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I never knew that the research and development division of Honda corporation was quietly working on reusable rockets. But they are and are surprisingly advanced too.

They just flew a vertical landing test article for the first time on a very successful launch to about 1000 feet, then very smoothly and elegantly landed it again.

So Japan joins the US and China as the only countries to do this. (Russia hasn't and neither has Europe.)

Now Japan needs to scale it up to a successful orbital class booster. So far only SpaceX has done that.

Video here:

https://x.com/HondaJP/status/1934940854247997745

Honda's test rocket is small. Humans for scale.

(Honda photo)

Oh, heck. At least it worked. A model rocket that failed would have been bad mojo.