[Space Brothers: Mutta the Former Car Designer Part 3] The path Mutta has walked draws a road on the empty lunar surface

I love the manga Space Brothers.
With the brothers aiming for space together, there is so much to love: the brotherly bond, the effort put into achieving the goal of going to space, and the wonderful nature of the people captivated by the romantic world of space... but what hits my sweet spot the most is the character of the protagonist, Mutta Nanba, and his background as a former car designer.

What I want to introduce this time is an episode where Mutta, who was about to be taken off the route to the moon, uses his expertise in automotive development to overcome a crisis.

Mutta had successfully become an astronaut.
On the other hand, his younger brother Hibito encounters trouble on the lunar surface, which causes him to develop the yips.
Fearing the pressure on Hibito, the department head tries to assign Mutta to an ISS project, but Mutta, who is fixated on going to the moon with his brother, rejects this proposal.
He had no idea about Hibito's situation at all. (I like this part; it feels like typical brothers.)

So, he was transferred to the development department for lunar bases, including buggies and rovers.
Moreover, it was to develop a lunar buggy as a preventive measure for the trouble Hibito had on the moon...
Mutta thinks, 'My first job as an astronaut is car development again...' Usually, this would look like a demotion, but I know better.
This is where Mutta shines. In fact, what great sense the department head has.

This episode is depicted roughly between #131 and #136.

■ What was Hibito's trouble on the moon?

The trouble Hibito encountered on the moon was falling into a valley while driving a lunar buggy. There were two main causes.
・The lunar surface, which completely lacks the artificial objects usually used to maintain a sense of perspective.
・The vehicle body was extremely lightweight for transport, and the regolith covering the ground made it difficult for the brakes to be effective.

When these two factors combine,
From the driver's perspective, valleys and craters appear suddenly.
On top of that, you cannot stop even if you slam on the brakes.

Cars cannot stop suddenlyis often said in traffic safety classes, but on the moon, that risk is maximized.

By the way, the scale of the view from the bottom of the valley he fell into was grand and impressive, so I'll post it here.

■ Improvement policy for the lunar buggy

The team's policy before Mutta joined the project was to improve the tires and brakes.

However, this was a vehicle that engineers had been developing desperately until then.
It wasn't that the original performance was poor. Making improvements from this point on is an extremely difficult task.

■ Interviewing Damian

And so, what Mutta does when he starts working on the project in earnest is to interview the people involved.
First Hibito, and then Damian, who was the driver.

They also conduct test drives in the desert, but it's not very helpful.

For car control, the fundamental premise is that the tires are in contact with the ground.
With an extremely lightweight vehicle body, floating and bouncing are unavoidable, but the only way to improve this is through weight.
What stands in the way here is the moon's gravity.

The moon's gravity is only 1/6th of Earth's.

This means that if you want to achieve the same effect as on Earth, you would need six times the weight. (It might not be that simple, but at the very least, the weight would increase.)
The cost to transport that weight to the lunar surface is... a whopping 200 million dollars... Space development is scary!

■ Drawing a road where there is nothing

I made the subtitle a bit of a stylish heading, but Mutta breaks the deadlock when the policy of improving the brakes hits a wall.
Just as they were joking about how if it's hard to land, they might as well make it fly, he remembered the concept for a flying car he had planned back in his days at the car company.

It was a system that displayed a road on the windshield, born from the idea of how to manage traffic once the era of flying cars arrived.

Moreover, although that project itself was scrapped, it was derived and is currently being developed as a navigation system.
Here, the question crossed my mind: would he really come up with this concept before the propulsion for flying?

But given factors like:
・A large company with many branching development fields
・Mutta's character, which possesses imagination
・The zeitgeist where traffic congestion was a problem
it feels just plausible enough to be exciting.

■ So, what is the road that gets drawn?

Looking at it this far, one can imagine that this navigation system will project the lunar terrain.
Then the question becomes, where does that terrain data come from? But the reader already knows: JAXA possesses that data.

This is data that emerged when the Earth side cooperated to rescue Hibito when he fell into a ravine on the lunar surface.

It's great that that connects here, and it's also great that JAXA appears here.

■ And the salaryman skills that come to life

Once the materials are gathered this far, the path to solving the problem becomes visible.
The flow up to this point alone is persuasive enough.
However, Mutta's strength is that, in addition to his perspective as an engineer, he was a salaryman.

First, to receive technical support from his former company, he skillfully handles the nemesis boss who could be said to have fired him.

He must have had his thoughts on the boss who did a complete about-face toward Mutta now that he had become an astronaut, but he manages the situation by properly giving the other person credit to gain the advantage.

And then, he perfectly executes the unreasonable presentation he was tasked with.

With JAXA's achievements and the development company's technology... and if NASA has the passion,
our proposal can be realized.

Could there be a cooler way to persuade someone?

Also, during this presentation, he talks firmly about costs,

and cleverly includes the point that sending him to the moon is actually a benefit for cost reduction.

■ An episode that encapsulates Mutta's journey so far

I think it's fair to say that this episode in the story is packed with everything Mutta has experienced up to this point.

・An engineer's perspective
・The connections he has made through his experiences (his brother who was involved, the car company, JAXA, etc.)
・Salaryman skills

These three things are depicted without omission, making this one of my top two favorite episodes in the entire story.

I think again that a space manga where salaryman skills are expressed so coolly
is the best.

Also, I thought it was very clever that the iconic
composition of his brother Hibito properly wearing a space suit, and his older brother Mutta wearing a necktie with only half a space suit on,
appears in this episode as well.

If you found this interesting, please read the rest of this series as well.

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