until now, Japan couldn’t compete for that business. When the U.S. licensed its Delta rocket technology, it forbade Japan from using the H-1 for commercial satellite launches. The agreement also kept certain key technologies secret-black boxes that had to be purchased from the U.S.
“When (the) H-2 (program) was launched 10 years ago, one of the objectives was independence and elbow room in rocket-related activities,” said Tomifumi Godai, executive director of the National Space Development Agency. “Launch vehicles of our own manufacture were required to do away with the restrictions and restraints from other countries.”
Developing its own rocket hasn’t gone smoothly, however. The first launch of the H-2, tentatively set for Feb. 1, is more than two years behind schedule.
NASDA suffered several setbacks in developing a powerful liquid hydrogen and oxygen engine. One accident killed an engineer from Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, the lead contractor on the program. Since the last explosion in June 1992, the H-2 team has conducted more than 100 hours of successful engine testing.
The slow, methodical approach to developing the H-2 has led many Western observers to minimize the commercial threat from Japan. “The strength of Japanese industry is in large-scale production,” said Arianespace’s Claudon. “But in small-scale production of highly complex items like rockets, satellites and aircraft, you don’t hear much about Japan.”
But Japan’s traditional strengths in quality and care have been as evident in rocket and space development as it is in automobiles or electronics. Japan has never experienced a failure in its domestic rocket program, which it has used to place 48 of its 51 satellites in orbit.
Ariane has had five failures in its 62 launches since 1984, although none since February 1990. Three of China’s last four Long March missiles used for commercial launches exploded before putting their payloads in orbit.
The U.S. record is mixed. The Delta, which, like the H-1 that is modeled after it, can carry only smaller payloads, has a near-perfect record. The Atlas, however, which was recently purchased from General Dynamics by Martin Marietta Corp., suffered two failures in the last year and a half, including one carrying a broadcast satellite owned by NHK, Japan’s quasi-governmental broadcasting arm.
U.S. trade pressure has limited Japan’s ability to use its home-use satellites as a pump primer for a domestic launch industry. The threat of sanctions in 1990 led to an agreement that all Japanese satellites used for commercial purposes-broadcasting and telecommunications-would be open to foreign bidders.
But the word most often used by Japanese officials when discussing potential commercialization is “reliability.” “This Feb. 1 launch will be successful,” said Hiroshi Harada, general manager of the space systems division of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. “This will demonstrate we’ve reached world-class technology.”
