This star is going to the moon

Chapter 380 The Future of Humanity: The Shift of Power Between the West and the East!

[The name Lu Shenqi chose... is quite unique.]

[Haha, what the hell, they named it "The Inspiration" on a whim!]

[It's confirmed, Lu Shen isn't perfect, because his naming skills are terrible!]

Speaking of this reminds me of the time he named China's domestic space internet constellation "Zhou Tian Xing Dou Da Zhen" (Great Array of the Celestial Stars).

[Well, actually, Lu Yun's choice of "A Moment of Inspiration" as the name for the space shuttle is somewhat reasonable, because Elon Musk's choice of a name is even less reliable.]

Oh, how so?

[Haha, anyone who follows aerospace closely knows this; it just goes to show that these unusual names often have a historical origin.]

Indeed, although Elon Musk's rocket recovery ship has a rather quirky name, it comes from the Civilization science fiction series, highlighting Musk's preferences...

The three Falcon 9 first-stage rocket recovery ships are named "Of Course I Still Love You," "Read the Instructions First," and "Undignified."

【Ah this...】

I get it. It's like naming a village child "Dog's Leftovers"—a strange name makes it easier to raise a child...

Before Rowoon's space shuttle appeared, many netizens admitted that Ma Yilong was stronger than Rowoon.

Even though Lu Yun developed the Wanhu rocket, which is 60% the size of the Falcon 9 rocket, in just over a year, the true pioneer of reusable rockets is still Mai Yilong.

In the future, no matter how many reusable rockets there are, they will all have to say that they "draw inspiration from the Falcon 9 rocket".

Therefore, even the names that Elon Musk gave to the three Falcon 9 rocket recovery ships have been interpreted in various ways.

The most basic interpretation is that they originate from the famous "Civilization" series of science fiction novels, demonstrating Elon Musk's love for science fiction and his commitment to creating science fiction through his actions.

For example, his famous Mars colonization plan.

Then he said that only someone like him could lead humanity to the stars and the sea, that he was the "light of humanity," blah blah blah...

The most prominent feature is freedom and spontaneity.

Unlike certain countries, cloud computing companies, or corporations that call the recovery ships for Wanhu rockets the "Wanhu Recovery" series, dividing them into No. 1 ships, No. 2 ships, and so on.

It's not free or casual at all; it's filled with a dull atmosphere!

Such people cannot be the light of humanity.

Even the rocket recovery capsule owned by Blue Origin, the company headed by Jeff Bezos, has a nice name – Jacqueline.

This name isn't from a science fiction book; it's the name of Bezos's mother.

Although Blue Origin's 7-meter diameter reusable heavy-lift rocket "New Glenn" is still nowhere in sight, it doesn't stop the company from building a 10,000-ton rocket recovery ship first.

After all, Bezos has been the world's richest man for several years in a row, so he has plenty of money.

Because he has money, Bezos doesn't care too much about the development speed of the "New Glenn" rocket; he just wants everything to proceed smoothly and safely.

He doesn't have the same "explosive" personality as Ma Yilong.

Blue Origin was founded 20 years ago with the initial goal of launching the "New Glenn" rocket in 2020, which is this year.

But at the beginning of this year, they postponed it to the end of next year.

However, Lu Yun did know that in his previous life, Blue Origin's "New Glenn" rocket did not make its maiden flight until 25 years later.

It was around the same time as the maiden flight of several commercial reusable rockets developed by China.

Not to mention that with Lu Yun's involvement in this life, several domestic commercial aerospace companies have made rapid progress. Apart from Blue Star Aerospace, their reusable rocket "Red Sparrow II" has made its maiden flight this year.

Of course, the Red Sparrow II was not recovered during its maiden flight; the plan was to attempt to recover it during the second launch.

After all, not every chief designer of a commercial rocket is named "Lu Yun".

Compared to their foreign counterparts, and knowing that the name Lu Yun gave to the space shuttle was relatively "serious," those netizens who were used to "serious narratives" stopped saying anything.

They are now looking forward to the official commercial operation of the "Ingenuity" space shuttle and the first fully commercial space tourism in human history.

However, as soon as December began, two pieces of bad news emerged.

First, the "2020 Global Ecological Environment Remote Sensing Monitoring Annual Report" was released.

The report focuses on three topics: “Global Major Grain and Oil Crop Production and Food Security Situation,” “Global Urban Expansion and Land Cover Change,” and “Antarctic Ice Sheet Change,” and conducts remote sensing monitoring and analysis.

Among them, "Changes in the Antarctic Ice Sheet" is a new topic that has been expanded this year.

