An $850k anime-related initiative to put a tiny spear on the moon is one-third of the way to getting funded.
The group says they'll use the funds to recreate a famous sequence from a 20-year-old mecha anime series called Neon Genesis Evangelion "where one of the massive Eva combat robots hurls the gigantic Spear of Longinus into the Moon." In this case they plan to attach a 9.4-inch replica of the spear on a lunar lander and send it up by a rocket.
From RocketNews24:
The campaign kicked off on January 30, and as of March 9 has raised 36.28 million yen (US$305,000), making it the fastest growing crowdfunding initiative ever in Japan. It’s achieved this figure on donations from 976 backers, making for a generous per-person contribution of over 37,000 yen.
But while backers will receive anime-themed rewards such as posters and T-shirts made specially for the Project to Pierce the Moon With the Spear of Longinus, Hakuto isn’t actually planning to build a robot to chuck a polearm at Earth’s natural satellite. Instead, a 24-cetimeter (9.4-inch) replica of the anime spear will be piggybacking on the team’s real world lunar lander, which will detach from a rocket launched from a site in the U.S.A. Ostensibly, the miniature spear would give the moon a poke after the craft lands on its surface.
