Have you read of Akatsuki, JAXA's Venus orbiter? It suffered a grievous propulsion failure in 2010 when a pressurant valve failed, causing its large main engine to run oxidizer-rich -- its nozzle thus shattered and fell off. It was therefore unable to enter Venus orbit in 2010.
However, JAXA engineers saved the spacecraft and salvaged the mission: after five years of orbiting the sun (beyond its expected lifetime), Akatsuki's far smaller attitude-control thrusters were lit up (for 20 minutes straight!), causing it to successfully enter Venusian orbit in 2015, and it's been functioning ever since.
On 9 May 2003, Hayabusa (meaning, Peregrine falcon), was launched from an M-V rocket. The goal of the mission was to collect samples from a small near-Earth asteroid named 25143 Itokawa. The craft rendezvoused with the asteroid in September 2005. It was confirmed that the spacecraft successfully landed on the asteroid in November 2005, after some initial confusion regarding the incoming data. Hayabusa returned to Earth with samples from the asteroid on 13 June 2010.
It's inappropriate and beneath HN standards to classify an entire country as being typically ignorant. Such a wild, broad generalization about hundreds of millions of people is impossible to support.
It's not a generalization about hundreds of millions of people, it's a generalization about the public education system in the US, and it's entirely valid. The US consistently ranks at the very bottom of public education rankings of all industrialized nations. This isn't inappropriate, this is supported by reams of research and explains how people in this thread can be ignorant about worldly matters.
> It's just typical American ignorance about anything outside of America
That's a generalization about hundreds of millions of people. You were very clear.
When it comes to education, according to the PISA, at a 15 year old level of development, the US ranks just behind Norway and ahead of France, Sweden and Austria on science; ahead of Israel and Greece on mathematics and just behind Slovakia; ahead of Spain, Austria and Switzerland on reading and just behind the UK, France, Sweden and Denmark.
On reading the US is one point behind the UK, and two points behind France; the UK is 37 points behind Singapore (the top) for comparison of the scale.
The US is 20 points behind the UK in mathematics; the UK is 72 points behind Singapore and 29 points behind Switzerland.
The intended audience is mostly China ("look at how similiar to an ICBM this space rocket is"), but the program is scientifically very useful despite that.
Due to the time it takes to prepare and launch one, liquid fueled rockets have very limited strategic or tactical relevance... The US learned this with the first generation of titan ICBMs which were stored horizontally and intended to be erected+fueled on demand for launch.
Russia/the Soviet Union built the world's first ICBM [1] and has arguably the most acomplished space program in the world:
They were the first to launch a satellite, the first to put animals in orbit and the first to retrieve animals savely from orbit, first EVA, the first probe on the Moon, on Venus and on Mars, the first robotic rover, the first woman in space as well as the first hispanic and black person in space, the first space station as well as the first permamently settled one, ...
I don't think their capabilities tell us much about Japan's.
The US doesn't buy rockets from Russia, ULA uses the RD-180 engine until the new Blue Origin engine is ready. The ULA rockets are eg Atlas V (uses the RS-180) and Delta IV. The Delta IV rocket and heavy lift variation uses the RS-68 [1] engine, which is US tech. Their new Vulcan rocket will use the Blue Origin engine.
SpaceX is certified for critical / national security launches and does not use Russia tech.
ICBMs stand for InterContinental ballistic missile. Intercontinental being the key word. Last I checked both china and japan were on the same continent.
I work at NASA. Trust me, it's common and sad. Barely anyone here knows the existence of this amazing feat of human engineering. I guarantee if the U.S. was involved in any way, it would be everywhere.
I guess they are not advertising as much as NASA does.