Project Fukurokuju

Project Fukurokuju was the fourth human spaceflight programme launched by the Dayashinese Association Space Agency which successfully landed the first Hemithean, Meridian, Kerenevoian, and Ostlandic astronauts on the Moon between the years of 2020 and 2024. Project Fukurokuju was considered a launch point and testing phase for the wider Project Daikokuten, which seeks to establish a permanent human presence on the moon, and eventually facilitate manned missions to Mars.

Background

Dayashinese Aerospace Exploration Agency (DAXA) had first conceived ambitions of landing Dayashinese astronauts on the Moon in the 1970s, nearing the end of the Space Race between Fyrland and Letnia. Then DAXA Director, Junsuke Maeda, laid out the first concept for Project Fukurokuju in 1978, but faced several issues that would prove insurmountable during his tenure. Primarily, that DAXA had specialised in satellite, probe, telescope, and rover launches, with human spaceflight as an afterthought compared to its other priorities. As such, the agency did not possess the rocketry or technology necessary for a reliable moon rocket or sustained, long-term human spaceflight. DAXA would attempt, unsuccessfully, to scale up the designs of extant rockets several times, and would encounter constant roadblocks in attempting to develop a new moon rocket. Project Fukurokuju was put on the backburner as DAXA continued to lean into its globally leading position in satellite and other unmanned technologies.

An opportunity would present itself in 199X, with FOLD, Fyrland's space agency, on the brink of total collapse following the country's steep dive into economic freefall. With the threat of FOLD ballistic missile and rocketry research and technology leaking to adversarial countries, the Dayashinese government made a decision to deliver a gigantic financial aid package to FOLD in order to stop its collapse. In return for this aid, it requested that FOLD allow DAXA researchers sweeping levels of access to FOLD technologies and research, up to and including FOLD's moon rockets. As such, DAXA researchers and engineers were able to gather much of the information needed to jump over the hurdles needed to get Project Fukurokuju off the ground. With the prospect of a Dayashinese moon landing back on the table, DAXA director Makoto Kitamura, upon his ascension in 1994, would request an increase in funding from the Dayashinese government to move Project Fukurokuju forward, and subsequently promised to prioritise it in the DAXA budget with cuts and slowdowns to other ongoing projects.

With an increase in funding (up to $15 billion official standard dollars), newfound information gained as a result of the FOLD bailout, and a high degree of support from the population of Dayashina as a whole, development for a DAXA moon rocket/superheavy lift vehicle entered a second phase. Furthermore, DAXA expanded its astronaut training and onboarding programme for the purpose of training sustained-spaceflight and long-range spaceflight astronauts, which included a partnership with the space agencies of Ostland and Kerenevoi respectively, which provided numerous technologies to DAXA's programme in return for the training of Ostlandic and Kerenevoian astronauts. Additionally, DAXA partnered with then Takagi Aerospace (renamed to Meira as of 2002), Anglia, and Ostkere in 1999 for work on Project Fukurokuju's launch vehicles, rockets, landing systems, and capsule. DAXA had already been working with the company on the development and implementation of light and medium lift vehicles, so the integration of the company into the Project was notably quick. The partnership of DAXA, later DASA, the space programmes of Anglia, Ostland, and Kerenevoi, and Meira company would result in the final iterations of Project Fukurokuju's vehicles, which would go through an extensive round of test flights before the mission launches in 2020.

DASA integration

In 1995, following the ascent of Makoto Kitamura to the position of DAXA director, DAXA would be integrated into the Dayashinese Association with a merger with HSA (Hanhae Space Agency) and SSA (Shijukunese Space Administration) to form DASA, or the Dayashinese Association Space Agency. In 1998, further integrations would follow, bringing A'olafa and Sundan's aerospace exploration programmes into DASA as well. The series of mergers would prove taxing and difficult over the course of a sweeping and extensive eight year structural reformation and unification undertaken across five different countries. However, the mergers proved immediately beneficial to the goings on of Project Fukurokuju, with further increases in funding and intellectual contributions, especially by Hanhaean engineer Moon Suk-yeol and Sundanese programmer Amangkurat Setiawan. Project Fukurokuju would be notably accelerated by the addition of talent from four other programmes.

Astronauts

Landing missions

Designation	Date	Vehicles	Crew	Notes
Fukurokuju 1	7 June 2020 - 21 July 2020	U-104, T-92, TK-09	Kotaro Maitachi Michiko Nomura Kim So-yeon Gaku Wakabayashi	First crewed landing mission in Ptolemaeus Crater, first Hemithean astronauts on the Moon, first landing of Uchūsen on the Moon, longest time spent on the Moon by humans
Fukurokuju 2	22 July 2021 - 28 August 2021	U-107, T-98, TK-11	Takumi Kadokawa Daizen Kamada Template:Country data Kerenevoi Niklas Mueller Chika Utsugi	First Kerenevoian and Meridian on the Moon
Fukurokuju 3	11 September 2022 - 29 October 2022	U-121, T-104, TK-15	Lee Baek-hyun Template:Country data Anglia & Lechernt Michael Ellington Axel Lehmann Kaoru Takagi	First Anglian and Ostlandic on the Moon, first fully international crew to reach the Moon
Fukurokuju 4	28 November 2023 - ongoing	U-128, T-109, TK-22	Michiya Suzuki Hana Yoshida Yang Chan-yeol Akane Nishmura	Targeting the longest consecutive inhabitation of the Moon
Fukurokuju 5	2024 (planned)	Unknown	Fully Casaterran crew (per DASA)	First fully foreign crew launched by DASA