Makoto Shinkai English Fan Forum and Site

gleowine · Posted: Sat Oct 18, 2008 3:56 pm Post subject: ELISH

I read a news article today about a probe being launched this weekend to study the edge of the solar system. It made me think about the ELISH launch in Story #2. Unfortunately, this one will not travel that far but will only make high earth orbit and SCAN the edge of the solar system from a distance.

I decided to do a search for something similar to the launch in 5 CM. The closest I could come was a Mars probe called Nozomi launched in 1998. It failed to achieve orbit around Mars and was left in solar orbit to avoid crashing into Mars.

Also, in 5 CM, ELISH was launched on a H-II rocket. The H-II program ended in 1999 in failure, as well, and was replaced with the H-IIA series. No deep space probes so far, just earth-orbiting satellites.

This may be just another instance of Shinkai trying to rewrite history, like he did in The Place Promised. Sort of a "what if" scenario. Still, an interesting concept.