Part 17: Learn Your History

There's another very helpful telop.

This is one of the LP updates that I was dreading a bit, because if Hideo Kojima is long-winded on a spaceplane, imagine what that cat can do with a damn museum.

Kinda crowded for something like this.
Probably thought he'd be safer. More visitors since it's the weekend too.
Think we can trust him?
We'll never know just standing here. Let's get to the meeting place.

Look; Water

This is part of Beyond's artificial sea.
Anything live in it?
You bet. It contains the same amount of salt as the seawater on Home. They regulate the water's evaporation rate and salinity by producing waves to circulate the water.
What's inside it?
Plenty. On top of the fish, it's got seaweed and all sorts of other marine plants. They let you fish and swim in it if you want. We even get floaters in it every now and then.

Look; Rockets

What are all these rockets?
This is a collection of rockets related to space exploration. Some are the real thing, but most are just replicas.
Reminds me of somewhere on Home.
Yeah, the Rocket Garden at Kennedy Space Center? A few of these came from there, I believe.

There's all sorts of rockets there, and Ed will talk a little about them, like the Space Shuttle Discovery, the Russian Soyuz 11A511, the Chinese FB-1 rocket, Europe's Ariane 1 launcher, and Japan's H-II Rocket.

Look; Building

The building is modeled after Kennedy Space Center's Vehicle Assembly Building. The scale and inside are totally different, but its outside appearance is an exact recreation.
I thought it looked familiar. Launch Complex 39.... We went to Kennedy once for part of our training, remember?
There's the main entrance there.
What about tickets?
Admission's free during the anniversary celebrations.

Enter

Let's head inside.
A museum.... Makes you feel young again.
Just don't forget why we're here. This ain't a field trip. Got it?



Yeah, look at that huge coral.

Look; Coral

This is an actual coral reef fossil from Home. In it you'll find CO₂ absorbed from Home's atmosphere, among other things. It's here as a symbol of the CELESS.

Look; Coral

It's a fossilized coral reef. It's the main attraction in the hall here. This is the only place on Beyond you can view a coral reef.

...Not sure what this has to do with space, but alright. What's that purple module on the left?

That's Project Mercury's Friendship 7, which carried the first American into orbit around Home. Astronaut Glenn's mission lasted 4 hours, 55 minutes, taking him around Home three times.
This is in pretty good shape for something that old.
This is only a replica. The real one was charred to a crisp when it reentered the atmosphere.

You can look at the various people here (and have to)... but none of them are the informant.

Look; Signboard

This is an information board. The building is divided into three main areas besides the one we're in now.
The Beyond Corner, the Moon Corner and the Space Corner?

Look; Space Station Replica

This is a miniature of Russia's Mir space station. It held the record for the longest stay in space, housed the first Japanese....
How could you forget it.
It lay abandoned after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Yeah, until it was bought by a Japanese company.
Which Tokugawa later bought. It's still in orbit around Home. They've got it set up as a space museum now.
Back then you couldn't turn on the news without hearing about Japanese businesses buying up Russian space technology.
That's how Japan got to where it is today out here. The almighty yen.
They were the first to really open up space for business.

"Wait... that's not what happened!"

Yeah, Policenauts was written while Mir was still in orbit, but in real life, it de-orbited and burned up on re-entry. Let's move on.

Move; Moon Corner



(Thank you, Ed)

This corner deals with the Moon, with its main focus being the Apollo program. This is as close as it gets to being there.

Look; Ladder

This is the Lunar Module's ladder. Astronaut Armstrong's famous words were broadcast as he stepped down from the ninth rung onto the Lunar surface.
Who knows, if that bottom rung had been a little higher, his words might've been different.

Look; Display Case

This is the so-called Genesis Rock that Apollo 11 brought back from the Moon. It's not as special now as it was back then, of course.
Is this the real thing?
Yeah. Moon rocks are a dime a dozen now, but I suppose you could call this a "first-edition" Moon rock.
I saw them selling them at the spaceport in OLA. That just sucks all that was special right out of them.
Lunar regolith was once heavily sought after for experiments, since there was so little available then. That all changed with the 21st century. People would even go to the trouble of making their own regolith. That's how valuable it was.

How about that thing hanging from the ceiling?

That's Surveyor, the Lunar probe that was used to scout for landing sites for the Apollo missions. Surveyor 1 got there several years before the first humans arrived. The Surveyor Program ended with Surveyor 7, 18 months before the first manned mission.

Looking at the flag will start a conversation about how business owns space now, instead of nations during the Space Race. Looking at the module on the right...

This is a replica of Apollo 11's Lunar Module, the Eagle. July 20th, 1969.
Who could ever forget that day.
The Ascent Module was recovered and brought back Home, but the Descent Module is still out there. That Saturn rocket outside was used to launch the Apollo missions.

Last interesting thing before we move on is that device on the bottom near the ladder.

That's part of the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package that was deployed on the Moon by Apollos 12, 14, 15, 16 and 17. This is an ALSEP device sensitive to Lunar surface movement. A seismometer, basically.
I heard there are stores that fix up this kind of old equipment and sell it.

