This star is going to the moon

Chapter 210 Blue Star Aerospace Commercial Astronaut Training Program

Dinner time, news broadcast.

"According to the Annan News Network, relevant departments in Annan and Britain have confirmed that the 39 victims found in Essex on October rd were all Annanese..."

Thanks to Lu Yun's appearance, a large number of people watched the news broadcast on time.

Originally, many people wanted to read Lu Yun's news, but as they watched, they found that the information reported by the News Broadcast was too broad, ranging from domestic political trends to economic development, to social livelihood, culture and sports, scientific and technological innovation, and military and agriculture.

Overseas, it’s international relations and international hot spots.

Young people who spend all day on the Internet and end up creating information cocoons for themselves have opened up a new channel for obtaining information.

Many people went from looking for information about Lu Yun to liking to watch the news broadcast.

After watching it, you can also complain about current affairs with the elders at home, which makes family relationships much more harmonious.

"The nationality of the 39 victims in the truck has finally been confirmed. They were Annanese. Those foreign media outlets are so full of themselves, claiming they were Chinese right away. They have bad intentions!"

"Yeah, there's no need to sneak across the border from China. We can just get a visa, buy a plane ticket and go there comfortably."

"Hey, you two should just keep quiet. After all, almost 40 people died."

"Okay, okay, Mom, you're the boss at home. Dad, change the channel to CCTV 13. The Shenzhou 11 astronauts' extravehicular activity will soon begin. This will be Zhai Zhigang's first extravehicular activity in years, and also Wang Yaping, who will be our country's first female astronaut to do so."

"That's great. Let's take a look at this. Isn't our country working on a manned lunar landing? Do you think Wang Yaping will become the first female astronaut to walk on the moon?"

"Wouldn't that really make her 'Chang'e'?"

On the other side, Lu Yun and others were also paying attention to this extravehicular mission.

In other words, after deciding to build the "space dock", Blue Star Aerospace Company will pay attention to every extravehicular mission of the space station.

After all, it is called a "dock", but it is actually equivalent to a normal space station module, with a diameter of 4 meters and a length of 10 meters.

So even though there are various space station modules on the ground for them to study, it is best to directly observe how they actually perform in space by observing the modules that have been launched into space.

That is to say, now that we have the Tiangong Space Station in China, there will be a large number of extravehicular missions in the future, so it will be more convenient to observe. This kind of observation was not possible before.

Lu Yun and the others had already finished their meal, so they were all watching attentively.

"Zhai Zhigang is also a veteran. As one of the first astronauts and the first person in China to perform a spacewalk, this is his second time flying into space and performing a spacewalk. Do you think he'll retire from missions and transition to a teaching position after completing the 13th mission?"

"He's 53 years old this year, probably about the same age. What, any ideas?"

"Our company has built the prototype of the Kite. We will then undergo intensive ground testing, and then launch our maiden flight in the middle of next year. We need to find a few real astronauts to take charge, right?"

"Yes, I think so too. We are going to develop space tourism in the future. Although space tourists don't need to train for several years like real astronauts, a brief training is still necessary. I even think that when we first manned the spacecraft, we must have real astronauts accompanying us on the flight, so that any emergencies can be handled by professionals."

"We also need to build our own commercial astronaut team. If the Kite makes its maiden flight in the middle of next year, then the manned mission will be carried out almost a year later. We certainly can't train a professional astronaut in one year, but it should be enough to train a commercial astronaut to fly a highly automated space shuttle."

"Commercial astronauts are called astronauts, but they are actually a combination of space shuttle pilot, captain, and flight attendant..."

While watching the live broadcast of the Shenzhou 13's extravehicular activity, Lu Yun listened to Yu Xingchen and the others chatting, and felt that what they said did make sense.

Although the Muyuan is highly automated, a professional astronaut is still required to operate a manned mission to maximize safety redundancy. Just like Ma Yilong's Crew Dragon spacecraft, it was originally designed to have a very cool reverse thrust landing, which means that instead of using a traditional parachute to slow down the landing, the reverse thrust engine is activated to slow down the landing.

Just like the return of a reusable rocket.

(Online photo, early test photo of the Crew Dragon spacecraft's reverse thrust landing)
However, although this method is cool, NASA believes that it is not mature enough and cannot provide enough safety redundancy, so it asked SpaceX to switch to parachute mode.

The same goes for the Kite. Even though it has very advanced automatic programs, it still has to retain the basic manual operating system, and there must be astronauts on board during manned flights.

So even though the Kite can carry six people, only five tickets are sold because one seat is for the "driver".

But in the end, it was calculated that there was only one year to train commercial astronauts, and everyone looked at Lu Yun.

The reason for this situation is that the development speed of the Kite is too fast!
Many considerations of commercial space companies are different from those of the national space team. The national team can train astronauts for a long time, but commercial space companies are very concerned about costs.

If astronaut training starts very early, if the progress of the Muyuan is not ideal, then the astronauts trained with great efforts will be "idle".

To put it bluntly, it causes a waste of resources.

Therefore, we need to wait until the Mu Kite project is almost complete before we start training commercial astronauts.

I didn’t expect that Lu Yun really did what he said. Even though it was impossible to use the “big technology integration theory” on a large scale, he was able to make the space shuttle project progress so quickly.

Fortunately, one year is almost enough to train commercial astronauts.

Of course, this is where Lu Yun comes in.

It is easy for general commercial aerospace companies to hire retired astronauts. In 2014, five of the first batch of domestic astronauts retired, but none of those five astronauts had ever been to space.

If they want astronauts who have been to space to help them train commercial astronauts, or even rent equipment from an astronaut training center, that will not be done in a short time.

If Lu Yun took action, Yu Xingchen and the others felt that they could accomplish it in a week at most.

Even if there are no suitable astronauts to carry out manned flight missions a year later, Lu Yun might be able to discuss with the Astronaut Center about renting active astronauts to serve as "drivers".

The regulations of the Astronaut Center are another matter, but the astronauts themselves are definitely very willing.

After all, astronauts train for so many years just to go to space.

Especially for the first five astronauts who retired without ever being in space, it is estimated that this will become the biggest regret of their lives.

But people like Yang Liwei, the director of the Astronaut Center and the "first domestic astronaut", only stayed in space for 21 hours.

He is very envious of today's astronauts who can stay in space for several months.

When the reporter interviewed him, he also said that he was still participating in training and could still perform tasks if necessary.

But that is basically impossible because the second batch of astronauts have already begun to take the lead.

Lu Yun knew that the Shenzhou 14, whose information had not yet been announced, had already begun to let the second batch of astronauts serve as commanders.

So when Lu Yun noticed that everyone was looking at him, he said, "No problem, the company's commercial astronaut program can be launched."

(End of this chapter)