Days after the first successful launch of his privately built rocket, entrepreneur Takafumi Horie said Wednesday his aerospace startup Interstellar Technologies Inc. may soon catch up with industry leaders such as SpaceX in the commercial space rocket-launching business.
Horie also said the company will be ready to launch another rocket, Zero, which is capable of placing satellites into orbit, "in two to three years." He noted the company already possesses the prerequisite control system and other technological capabilities essential to rocket development.
"I assume that if we achieve the launch, we could stand on the same starting line as them from a technological perspective," said Horie, a company founder, during a news conference at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan in Tokyo.
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