... only this looks much more fun!

>We didn't get back to the idea until
>the next day, when we regrouped back at the
>racetrack at midday to tidy up the garage
>and make certain the car was properly put
>away. While we worked, I remarked to Korra,
>"The moon?"

I love how Asami brings this up completely out of nowhere almost twelve hours later after some truly epic drinking and possibly bedroom-related celebrations and Korra picks up the thread with very, very little trouble.

>"We read excerpts from it when I was
>at school, but never the whole thing," I said.
>"Why? What interest does he have in the
>moon?"

I like to think that Korra had to work very, very hard not to digress into a whole big thing about Zuko's complex relationship with the events surrounding that time the Fire Nation murdered the moon.

>Korra explained
>that the last chapter of the book contained the former Fire Lord's
>suggestions for various far - reaching projects
>his posterity might undertake to improve
>worldwide cooperation, the most ambitious
>of which – by a long way – was a manned expedition to Yue.

ASAMI
Oh, wait, I -have- read about this! Didn't he lose a bet with Sokka and, to pay
up, had to figure out a way for him to go hook back up with his ex and her
"celestial body?"

KORRA
Asami, I hate to tell you this, but Master Sokka, You're Drunk! is...
not reliable as a matter of historical record.

ASAMI
The devil you say.

>"The comet's due in the summer of
>200," I told her. "We would have seven years.
>Seven years to invent technologies, materials,
>and bending techniques no one has even
>thought of, marshal all the technical and
>human resources that would be required to
>realize them, construct facilities, train
>personnel... seven years."

Nobody else has said yet, so I might as well be the first: digging the historical parallel.

As someone who did three years at Space Camp/Space Academy (note to anyone who has kids: if you can afford it, send them to those programs, it's so much better than camping, I'm not even kidding) and who has a copy of The Right Stuff and a whole stack of embarrassingly propagandic 1980s-era histories of the moon shot still on his bookshelves, may I express the devout hope that Challenging the Cold Silence will end just chockablock full of stuff like that?

>talking about a man who had once
>employed the entire world supply of platinum
>solely in the development of a more efficient
>way of punching metalbenders in the face,
>and even he would have found the task of
>arranging a moon mission daunting.

I somehow think Hiroshi's plans for the moons would have been a lot less "Apollo Program" and a lot more "Mr. Show."

>Then she added with a wry grin,
>"There are better ways to bankrupt yourself
>than trying to send your nutty girlfriend to
>the moon."

I deeply approve of this sentence and choose to interpret it in the sexiest way possible.

(I'm a simple man with simple needs, dammit.)

>Oh, private enterprise could, and would, make it
>possible – the private sector was where all the technology
>and know - how would come from

You know, I'm genuinely unsure if that puts Diqiu at an advantage or disadvantage when it comes to planning a moon shot. Here in the real world, a lot of technology and know-how came from the public sector, as the military had a vested interest in shooting things in grand arcs around the planet using rockets. (Many universities and other government organs had more peaceable goals, of course; many of the organizations that would eventually be folded into the NOAA were very, very interested in the possibilities being able to loft things into orbit offered.)

Private enterprise has its own very different pathologies and problems compared to public ones, so I'm not sure if taking it entirely private and just using the governments as a cash source is a step in the right direction or not.

>This led Korra's first
>biographer to wonder how it is that he's even
>still alive, but then, Jinora has peculiar ideas
>about romance generally.

Considering the world she lives in, Jinora's ideas are less "peculiar" and more terrifyingly possible.

Oh man, I am so jazzed for this. I truly am.

And I appreciate the amount of effort that must have gone into formatting and producing that document, Ben. It looks amazing, like a real excerpt from a proper newspaper.

-Merc
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