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

Chapter 741 Shattering the Old Order

"I hope you will be careful. This will be the most expensive single spacecraft ever built."

Inside the Houston Launch Control Center, Robert had asked the launch pad to check the rocket's status again for the third time.

The "Artemis" artificial sun launched by the SL-X is worth more than the same weight of gold, equivalent to nearly 150 tons of gold. If it falls, it will definitely be an unprecedented huge loss. The director of the space agency may even be dismissed from his position because of it.

Under his command, the staff of the Kennedy Space Center stood on the basket and carefully checked every detail of the rocket, even the screws, and the level of attention was even higher than the moon landing mission.

But in a sense, the importance of the moon landing mission is actually far less than before.

Although the "Centaur" program, which was originally planned to carry out a moon landing mission every two months, failed to be fully implemented, it was due to the adjustment of the task schedule of the moon landing work. The preparation of materials such as rockets and spacecraft required met or even exceeded expectations.

On September 9, a week ago, Artemis VII and VIII spacecraft were launched from Kennedy Space Center and Boca Chica respectively.

Six astronauts and the inflatable module manufactured by Bigelow landed on the lunar surface on September 6 and are actively carrying out their mission.

The two spacecraft launched at the same time have also made progress. Their command modules were used in the Artemis V and VI missions. They were refurbished and reused, which significantly reduced costs.

The spacecraft and rocket for Mission No. 9 are basically ready, and Mission No. 10 is also progressing rapidly. NACA has indeed fulfilled its original promise.

After several successful landings in a row, NACA quickly re-familiarized itself with the lunar landing process. The United States believed that this was a sign of NACA's revival, and at the same time began to praise John's three major bills, believing that they had an indispensable driving force.

From the "Gemini" in the 60s to the "Centaur", no one will say that NACA has made no progress.

However, in Robert's mind, the Centaur project has reached the point where it needs to be changed. At least if a space cooperation agreement is reached with the Chinese next year, such efficiency will not be able to play a very obvious role.

"One hour to prepare!"

It was already the final moment of Artemis launch, and all personnel involved in the launch had already evacuated. Robert's heart tightened little by little, and he held his breath waiting for the moment of ignition.

……

"Long live!"

"Ah ah ah ah..."

“we did it!, we made it!”

Above the border between the African and European continents, an unprecedentedly heavy artificial celestial body is orbiting at an altitude of 390 kilometers.

Artemis was still in a retracted state, but after entering space it performed several rounds of self-inspections of its electrical equipment and found no problems.

The people in the ground command center cheered together to celebrate their victory.

Artemis is the largest man-made object in the world today and probably in the future, only slightly smaller than the Chengdian No. 1 space power station.

In terms of weight alone, Artemis is not as heavy as the launch mass of the solar cell components of C-1.

At the end of July and the end of September, the two new Yuan-7s will launch into space with a total of more than 9 tons of solar panels. The Chengdian-510, which is only halfway completed, has an operating mass of 660 tons, making it the largest man-made spacecraft besides the Qianjin.

The only thing to be thankful for is that the completion of Chengdian-2019 will be delayed until , and it will take several more months to actually be put into operation. Overall, it will be half a year later than Artemis. This period will be the home turf for the artificial sun.

In terms of technical content, the two are actually at the same level, and the artificial sun is even higher in some aspects (referring to maintenance costs).

“All employees have done a great job. All coffee expenses for this month are covered by NACA!”

Robert was equally happy, but he also forgot to remind the Artemis operation team:

"It must be tested carefully and thoroughly before it flies to synchronous orbit, otherwise we will lose the string of this kite."

……

CBS: "The U.S. Congress passed a bill formally deeming the Wolf Clause discriminatory and unequal and abolishing it effective immediately."

Bloomberg: "Former NASA Administrator Claire Boden: China-U.S. friendship is reaching new heights, and we will move forward hand in hand in the future."

ABC: "Kissinger is about to start a visit to discuss"

The Times: "A vast conspiracy is taking shape around the Pacific, and the world needs to be on high alert."

TASS: "The traditional friendship between the two countries has a long history. The relationship between Romania and China is unbreakable and stronger than gold."

Agence France-Presse: "Huayin has achieved phased results in its routine meeting, and the Dawn-6 mission is being actively planned."

"..."