Hooray! We've learned stuff!

Move; Space Corner



Look; Lander

That's one of the Viking landers. There were two landers that landed on Mars as part of the Viking program. This is a Viking 1 lander replica, which touched down in Chryse Planitia on July 20th, 1976.
I saw what was left of it when I was there. The media dubbed it a "reunion".

There's another spacecraft model to the upper-left.

That's the Voyager 1 interplanetary spacecraft. Voyager 1 traveled to the outer planets Jupiter and Saturn. It discovered Io's volcanoes and Jupiter's rings, as well as new moons around Saturn. It'll be making its way through the far reaches of the heliosphere about now. Inside that display case is a copy of the gramophone record carried on Voyagers 1 and 2.

Look; Pioneer (upper right)

That's Pioneer 10 there. It was the first spacecraft to make a close encounter with Jupiter. That's only a replica, of course. The real one left the solar system a long, long time ago.
Yeah, back in 1983 or something, before either of us was even born. So this is the Pioneer the informant was talking about? Where is he?
You see that case there? There's a plaque the same as the one carried on Pioneers 10 and 11 inside.
Maybe there's some kinda message from him?
Let's take a look.

Look; Plaque



I don't see anything that looks like a message.
Guess not then.

The plaque contains a radial diagram that shows the location of the Sun relative to 14 pulsars and a spin-flip transition model of a hydrogen atom, used to provide a set of measurements to play into other parts of the plaque. There's also a model of a man holding up his right hand in peace.

There's also a Galileo spacecraft model.

Move; Beyond Corner

This corner focuses on Beyond itself.



Surprised? You and I are heroes around this part of the place.
A living legend at my age.
Come on, we contributed to space in our own little way. Brings a tear to your eye, huh?
What do you mean "little"?

Look; Yuri

This is a replica of the Yuri, the forerunner to the modern EMPS. Its emphasis was on mechanical work outside the colony, so its armor's thin and it's only lightly equipped. Totally different setup from today.
It was hailed as the successor to NASA's MMU. Hard to imagine this is where combat EMPS evolved from, huh?
Still better than the suits at the Moon Corner, though.
You can't really compare this to the old Lunar suits.
Yeah, I suppose that's true.
This is what I had my accident in. Nearly sent me on a one-way ticket to nowhere.

Look; Survival Ball

This is the Yuri's survival ball. Comes complete with cold sleep function. The real ones are slightly bigger.
I spent 25 years inside one of these. Now I can't stand being out here.
It kept you alive all that time. That's pretty impressive. Cold sleep was still one big experiment back then.
When they thawed me out I was like an old man trying to get out of bed.
Very little muscle atrophy occurs today.
I couldn't walk for over a year.
The advances came from studying bears.
Bears?
Human muscle tissue starts to atrophy after 3 days of non-use. But bears, they maintain their muscles for several months while hibernating.
Maybe bears would make better astronauts.
Cold sleep is also called "hibernation" now for that reason.

Look; Ed Statue

This is me in my younger days.
I'd never recognize you.
C'mon, I hate it when people bring up my age.
These are really well done. They're like our doppelgangers.
They got the best in the business on these. They were given every piece of data they had on us - body measurements, hair samples - everything. They knew us better than we know ourselves.
I remember them going over our bodies with a fine-tooth comb when we applied for the Policenauts.
I heard they're gonna replace these with animatronic robots soon.
They're gonna have us moving around like idiots?
Using hydraulics and air pressure, yeah. And, we'll even talk. The same Japanese company that made those animatronic dinosaurs is gonna make 'em. You know the ones I mean, right?
Who'll decide how we move?
They've already got all the necessary data. They're working with the ISPA on them. They'll end up as some live action show, almost indistinguishable from the real us.

Look; Diagram on Right

This diagram shows you where Beyond's located. In an orbit around L5. A stable position in relation to Home and the Moon's gravitational forces.
The colony's started to show its age, I heard.
Well, it has been 30 years.
So tell me. Why exactly aren't they gonna build more O'Neills?
There are technical issues to the O'Neill, but it has more to do with the makers themselves.
Politics, huh?
Tokugawa Construction currently have a monopoly on colony construction. Tokugawa have always focused on the torus. The O'Neill was America and Europe.
They're playing favorites. Goodbye O'Neill.
More or less. They wanna ensure a market for the torus. Of course, we have since discovered technical problems with a large-scale O'Neill. Beyond's living proof of them. And now Tokugawa conveniently have an answer for that.
That must be why they're going on and on about the colony's deterioration. But the guys who built this place aren't just gonna sit back and do nothing, are they? Colony construction's a lucrative market.
It's not that simple. They still got all their parts for the O'Neill from Tokugawa. Every last piece.
You can't build a colony without Tokugawa.
Exactly. Lately they've started calling the torus type the "Tokugawa type".

I think that's killed enough time. Let's go back to the Pioneer at Space Corner.