I ask you to build tractors, but you build rockets?.

Chapter 728 Richard
"Tower, this is the Enterprise, we have a situation."

Meng Senlin held the intercom and found that Serev had no reaction to his behavior.

"Tower received, please speak."

"Uh... Commander Xie is also on the spacecraft. He is sitting in the flight engineer's seat. Over."

"...Zi...Zi"

The sound from the tower was interrupted, and the voices of people could be vaguely heard. Meng Senlin called several other crew members to prepare, and at the same time tried to persuade Serev:
"Chief Commander, this is still an experimental model and is very dangerous."

Serev: "This is already the tenth flight test. I have been here before. I have done a good job in this position. I can fly this shuttle alone."

"..."

"Xiao Meng, do you know Richard Russell?"

"Sorry, Mr. Xie, I have never heard of this name. Is he also an aircraft expert?"

Serev: "No, he had only learned to fly in a flight simulation game before that. He drove the commercial airliner and did a backflip in the air, and finally crashed on an uninhabited island.

"..."

Serev: "The reason may be that he caught a gust of wind when he was about to get off work, but he thought it was worth his life to exchange for these 75 minutes.

Although Meng Senlin didn't know why Serev was suddenly excited or why Siberia was suddenly mentioned, he was indeed convinced. In fact, with Xinyuan's strict engineering control system, important spacecraft almost never had accidents.

"No, he is an ordinary person. He is a ground handler at an airport in Seattle. Two weeks ago, he stole an unoccupied passenger plane from the airport and drove it around in the sky for 75 minutes."

Meng Senlin: "Is he...a terrorist or a vengeance against society?"

"The wind speed is 4.5 knots, the air humidity is 34%, takeoff is allowed, takeoff is allowed!"

He wasn't getting revenge on anyone, he was living a happy life, he was driven by just wanting to do this, and he told air traffic control that he wasn't going to land and didn't plan to land. "

Meng Senlin: "..."

……

Most of life is spent in mediocrity, but the small amount of adventure is what makes life meaningful. The career we do is a job full of adventure. If not, I would rather go to Siberia Dig potatoes. "

"Okay, thank you, Chief Engineer. Then please do your job as a flight engineer."

"The Enterprise understands."

Meng Senlin pressed his hands on both sides of the flight rudder and set the thrust to the first gear. The four nozzles on both sides of the Enterprise immediately started working, ejecting bluish gas to levitate about 50cm above the ground.

The XN90 has a total of 6 reactors and 6 engines, but they are not independent from each other. Instead, they are connected through pipelines, which can flexibly adjust the output flow of each nozzle. When vertical takeoff is required, the four NPAEs can actually output a maximum thrust of 270 tons (below 50000 meters). After flying, they use the two horizontal nozzles on the tail to work, and can output a maximum thrust of 130 tons (below 50000 meters).

The thrust data of 20 tons is in a vacuum state, but it is completely different in the atmosphere:

NPAE uses methane as fuel and uses a nuclear reactor to heat it to ultra-high temperature in the atmospheric environment, causing it to expand and eject it at high speed in the pipe. This is the first source of thrust and the only source of thrust in a vacuum environment, with a thrust of 20 tons;
If in an atmospheric environment, gaseous methane at high temperature will react with oxygen in the atmosphere, turning into carbon dioxide and water vapor to continue to expand, which is equivalent to a traditional methane engine. Although the oxygen content in the atmosphere is not as good as liquid oxygen, it is most needed in the XN90 The air density is relatively high at low altitudes, so this channel can still provide about 40 tons of thrust;

The third thrust source is that after the flight speed exceeds the speed of sound, there is also a narrow variable inlet on the side of the Enterprise. Using the principle of the ramjet engine, the air is compressed by the inlet and then heated and expanded by the heat emitted by the reactor, and then passes through When the Laval tube is ejected, an engine can increase thrust by about 7.5 tons.

The sum of the three thrusts, coupled with the advantage of the air tip engine adapting to working conditions at different altitudes, makes the peak thrust of NPAE in the atmosphere actually fluctuate between 50 and 68 tons.

At supersonic speeds, the Enterprise's angular shape will generate a shock wave with a large angle at the front, wrapping the body and greatly reducing the overall resistance, which can reduce air resistance by about one-third.

The XB70 Valkyrie also adopts a similar principle, which is equivalent to using aerodynamics to obtain more than 30% of the thrust. The faster it flies within a certain range, the more fuel it saves.

The biggest reason for limiting the Enterprise's transportation capacity is the section between 50 kilometers and 100 kilometers. The thin atmosphere causes the thrust to drop sharply, so the upward transportation capacity has to be limited to 20 tons.

However, it gives the Enterprise a considerable downward transport capacity, which can reach a maximum of 100 tons within a safe range, which is about five times the upward transport capacity.

The completely different working conditions make the Enterprise's automation system extremely complex, and human control is completely wishful thinking. Only SC09's exquisite computing model and rich data support can prevent the aircraft from crashing and killing people.

Including aerospace aircraft and traditional manned spacecraft, these high-tech equipment are actually computers that are always more reliable and safer than humans.

The conditions for the Enterprise to take off are not stringent. As a general-purpose shuttle designed to take off and land on Mars or even Titan, the Enterprise can take off and land in most land and non-corrosive active liquids. The current take-off The field is nothing more than a reinforced hardened concrete floor.

Serev, who was almost lying on the chair, quickly felt the acceleration from bottom to top, and then saw the tower in the side window quickly disappear, leaving only the light blue sky outside.

"Go faster, I feel that the air tip engine doesn't have much power now!"

Meng Senlin heard his dissatisfied urging. Although he didn't respond, he still slightly increased the range of the lever.

As the speed increases, the attitude of the Enterprise gradually tilts back, so that the pyramid at the front of the cockpit coincides with the forward direction. The vibration caused by it piercing the air becomes more and more violent, and then suddenly becomes stable, and the entire shuttle begins to ride. Flying on the shock wave.

In the test a few days ago, the Enterprise should have exceeded the altitude of 4000 meters at this time, but now it is still climbing, the elevation angle is getting larger and larger, and it continues to accelerate along the tangent direction of the earth's rotation.

Most of the thrust from the six engines began to be concentrated toward the two nozzles at the tail, maintaining the direction of the combined force.

When the color of the sky outside the porthole changed from light blue to dark blue, and finally darkened to an indistinguishable black, Meng Senlin already knew that he had crossed the Karman Line.

The first stage of acceleration was over. The roaring engine stopped outputting, the vibrations of the machine body completely disappeared, and the force that had been restraining him in the seat no longer existed.

The next acceleration will be 40 minutes later. At that time, it will accelerate in the tangential direction of the target orbit for a while, and the Enterprise will enter the orbit.

(End of this chapter)