04x32 - Challengers of Science

[bunniefuu]

When you're stargazing with a telescope,

you're always at the mercy of the Earth's atmosphere.

Besides the atmospheric blurring,

bad weather can really get in the way of things.

And that's why we'll be launching our telescope into space.

It'll be easier to find Why-man's hideout on the moon.

Oh, yeah.

The best way to get a clear shot

is to send out a spy of our own.

The Stone World's first man-made satellite.

CHALLENGERS OF SCIENCE

A what now?

Satellite?

We're launching it?

So is it like a plane or something?

And somehow it can keep on flying until it finds Why-man?

Seems like it would run out of fuel pretty quickly.

You know, if we're being precise,

satellites don't actually fly like you'd think.

Truth is, they're constantly falling toward the planet.

Help, help!

I'm falling to Earth!

Ah! What? Oh, no.

Now I'm falling from the other side!

Wait. So the thing is always just falling around and around?

Oh, I get it now.

Satellites are so cool, they don't even need anyone to gas them up.

Freaky.

That's true in theory,

but in practice, it'll need to have a source of energy.

Yeah, without power, we won't be able to take shots of the moon,

not to mention make any changes to its course.

So does that mean we're gonna put a battery inside of it?

Maybe.

But I'd bet that a battery wouldn't last very long.

Yeah.

What we need is an endless source of energy

that we can easily acquire in space.

But luckily for us,

our good old friend Mr. Sun is hanging out up there too.

And all he wants to do is put out energy 24/7.

Mr. Sun does that?

He puts out energy?

We're making solar panels.

That stuff you guys dug up in Kagoshima is called selenium.

And once again, this element is coming in clutch for us.

We'll stack up a bunch of these thin-a*s sheets,

and convert the sun's rays into electricity.

It's hella old school and hella inefficient,

so we're gonna have to make it a little bigger for it to do what we want.

It's moving!

SOLAR PANELS ACQUIRED!!

That's bad.

The sun's really powering that thing.

Wait.

How's this gonna work if it's cloudy, or rainy, or dark out?

No weather in space to worry about.

Yeah, it's gonna be way above the clouds.

We're sending that huge thingy

all the way to space because Mr. Sun is always shining up there?

Hell yeah. The battery in this satellite of ours will never run out.

LAUNCH PAD ACQUIRED!!

UNMANNED ROCKET ACQUIRED!!

LEVEL 99 ROCKET ENGINE ACQUIRED!!

I must say, Senku

again, you've managed to craft quite an elegant creation.

Well, the fact that you were able to put together a rocket engine in just three years

is impressive as hell.

You may have been rotting away for a few millennia,

but you never lost your edge.

We're coming to you live from here at Treasure Island,

where the first-ever rocket in the new world will be carrying a satellite into space.

Though we may be able to do that,

there's no way we can get a television signal to mainland Japan.

Oh, hush. This is a lifelong dream of mine.

We've got the Dr. Xeno of NASA,

the world's top rocket scientist,

working in concert with Senku,

the only high schooler to have ever launched a homemade rocket into space.

We're playing the best cards the world has to offer.

For this master-apprentice duo, launching an unmanned rocket

is as simple as taking candy from a weak little baby.

The thermal insulator,

it appears that the gas has corroded it,

causing a hole in the nozzle.

Everything looked solid as hell on paper,

but we're working with Stone World fabrication.

It's not precise enough.

NEW YEAR'S EVE LAUNCH DATE

It was a simple wiring mistake.

That's eriously-say all that it took?

What a waste.

This is all incredibly complex.

We had these same issues during our time.

More often than you'd think.

Apparently, back in the 1960s,

NASA's launch of the Mariner I rocket was ruined by a missing hyphen in the code.

So, an air bubble in the vaporized fuel?

Yep, that's what tore up the internal fins.

SEPTEMBER

OCTOBER

Ah, damn, this thing's a real kick in the teeth.

When's it gonna work?

Feels like we've been doing this for years.

I mean, what the hell's with those guys?

How do they keep going?

This space stuff is bad.

We've got Senku and Xeno,

the top rocket builders on Earth,

yet they've been struggling with this launch all this time.

Trial and error, again and again.

We've gotta watch them and learn.

We gotta know all we can about the tech, too.

Everything that worked out and everything that failed.

