Thanks! Interesting to see whats in the bibliography of some of these
sources to figure out where they got their information.
The whole program leading up to Lambda is certainly pretty big, but
still much, much smaller (and cheaper!) than other national space
programs. As far as I can tell it's just University of Tokyo -- but an
entire department unto itself with millions in yearly funding and
hundreds of staff. Though the exact management structure still isn't
clear to me. ISAS is it's own entity by 1964, but it was still
physically on campus in Tokyo. I can't tell how independent it was.
I also haven't seen anything about who actually built the rocket. Was
it outsourced to traditional aerospace manufactures like Mitsubishi
(they build the current HII vehicles) or done 'in house' by the
ISAS/Tokyo team?
On the technical side I'm looking at reconstructing some of the motor
and trajectory data, which is pretty interesting just as an example of
long coasting period optimization for orbital injection.
Fun fact, the first two stages were unguided and 'controlled' via a
mechanical timer. Washing machine to orbit ;)
-Nathan
