Beside a booth somewhere in the exhibition hall sat a gigantic silver-white egg.
It was SpaceX's X-2 Life-Support Unit, supposedly an improved version of the original Life-Support Unit.
After the Ares Program failed, the partnership between SpaceX and Blue Origin came to an end. Having dumped all the blame onto Amazon-controlled Blue Origin, Elon Musk quickly found a new partner in an aerospace technology company based in Tanegashima, Japan. This X-2 model, designed for the lunar environment, was born as a result.
Without question, it was a very wise decision.
After the Ares Program went bankrupt, a new Mars colonization effort was impossible in the short term.
Even if Congress signed off on the budget, the New Virginia accident investigation committee would repeatedly give them trouble over safety concerns.
Therefore, Hua Nation was currently the only customer likely to pay for their technology, because Hua Nation alone seemed to have a need to send people to the lunar surface.
The Pan-Asian High-Tech Innovation and Investment Summit did not exclude North American companies. After obtaining permission to exhibit, Elon Musk had SpaceX's people move this silver "round egg" over. He had even given it a Chinese-style name—Glutinous Rice Ball—in hopes of winning Hua Nation's favor.
After the key technologies had been removed, the X-2 Life-Support Unit, now merely an experience version, possessed only a limited number of functions, and its footprint had been reduced by fifty percent. Still, though it was small, it had everything it needed. It was perfectly adequate as an exhibit. Visitors could even crawl through the open hatch, take a look around, and lie on an astronaut's bed to experience what it felt like.
Unfortunately, although its silver-white, round design did draw plenty of curious looks, no one seemed inclined to step forward and examine it. Nor