perihelions parent
It's much smaller than other suborbital hop vehicles. If it's 6.3 meters, the smallest Starhopper was 18 meters; Blue Shepherd 19 m; China's Hyperbola-2Y 17 m; the Zhuque-3 VTVL test vehicle 18.3 m. Also the Grasshopper from 2012 was 32 m and even 1993's DC-X was 12 m.
> It's much smaller than other suborbital hop vehicles.
You likely weren't being exhaustive in your listing, but I first started watching aerospace development with Armadillo Aerospace, and some of their rockets were much smaller. Their largest one was still shorter than the dc-x.
There's a hobbyist ~1m orbital hop vehicle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SH3lR2GLgT0
Pretty sure that, or some other hobbyist project, is going to take the prize for "smallest".
Electron is an 18m orbital delivery rocket (14.5m+payload without the optional third stage).
Japan holds the record for the smallest rocket to reach orbit with the SS-520, which put a cubesat into orbit in 2018.
Its dimensions according to Wikipedia:
Height – 31 feet (9.54 meters)
Weight – 2.9 tons (2.6 metric tons)
Diameter – 20 inches (52 centimeters)
Payload to Low-Earth Orbit – ~9 lbs (4 kg)
The important thing about Starhopper was that it had a Raptor engine. And the Falcon 1 had a Merlin engine. They were testing with the engines they intended to put into orbit. Blue Origin are also going with orbital class engines.
I doubt that this rocket has an engine intended for orbit? So it makes me wonder how serious this program is.