In the two decades since the beginning of this century, the Antarctic ice sheet has melted significantly, with the melted area accounting for 19% of the total area of ​​the Antarctic ice sheet!

The report indicates that melting is mainly occurring at the edges of the Antarctic ice sheet and in the Antarctic Peninsula region, and is showing an increasing trend.

The Antarctic Peninsula is experiencing the most severe melting, and the increased frequency of winter foehn winds and anomalous circulation phenomena have intensified the melting trend.

It is predicted that the melting of the Antarctic ice sheet will continue to increase in the future, especially in West Antarctica and the Antarctic Peninsula, and its impact on sea level rise will become significant.

Several small island nations are already suffering greatly, and Tuvalu may even be submerged by the sea in 30 to 50 years.

China's territory is vast; even if the entire Antarctic ice sheet melted, it wouldn't be completely submerged, and there's even the towering western plateau.

The "Doomsday Ark" in the famous apocalyptic movie "2012" was built in the western plateau. The great flood finally reached the western plateau, allowing enough people to enter the Doomsday Ark and preserving the spark of human civilization.

Of course, the movie's plot was pretty far-fetched.

However, the big scenes are indeed spectacular.

Moreover, Lu Yun remembered that apocalyptic web novels were very popular one or two years ago, but after one or two years, no apocalypse happened, and those apocalyptic web novels declined.

However, if the Antarctic ice sheet melts, China's long coastline will be in danger as sea levels rise.

After all, the coastal areas of China are very economically developed regions.

As a result, the issue of global warming has once again been placed on the agenda.

This is why humanity has been searching for extraterrestrial life and Earth-like planets.

In the 1960s, the United States began building giant radio telescopes—the Arecibo Radio Telescope—by utilizing the mountain structure.

The entire telescope consists of a receiving disk with a diameter of 305 meters at the bottom, and a receiving platform weighing 900 tons suspended above it.

Three reinforced concrete towers support 18 cables, helping to suspend the receiving platform above the tray.

Arecibo Radio Telescope

After its completion, it was called the "Eye of the Earth".

It helped search for dangerous near-Earth asteroids, look for signs of extraterrestrial life, and discover the first planet outside our solar system.

In 1974, it underwent a complete refit and, after the refit was completed, sent a signal consisting of 1679 binary digits to the spherical star cluster M13, which is 25000 light-years away from Earth, in an attempt to make contact with extraterrestrial civilizations.

This is the famous "Arecibo Information".

This includes information from binary 1 to 10, the chemical element sequence and structure of human DNA, the human form, and information about the solar system. (The famous "Arecibo Message")
However, as time went on, the maintenance costs of the aging Arecibo radio telescope increased year by year.

The space research institute that manages the telescope has been applying for funding, but federal grants are dwindling.

Since 2017, the Arecibo Telescope has suffered a series of "damage".

Back then, the strong winds brought by Hurricane Maria caused the 430 MHz feed line to break and fall onto the main mirror disk, damaging about 30 of the 38000 aluminum plates on the receiving disk.

Because Arecibo's observation data primarily relied on feeds and receivers located in the dome, rather than line feeds, the overall damage caused by Maria was minimal.

But the two injuries Arecibo suffered this year were quite severe.

In August, the passage of Tropical Storm Isaias caused an auxiliary cable to detach, creating a hole about 30 meters long on the receiving panel, which greatly affected the operation of the telescope.

However, due to limited funds, the engineers spent a long time trying to repair the cable with the least amount of money. Just as they were about to start the repair, the second main cable fell on November 6.

The engineering team had initially estimated that the telescope's structure could continue to bear the weight, but the new incident shows that their assessment was wrong and could endanger the lives of the repair personnel.

Sure enough, around 8 a.m. on December 1, the telescope completely collapsed.

The 900-ton receiving platform completely collapsed and fell, directly destroying a large area of ​​the receiving surface.

(Collapse diagram)

When scientists saw this, many of those who had worked around it for a long time wept.

“I was in the ground control room not far away, and it sounded like a rumbling. I knew what it was, and I just screamed... I can’t put it into words. It was a very profound and terrifying feeling.”

"I feel unwell in my stomach. Many people have done a lot of hard work to repair this facility, but we have not succeeded. It is really disappointing. This morning has been tough."

"When I heard the news, I was devastated. It was so hard to accept, like losing someone important in my life."

In fact, the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Virginia and the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia can also undertake some of Arecibo's data collection tasks, but these two observatories are far less sensitive to radio signals than Arecibo.

Therefore, scientists believe that abandoning Arecibo means the de facto end of the US's extraterrestrial radio surveillance program.

