Honda adds reusable spaceflight to its list of products

Tuesday, Honda’s Research and Development Company surprised the world with its announcement of a successful low-altitude hop of a test vehicle designed as a reusable rocket testbed. While Honda’s entrance into the space industry is not new, no prior word of this sort of progress in the space launch market was previously known.

It’s not often we get to be shocked by a space development in the industry. Nowadays companies tend to promote their concepts publicly well ahead of time in hope of generating hype for potential funding opportunities. But Honda, an already well-financed company, has been able to keep its space ambitions pretty well under wraps.

The test vehicle featured retractable landing legs and grid fins, similar to SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. The vehicle looked to have been powered by at least two liquid fuel engines, but Honda has been few on details about the vehicle, other than it is about 20 feet and eight inches in height and two feet and nine inches in diameter. The flight was about 300 feet high and lasted less than a minute.

The successful flight and advanced nature of the vehicle show that Honda has been working on this rocket for a while. In fact, Honda’s public statements on space launch research go back as far as 2021, when it stated it was working on a rocket engine and a small lift rocket. It’s unknown if these engines are the same ones Honda mentioned back then and if the company is still working on that rocket.

It may seem weird for Honda to add spaceflight to its list of projects. The company started as a motorcycle manufacturer shortly after World War II, then added automobiles in the 1960s. Its HondaJet small business jet was also a secret project it started in the 1980s and has been a hit in the industry.

Honda also has its foot in the marine, racing, generator, and other specialized engine markets.

In Japan, there are few real commercial space launch operators. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, the builder and operator of the H3 rocket for JAXA, is the only real contender. However, it is not even close to being able to compete with any Chinese, Indian, or US-based operators.

Honda’s public acknowledgment of its work in reusable rocketry could mean it is continuing its space launch efforts, although the company is still holding most of its cards close to its chest for the time being.