The Apollo 11 moon landing was the event that had the greatest impact…

“It was like I saw the future. ... Technology would connect the world.”

When journalist Toyohiro Akiyama traveled to space in 1990 with funding from TBS and Soviet technology, Kojima realized a civilian route existed and reacted with frustration and jealousy for not having imagined it. This made him understand that he did not simply want to reach space but to train and go as an astronaut; for that reason he did not feel the same envy when game designer Richard Garriott paid about $30 million to travel to the International Space Station in 2008.

“I actually received a message from him on Twitter. […] I can't believe he wrote something this good his first time around.”

“I would like to go. Not to Mars, but to the surface of the moon. Just getting out of Earth's orbit, and seeing our Earth from up there… I could die happy. Seriously, I wouldn't care if I couldn't come back.”

Kojima’s aspiration to become an astronaut turned him into an obsessive science enthusiast: he spent his meager allowance on Newton and the Japanese edition of Omni, watched Carl Sagan’s Cosmos and live broadcasts of space missions—which he prioritized even above his favorite movies—and studied biology, chemistry, and geology to prepare. He said he was hopeless at math and that those magazines and TV shows excited him more than Playboy or the late-night program 11PM.