Throughout mid-to-late September, the huge progress that was happening silently in space did not occupy the top spot on the hot searches, and affairs on Earth still attracted everyone's attention.

The first Aramco business delegation left in early October. Although no transaction details were disclosed to the outside world, according to "sources", the total transaction amount reached by the two sides exceeded US$10 billion and involved a number of sensitive technologies.

This undoubtedly further exacerbated the panic of the outside world. Other countries throughout Europe and Asia frequently sent delegations to gather information, but so far it seems to have had no effect.

……

"Hello, Director Truk."

"It's nice to meet you, young Lin."

Truk and Lin Ju held hands, leaving a picture in the flash light.

The two people who shook hands each had their own thoughts:
Truk looked at this legendary figure intently. The Director of the Space Administration, Zhong Cheng, was so busy that he hurriedly attended the welcome ceremony and then disappeared. It was said that he went to inspect an engine base somewhere, and he was told that Vice Chairman Lin would have full authority for the time being.

This arrangement was very interesting. Truk was keenly aware that the young man in front of him was not simple at all.

From what he had learned over the past few days, he also learned that Lin Ju even had the largest office and the largest group of secretaries, and he immediately regarded this as a possible breakthrough.

Lin Ju was racking his brains thinking about how to get out, but was caught on the spot just as he was about to return to the base. Zhong Cheng and several deputy commanders were missing due to important matters, so he unexpectedly became the person who had the final say.

Lin Ju had no similar experience at all, so he simply left everything to the secretary of the Aviation Development Commission. He was determined to listen without doing anything, read without replying, and try not to miss a word except understanding the greetings.

After the public meeting, Lin Ju discussed the cooperation issues of United Mining with Truk according to the arrangement left by Zhong Cheng, and took him directly to the headquarters of United Mining to visit and kill time. Truk also gladly accepted it, without showing any reluctance, and followed him all the way to visit.

……

"Now, United Mining has made all preparations for lunar infrastructure!"

Lin Ju casually took a wooden model from the booth and carefully showed it to Truk:

"This is a highly integrated road-building machine that uses space cement technology. With it, we can carry out such a large-scale infrastructure operation with only a few dozen people.

In addition to this main machine, only four auxiliary operation vehicles and seven personnel are needed to operate at the designed efficiency.

Truk carefully observed the model in Lin Ju's hand. From a subjective impression, it was more like a combine harvester, and might be a little larger in proportion.

"How big is it and how heavy is it?"

"The first prototype should be around 45 tons when assembled, with a maximum length of 11 meters. You can see this part is the radiator fins that can be deployed. It also uses nuclear power, not isotope batteries, but a thermal ion power reactor with very high power, which can also power other machines.

According to our design expectations, this machine can build at least 350 meters per day."

With Lin Ju's reminder, Truk could roughly recognize the modular reactor module, which was not large in size, indicating that the technology was quite mature.

Xinyuan's world-leading nuclear technology is truly enviable, and it has truly achieved ubiquitous nuclear power.

The outside world has been able to analyze that Xinyuan's spacecraft has begun to be nuclear-powered in large quantities, because the amount of yellowcake imported by China has been steadily increasing, and the approximate number can be guessed.

"350 meters? That sounds a bit low."

Lin Ju: "So there will be at least six such road construction machines starting work at the same time. The first prototype sent up now is mainly used to collect data, and the construction period will be controlled within 6 to 8 months.

During this period, United Mining will develop the mine to a usable state and try to put our steel smelter into production."

"This is amazing. In Japan, we can't even repair a 6-meter municipal road in 300 months, but you decided to build a steel complex on the moon."

Truk couldn't help but think of the current status of Daiying's aerospace industry. It couldn't be said to be making great progress, but it was also a mess.

The country can still barely keep up with the mainstream with the help of the European Space Agency, but it has no money at all, its technology has been interrupted for half a century, and its rocket technology reserves may not even be as good as those of the island countries.

By selling the nuclear bomb, the few astronauts sent up with Ying and the data collected by the way have far exceeded the sum of all the achievements in aerospace in the past, but that's all. They can no longer participate in more operations. The Royal Army even decided to retire all tanks to save money...

