I've had a lot of thoughts re: being a "spacefan" and I thought I should stream-of-consciousness them for a bit.
Firstly, I'm not the biggest spacefan, nor the most educated spacefan. I'm in awe of some of the work amateurs have done on YouTube (there's a very detailed series on the construction of the ISS, using real footage combined with animations from Kerbal Space Program, which has transformed my understanding of space station construction), and I often wonder how Cosmosporia will be received by the more realism- and detail-oriented. But I probably shouldn't worry about that, Cosmosporia is primarily a personal journey.
Second, the recent Polaris Dawn mission hit me kinda hard. Space is rapidly becoming a "billionaire's playground," which saps all the excitement out of it for me. Space exploration is incredibly conflicted otherwise, but the public/commercial split bothers me a lot. When I was a kid, space exploration was entirely government funded and commissioned. Astronauts were selected entirely on merit. Designs were purely form-meets-function. Missions were for the advancement of science. Of course, I had only just learned to read when the Cold War ended, so I don't have any first-hand experience of the proper Space Race, I just know space exploration as an international endeavor for the good of mankind.
With commercial spaceflight, this is all changing. You could say I was excited about it at first, but I was a lot younger when SpaceX was founded. I'm not entirely sure when I soured on them, but the real turning point for me was the first Falcon 9 Heavy launch. Billionaire Elon Musk decided it would be "funny" to launch his Tesla Roadster on it rather than a dummy payload. He referred to it as "basically trash." Literally throwing his garbage into space, as a stunt. (If we really want to get into the weeds, it wasn't even his car, he stole it from Martin Eberhard.) A real space agency would have, I dunno, sent up some kind of time capsule or monument to be found by future generations, given it would be in a circumsolar orbit forever? Bleh. But he gets to override all of that because he has all the money. I really hate that man.
One aspect of space exploration I love is when science fact overrides science fiction. For instance, look at concept art of spacesuits from the 50s versus what we ended up with in the real space program - instead of sleek, featureless skin-tight body suits, we got bulky, jointed, bright orange IVA suits like the iconic ACES. To me, they look very cool. Everything about them is thoroughly tested with design knowledge dating back to the X-15 program. The Artemis EVA suit looks super cool too - it looks weird, but all of the design choices are in the interest of functionality.
Contrast the SpaceX suits. They're made to look like a motorcycle suit. You can tell just by looking at them that every step of the design process was compromised for the physical appearance. They have all the energy of a dad trying to impress his teenage son. I'm sure they work okay, but they can't be as useful or versatile as the non-commercial spacesuits.
My thoughts are leading me to the correlation of spaceflight and nuclear weaponry. I don't really have anything new to say on the subject, but it's something I think about all the time. It's why Cosmosporia's lore is based around Erua's East and West uniting to solve a climate crisis bigger than their cold war. It's a deliberate political statement - I'd rather have players that understand preserving Earth requires a kind of cooperation that crosses national borders, and which capitalism actively sabotages. Not that I expect having more than a handful of players.
Long post. Running out of thoughts. Cohost is ending, post post post