“By the way, I first learned the word albedo from his album, Albedo 0.39. It's a term often used in the CG industry actually.”
Kojima first discovered Vangelis in high school through the American documentary television show Cosmos featuring Carl Sagan, which used Vangelis’s music; he became a fan and Albedo 0.39 was the first Vangelis album he bought — the record he has listened to most — and it was from that album that he first learned the word “albedo” (the index of reflection of light, today a common term in the CG industry; 0.39 is the albedo of the Earth). The track “Alpha,” frequently used in Cosmos, also carries a local memory for him: in the Kansai area Shizue Abe produced a solo 15‑minute weekly radio program about Space Battleship Yamato with only her speaking and no music, and the program always closed with “Alpha,” never any other piece.
“there was an American documentary television show called Cosmos featuring the famous researcher Carl Sagan […] that's how I first discovered him. […] Albedo 0.39 was the first thing of his that I bought. […] in the Kansai area of Japan, Shizue Abe did a solo radio drama production of Star Blazers. […] at the end, they played Alpha. It was always this song, they never played anything else.”