You know how when your Japanese personal compact disk player fails a week after the guarantee ran out and the company tells you it will cost almost as much as you paid for it to fix it, making it clear you should throw the thing away and buy a new one? Well the same thing has happened with Japan’s first big experimental domestic satellite: Japan hopes to get into the satellite launching business and while the H2 rocket did its stuff, Kiku – it means chrysanthemum – No 6 went into orbit on Sunday, but an engine valve failed so it couldn’t be put into geostationary orbit, and it was abandoned to the heavens on Wednesday, taking with it a cool $415m of taxpayers’ money – and no, it was not insured (sighs of relief all round at Lloyd’s of London).