This world of science is freaking tough.

And one of the first things I learned from Senku feels more true than ever right now.

And it's driving me crazy,

because the fact is, the more you know, the more you know you don't know.

We finally pulled off a successful launch.

And now we'll be able to get a closer look at the moon and find Why-man.

Not yet.

We're starting off with something elegantly simple--

a reconnaissance orbiter.

SATELLITES ACQUIRED!!

Like always, we're doing things one step at a time.

Yeah that acks-tray.

We can't start with manned missions,

because we definitely don't want our brave astronauts to blow up.

Wait a sec.

We've built a ton of rockets

so we could use them for all of these Stone World launch experiments.

And now that I'm thinking about it, they've all been on a smaller scale.

That's true.

But the two-way rocket that we want to build to bring everyone back can't be that small.

When we had Sai do the calculations the other day,

he said it'd have to be about five whole times bigger.

A satellite image.

It's crazy that we can look at ourselves on Earth from way up there in space.

And like we saw on our tour around the world,

a whole lot has changed here over the last 3,700 years.

Are you getting much from this, Chelsea?

Totally, and it's like, freaky to the deaky!

It looks like the Panama Canal doesn't even exist anymore. It healed up.

I guess it did.

We're so lucky we didn't try to pass through there.

And the African deserts did a costume change, and now they're forests and grasslands.

It looks like fertile farmland ripe for development to me.

That's pretty wild, huh?

Guess the planet changing can actually be a good thing.

If we want to go into space exploration,

then we'll need all the manpower we can muster.

Yeah.

And that means we've got to figure out the new globe

and draw up a solid plan for reviving all 7 billion people on it.

I know you guys can handle that.

We've got Ryusui, the builder of empires,

working hand in hand with our own geography whiz, Dr. Chelsea.

SPACE TELESCOPES ACQUIRED!!

Ha. We can watch these to scout the surface of the moon.

I'll use my eagle eye vision to spot Why-man.

We'll be on his trail in no time.

Doubtful.

We're receiving the images in the form of raw data.

Keen eyesight won't be enough.

Never underestimate Kohaku.

Her ridiculously good vision always comes through for us.

Like when she spotted an oil field in an aerial photo.

Intense focus and attention to detail,

that's why Kohaku has the sharpest eyes around.

It makes sense.

After all, she's descended from astronauts like Byakuya.

With that kind of genetic pedigree,

she could prove useful.

Sounds like we finally have a way to find Why-man.

I should be celebrating,

but I just know what's gonna happen the second she spots him.

They're gonna jump inside that one-way rocket and blast off to space.

We've got you cornered, Why-man.

We're coming for ya!

Science power!

We can't let that happen.

We've got a time limit on our roadmap.

But it's fine.

We just have to finish our round-trip rocket before she finds him.

Though it's easier said than done.

We've got to make a five times bigger rocket and then test the heck out of it.

Ah, damn it!

That could take us decades at this pace.

This is bad.

What now?

Found something!

On the screen!

See?

Look at this.

This one tiny spot here has been changing shape little by little,

so slowly it's hard to notice at first.

It's rather difficult to discern.

However, speaking as a NASA scientist,

I can confirm that it is not a natural lunar feature.

How exquisitely elegant.

It's the moment we've been waiting for.

Let's go knock on Why-man's door.

We found the mastermind holding all the secrets behind humanity's petrification.

Why?

Why?

Why?

WHY?

All right!

We're coming for ya, Why-man!

Let's bring the fight to Why-man before he tries to unleash another Medusa.

We'll pull off a surprise attack on the moon!

We're hopping on a one-way rocket to get petrified in space.

Well, they already found Why-man.

Guess they're gonna use that one-way rocket after all.

We didn't finish fast enough,

our round-trip rocket,

the one that was going to save our friends.

Let me at her!

Time to build one of those rocket thingies for them to ride in.

We have effectively redrawn the map.

Now we must find a way to foster global cooperation.

Global?

Think bigger.

We're bringing humans together on a galactic scale.

That's what the Kingdom of Science does best,

and this will be our crowning glory.

Together on a galactic scale.

That gives me an idea for the rocket.

Our friends aren't just gonna survive this trip,

we're gonna get them back to Earth where they belong!

GRAND SCIENCE MEETING

What the hell are we doing here?

