IHI Aerospace Head Office Holds Tomioka Rocket Festival
On September 7, 2024, the IHI Aerospace head office in Tomioka City, Gunma Prefecture, held the Tomioka Rocket Festival. This fun event is held every year as an expression of gratitude to employees, their family members, members of the local community, clients, and others for their support. This April was the first time the Rocket Festival was held since the head office was relocated to Tomioka City. The day of the festival was a hot, sunny day, but the event was attended by roughly 3,800 people, a 20% increase from last year's festival.
The Epsilon Launch Vehicle monument in front of the head office's front gates was rigged up to send out plumes of smoke at regular intervals. A photo spot was set up in front of the monument, and many festival attendees took commemorative photos.
President Namiki launched the event with a speech during the opening ceremony. This was followed by a head office relocation ceremony in which the mayor of Tomioka City, the Director General of the Department of Industrial Economic Affairs in the Gunma Prefectural Government, the president of the Tomioka Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the chairperson of the Association of Tomioka City Ono District Chiefs, and President Namiki opened a waritama confetti ball and cracked open a cask of sake. Sake was served to attendees in small wooden masu boxes.
The main festival site had 25 stalls to which individual worksites had added their own creative twists. The Assistant Foremen's Association's stall, which sold taiyaki, sweets baked in the shape of a sea bream, was especially busy. There was always a long line for the takoyaki octopus balls sold by a team including the Corporate Planning Department and the Digital Transformation Department, thanks in part to the hard work of the vendors. Yaki-manju sweets are a specialty of Gunma Prefecture, and the yaki-manju cooked by the labor union are always a hit. This year, they sold out in less than two hours. In addition to food, there were also stalls where children could fish for Japanese yo-yos and bouncy balls. The staff of the stalls also had fun taking part in the event.
At the children's plastic bottle rocket workshop, a fixture of the festival, the rocket construction process was omitted this year to enable even more people to be able to launch rockets. Instead, this year the workshop was changed to a model rocket and plastic bottle rocket-launching workshop.
In the model rocket launching, children connected wires to the igniters on rockets launched using black-powder motors, placed the rockets on their launch pads, checked the skies and surrounding area to make sure that launching could be performed safely, and then pressed the ignition switches, launching their rockets into the air. Before reception even began, more people than expected came to sign up, and the stall quickly ran out of numbered tickets for those wishing to launch model rockets. Children who experienced launching rockets powered by actual black-powder motors were stunned by the speeds of the vertically launched rockets and the heights they reached.
There were no limits on the number of people who could participate in the plastic bottle rocket launches, and children who would be too young to build the rockets themselves were able to participate with the assistance of parents and staff members. They pumped the plastic bottle rockets up with air and then, when the countdown reached zero, shot their rockets high into the air. The plastic bottle rocket launch was also a great success, and children were lined up until just before the event ended.
The ultra-small KOSEN-3 satellite (cube-sat) is part of the experimental scope of the No. 5 Innovative Satellite Technology Demonstration Program conducted by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). At this year's festival, technical college students involved in the KOSEN-3 project had a booth at which they explained it to rapt visitors, not just festival attendees but also employees.
The employees of IHI Aerospace began working as one to prepare for the festival roughly six months ago. We will continue working to make the Rocket Festival an even more enjoyable event for employees, their family members, and the local community as we aim to become a company with even deeper local roots.