After a few minutes of celebrating, followed by quick showers and changes of clothes all around to wash off the sticky champagne residue, the five men in charge of Imugi-Danche called their families and friends to spread the good news.
“You aren’t gonna believe this, but....”
“Mom, we did it!”
“Dad, our design was accepted!”
“Honey, how would you like to visit space?”
“Sis! Guess what?!”
The calls lasted for hours until well into the night, but all of them were too excited to sleep and began a proper Korean drinking party that went all around the city, from bar to karaoke to bar to restaurant, and so on. It wasn’t until their sixth stop that they were too inebriated to move and the bartender called for a car to bring them home.
......
The next day.
Five men were in Park Seo-Yeon’s living room nursing their hangovers and discussing their future plans.
“I think we should let HHI do the manufacturing. They hold quite a few patents on black box imperial tech that we incorporated into the design, so it’s the best option. Otherwise we’d have to find a factory that can manufacture most of the parts, then send them to HHI for final assembly anyway. So just letting them handle it from start to finish not only guarantees the quality, but also cuts out a lot of middlemen,” Moon Hyeonwoo said.
Though the five men were all fast friends and had no idea of how to set up a corporate structure, Hyeonwoo was their “tech guru” and the others would generally defer to him on all matters technical.
A chorus of agreements followed his suggestion and the matter was considered settled. Moon Hyeonwoo was unanimously appointed as the person who would contact Hephaestus Heavy Industries and work out the licensing and manufacturing deal alongside Kim Ye-Jin, who had the most experience in a corporate environment. Ye-Jin had worked as an intern for a Korean corporation that manufactured office chairs up until he’d been roped in by his friends to shoot for the moon... or rather, the asteroids.
“That’s settled then,” Park Seo-Yeon announced. “So on to the next topic: where should we go to prospect?”
Everyone in the room exchanged glances and shrugs. None of them had any mining experience whatsoever, especially considering that South Korea wasn’t particularly rich in minerals and lacked a robust mining industry. Most of the materials used in South Korean manufacturing were imported from other, richer countries like Australia, China, Japan, and Russia.
“We should probably hire prospectors. Or maybe we can just put our ships on the marketplace and sell them to others,” someone finally suggested after a few minutes of silence.
“Now that we’ve got experience under our belts, why don’t we start designing pleasure yachts instead? We could go after the rich people that way,” came another suggestion.
“Oh! That gives me an idea! There aren’t many super rich people anymore, not after the shuffle, anyway. So how about we build a big solar system cruise ship that’ll offer vacation packages for every budget?” Kim Ye-Jin chimed in.
“Why don’t we....”
“We could....”
“I think we....”
The conversation shifted to brainstorming, then after an hour or so of that when suggestions had grown too unrealistic to continue, Park Seo-Yeon cut in and said, “Okay, okay, settle down. We can branch out and do multiple things. We can offer leases on asteroid mining ships where people interested in asteroid mining pay for their ships with five percent of their finds for... let’s say, ten years.
“Another avenue would be designing luxury yachts for solar trekkers. I think people with disposable income would be more than happy to buy their own spaceships. Rich peoples’ money is easy to earn if you offer them a way to increase the size of their assets in dick measuring contests. Just look at how Musk sent a car into orbit around Mars for no good reason but to brag. Imagine if we were the ones to steal the luxury market out from under those buja babo!”
(Ed note: Buja babo (Hangul: 부자 바보) is a phrase that supposedly refers to people who have great wealth, but lack intelligence or common sense. The Korean term literally translates to “rich idiot” or “wealthy fool”. I don’t have any knowledge of Korean myself, much less their slang, so I went to the expert on this one... ChatGPT. Let me know if I got it wrong here, yeah?)
The Imugi-Danche meeting continued, the five friends using sheer enthusiasm to make up for the complete lack of experience in actually running a company.
They were far from alone in that, however, as the Innovation Project had accepted a lot of designs from “startups” that had zero experience and were, realistically speaking, doomed to eventual failure. Some might survive, but the shark-infested waters that corporations regularly swam in were definitely not for everyone, a lesson that most of the bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and optimistic people diving in headfirst was soon to learn.
But if those that failed continued trying and trying again, they would learn the important lessons and, eventually, become one of the giants whose shoulders future generations could stand upon to look further into the foggy, distant futures themselves.
The explosion of space-related companies, whether they focused on selling designs or customizing their own ship in pursuit of the vast mineral wealth present in the solar system, or anything in between, was the beginning of a wealth redistribution within the empire. Aron himself was in favor of the shakeup and injection of fresh blood into the stale economy that had been the playground for the detached and delusional ultra-rich people for far, far too long.
So he would put his money where his mouth was and invest in everyone who dared to dream, ensuring that they all had an equal chance of fulfilling those dreams and kickstarting the age of exploration.
It also proved a rather effective distraction from the events of the recent past, as well. With so many negative things happening since the founding of the empire, it was good to inject a little bit of hope and enthusiasm into the collective subconscious of humanity.