Wanna know? Well, I'll tell ya.

We're changing the plan.

No more suicide mission in a one-way rocket.

It's over.

Instead, we're gonna build ourselves a round-trip rocket straight to a happy ending!

We all wish that were possible,

because it's hard to accept that it isn't.

Sadly, we have no choice, seeing as how time isn't on our ide-say.

I'm sure you've already figured out the issue.

We'd need a ridiculously huge rocket for a round trip.

Plus, we'd have to start over with launch testing.

It quintuples risk and time.

Roughly speaking, it would take us several decades.

Chrome already knows that stuff!

Why do you think he's been racking his brain this past year to find another way?

To think of how we can get to the moon and back,

and do it without building a huge rocket.

At least hear us out.

The rookie science team has been working nonstop,

and the plan we've made is completely bad.

We build one of those ginormous rockets that can get the moon team back home safely.

We split it into five parts, launch the pieces,

then slam them back together on the frickin' moon and live happily ever after!

You get an A for effort, but you have to admit, the whole thing sounds a bit far-fetched.

I don't know a lot about this space stuff, but there's one thing I'm an expert on.

I can tell immediately when Chrome's gotten carried away with one of his crazy plans.

You two are awfully quiet.

Care to comment?

The space station that Byakuya and his team traveled on,

it was launched as separate parts and assembled in space, just like you two are proposing.

You're saying you already knew?

What the hell?

So then we didn't invent a genius solution?

Who gives a crap if you invented it or not?

I'm 10 billion percent sure Xeno and I would never have devised a plan like that.

But that's only because it's completely bonkers.

Even at NASA, the idea of a piecemeal spaceship

was theorized but never came to fruition.

You see, the nail in the coffin was the design.

Round-trip rockets are complex enough to begin with.

To make one comprised of interlocking segments

would require a number of parts totaling in the millions.

So you're saying it's possible?

Because if all of humanity banded together to make it happen

and crafted every last one of those millions of parts we need

we can make that return rocket a reality.

Am I wrong?

Shocking.

Ryusui heard of something new, and now he wants it.

If it helps, I already ran the numbers on the launch.

Yeah, the plan works in theory.

A rather elegant notion,

even if it is utterly unrealistic.

No, it isn't! Not if we all work together!

Teamwork makes the dream work.

Listen, it's easy.

We'll ask everyone to choose and go with the winning plan.

You do realize we would have to spill the beans on what the petrification device is capable of?

Then instead, we'll have to get everyone in this room to vote here and now.

We're clearly just the damn rookie science team in your eyes, and you know it's true.

The details are lost on me.

I can't wrap my head around it.

If you tell me it's 10 billion percent impossible to make a round trip work,

I can't argue.

But still, if there's a chance we can pull this off,

we should all get to decide.

Is it a round trip, or are they not coming back?

That's science!

We work together to move ahead,

and we combine our strengths so that we can build a better tomorrow!

Looks like we're about to hold the Stone World's very first democratic vote.

I coded a voting program just in case.

Already?

It's a simple system.

The one-way rocket, or the two-way rocket.

Pressing one of these casts an anonymous vote.

Let's hope he's not using a cheat code.

There's no reason to worry.

The same way I know beyond a doubt that you would never lie about matters of science,

I know Sai would never taint his code with deceit.

GRAND SCIENCE MEETING

Time to count the votes.

What kind of rocket are we building?

The kind that isn't coming back,

or the one that can bring the team home?

Two-way.

It's gonna be a round trip!

Yeah!

You see, we beat you guys fair and square,

so you'd better not try to go back on our agreement now.

Nah, you know I wouldn't do that to you.

Things are about to get downright nasty around here.

And you can count on us to help out, too.

I promise we'll make ourselves useful!

Oh, to clarify, although the votes are completely anonymous,

there's no harm in displaying the final tally.

You should probably know.

I heard every word you two whispered to each other.

You little sneak, straight up eavesdropping

by using that OP hearing of yours.

This task will take a ridiculous amount of cooperation across the globe,

so we'll need a way to connect the whole world.

You can't mean, you know at-whay?

I do.

There's no getting around it.

We need this modern tool.

We're gonna take the Stone World online!

That's great, but scary, 'cause there's no way this is gonna be pleasant.