But seeing that the space craze in the global village is getting higher and higher, Truk couldn't help but say:
"Mr. Lin, I think building such a consortium in space involves difficult technical issues involving all-round industries. Daiying still has a broad technical accumulation and is willing to provide services for United Mining.

We can provide many new types of space plants and very good life-support equipment, which are used on the International Space Station and are of very reliable quality. "

"..."

Lin Ju originally wanted to say a few polite words, but when he heard these two things, he was suddenly stuck.

According to the latest results of the bilateral secret talks, NACA will send a delegation to China for academic and experience exchanges on October 10, within a week of the Tianwen-18, the fastest spacecraft to reach Mars, entering orbit.

In response, the Aviation Development Commission will also organize a team to visit Aramco around November 11.

The issue of the spaceport construction was also formally notified to NACA in private contacts, and Robert immediately stated that NACA was willing to participate in all aspects of bidding in joint mining lunar development and spaceports, and to carry out "all possible cooperation."

To show its sincerity, NACA provided a set of test data and results on artificial ecosystems from earlier years.

At a time when the NACA space program had not yet been drastically cut and its status downgraded, NACA had ambitious visions of how to establish long-term colonies on Mars and the Moon, and therefore funded a series of artificial closed ecosystem projects.

The most famous of these is the largest closed ecosystem, Biosphere 2, which recruited volunteers to live in it for half a year. Although the Biosphere 2 environment eventually collapsed and the experiment failed, it provided rich data and reference experience.

Later, the NACA spacecraft design and space station design were more or less referenced from these data. These data are quite useful and indeed very advantageous in the lunar and future Mars programs.

NACA hopes to participate in the design of the life support and environmental systems of the spaceport or the United Mining Yushu Base, and has even pointed out that the environmental system design efficiency of several living modules in the Yushu base is very low.

Xinyuan has basically confirmed that NACA's strength in this area is top in the world, so when Truk talked about this aspect, Lin Ju's expression was very strange and he didn't answer for a while.

Although he quickly recovered and agreed casually, it did not escape Truk's attention, and he immediately had a bad feeling in his heart.

Dai Ying doesn't have much to show for it, and he did some research before coming here. This kind of field that requires long-term data support should be in great need in China.

I was deeply involved in both the biosphere experiment and the space plant experiment, and I indeed have a lot of first-hand data, which is impossible not to be attracted by.

Who is it? Lucia? The Alliance doesn't have these, and the European Space Agency is even less likely, so...

Truk remained calm on the surface and forced himself to suppress his speculation.

It was not until the end of the visit to United Mining that he asked:
"There are rumors that the Aerospace Development Commission is about to launch a super spaceport project with a capacity of tens of thousands of tons. Will this also be part of United Mining's future work?"

"That... I can't give you a definite answer, but the Aerospace Development Commission does intend to take humanity's space presence a step further and make groundbreaking changes."

After hearing this answer, Truk already had a basic idea in mind, and said:
"Such a grand plan requires an extremely huge investment of resources. Do you have any plans to invite foreign space agencies to join and participate, and to carry out extensive peaceful cooperation like the International Space Station?"

International Space Station? Excluding its own "extensive cooperation"?
Lin Ju expressed his doubts with his eyes before responding to Truk's question:

"Of course, the Aerospace Development Commission welcomes all friendly cooperation. The globalization of the aerospace strategy is also a very important part. If you are willing to join, you can pay more attention to the latest news from the Aerospace Development Commission."

If Dai Ying seems to be able to join, then forces outside the Huayin organization can also participate, so... Musk is not bragging, his interviews are all telling the truth, and it is possible that Lin Ju really invited him to ride on the space plane.

In a short period of time, Truk has sorted out a lot of information and completed most of his mission.

Damn, the Yankees really betrayed the free world!
Since NACA released the exclusive interview with Musk, it is building momentum. The most advanced and largest aerospace forces on earth are about to be combined!

When I think of the so-called unified space order proposed by the Ame representative at the UN General Assembly, I am afraid that in reality the space is directly ruled by two parties, and all other people conducting space exploration must follow their rules.

The space forces that have been established on both sides and are currently in full swing are probably also related to this matter!
Truk no longer had any desire to stay here any longer, and wished he could set off immediately to return to Daiying, with only one thing to tell him:

The Yaita system that was established after World War II is about to be smashed by a joint force!
(End of this chapter)