Special Column: Touhou and Space Exploration
– by Giichi
Touhou Project has a lot of things with a spacey theme, doesn't it? Take "Voyage 1969" and "Voyage 1970" on the Imperishable Night soundtrack for instance. I heard somewhere that their titles reference NASA's Apollo 11, the first manned spaceflight to the Moon in 1969, and Apollo 13 in 1970, the first failure in the Apollo Program after 11. On the side of space exploration itself, the fact that the first Chinese satellite's name can translate as "Eastern Scarlet 1", and that "Chang'e 4" is going to be exploring the dark side of the Moon this December really made me go "Oh!"
No matter the era, space never ceases to fascinate us. Our longing for those beautiful stars and spirit of inquiry for unknown regions, the sense of scientific accomplishment...Since who-knows-when, those dreamers of space have been researching ways to exploit it, and now several countries have their own space exploration programs. Even Japan has become a major player in space exploration, using its world-famous technological expertise to develop high-quality and reliable spacecraft like "Kounotori" and the asteroid probe "Hayabusa".
Currently JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) is in charge of things such as launching rockets and developing the key technology, trying to make it more low-cost and high-quality, adopting new techniques and much more.
