This is the first time I've heard of this, where was the week long breathless coverage about how the US was dangerously allowing it to fall back to earth where it might land on a populated city and annihilate everyone there?

Honestly good riddance. This was the rocket that was going to smash human remains into the moon.

It is amazing that with infinite money and computers we are so much worse than the ussr and their one calcualtor

If it succeeds, Japan will be the fifth nation to complete the achievement, after the Soviet Union, United States, China and India.

I’m not an expert on the topic but I feel like calling it privatized is a bit of a misnomer. Development and construction of space technologies has always involved private contractors. The only change, albeit a big one, is that a few contractors like SpaceX are doing more vertical integration instead of being contracted to build partial components. NASA still has significant oversight and contract leverage, also of course, control over launches and airspace.

I’m a space nerd myself but I’m a bit jaded now. Space exploration, for the governments who fund it, has never really been about science or abstract human progress. Those things are PR. Global superpowers “need” to demonstrate at least a theoretical capability to access outer space for military purposes. Satellites were cutting edge 75 years ago but now they are absolutely necessary to compete militarily. It costs trillions to do it and a telescope is a rounding error. Hubble itself is a repurposed spy satellite.

Now I think it’s absolutely true that these vertically integrated space companies open the possibility for grift like we see with traditional corporations like Raytheon. But this will be the case regardless of whether the product is an entire launch system or pieces of it.

Edit: I rambled. I guess my point is the idea of privatization being this new thing is overhyped.