Currently, the most feasible approach is still reconstruction.

The rebuilt Arecibo will become an important scientific research facility in many fields, especially in the field of gravitational waves.

However, scientists also acknowledge that economic factors must be taken into account.

Therefore, the newly elected Deng and Congress will be the biggest obstacle to funding.

Fortunately, they have figured out some tricks of the trade over the years, so the scientists told reporters, "Now, FAST is the only 'eye' left in the whole world."

"You asked what FAST is? It's China's radio telescope. It's currently the only one of its kind on Earth, and it has a diameter of 500 meters, which is more than 100 meters larger than Arecibo..."

Arecibo and the FAST telescope in China and Laos are hailed as "two big eyes of the earth" in radio astronomy.

To monitor a source with a weak radio spectrum, two large radio telescopes are needed, one pointed at the object during the day and the other at night.

Compared to the aging Arecibo, the 500-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST), known as the "Sky Eye" by China, was built in 2016, underwent four years of commissioning and operation, and was officially opened to traffic at the beginning of this year after passing acceptance tests.

(FAST, the 500-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope)
Currently, only Chinese and Lao scientists are using it, but next year we will solicit observation applications from astronomers worldwide.

Although the US prohibits cooperation between China and Laos in the aerospace field, only Laos and China can do this job now. If these scientists were to go and work in Laos, China would probably welcome them.

What if the Chinese detect extraterrestrial civilization first...

"Hey America, you don't want the Chinese to detect alien civilizations first, do you?"

"Then what are you waiting for? Send the money!"

Although the scientists didn't say these words, the meaning was already quite clear.

Then the federal leadership remained unmoved!
This is a crucial moment for the transfer of power at the federal level. Trump doesn't want to relinquish power and has accused the Democratic Party of election fraud. Meanwhile, the Biden administration is focused on preventing Trump from causing trouble and has no time to pay attention to matters related to space exploration.

"alien?"

"The federal government has been searching for decades and couldn't find it, but the Chinese can find it in just two years?"

"We're busy with partisan strife right now, let's deal with the opposing party first!"

"And you also reported before that as the number of constellations like Starlink and Stardust increases, the impact on ground-based astronomical observations is significant, right?"

"They even said that it would be best to build a new radio telescope in a crater on the far side of the moon where there is no interference. Then why did the Federation spend money to rebuild Arecibo?"

"Why not save the money and invest it all in the return-to-the-moon program!"

the scientist:"……"

Regardless, space enthusiasts still feel it's quite a pity.

Moreover, they discovered problems from many subtle clues.

I've noticed that while the federal GDP is growing year after year, funding for space exploration, especially deep space exploration, is decreasing. Why is that?

Yes, China is building a lot of deep space exploration equipment, while the federal government neither maintains the old equipment nor builds new ones. Is it abandoning deep space exploration?

[No way! I remember NASA has several deep space probes planned for the future, and they just launched a new Mars probe with an unmanned helicopter—these are all breakthroughs.]

[China is also working on this, and they've even added new ground-based equipment construction, while the federal government has been consistently cutting funding. It seems like there are many deep space exploration projects ahead, but it's uncertain how many will be able to sustain them.]

Indeed, to my knowledge, at least three projects are facing budget cuts next year.

Is it that serious? Where did all that space funding go? Did it all end up in the return-to-the-moon program?

I'm certain that military spending will increase further next year, but space spending may not.

[Sigh, why does the Federation love waging wars so much? If they withdrew from those overseas bases, they could save a lot of money. If they could use that money for space exploration... I can't even imagine!]

So don't even think about it, it's impossible. Without the support of that military spending, the Federation would definitely collapse.

I used to fantasize about what it would be like if NASA received funding equivalent to the military budget; then Elon Musk wouldn't even have a chance to do Mars colonization. Now I don't even dare to think about it.

Unfortunately, commercial space companies don't engage in deep space exploration, which is considered a "money-losing" endeavor. Currently, only Elon Musk's dream of colonizing Mars and Yun Loo's lunar landing program seem somewhat feasible.

Chinese netizens didn't seem to care much about the loss of Arecibo, since there are bigger and better ones available in China.

Moreover, compared to those within the federal government, older Chinese are more likely to perceive from the outside how rapidly the United States is declining.

Of course, it's also possible that China's development has been too rapid, thus highlighting the rapid decline of the United States.

In reality, to others, the United States remains the invincible beacon of the world.

After all, eleven nuclear-powered aircraft carriers are no joke.

However, Chinese military enthusiasts have noticed that as China's Type 003 aircraft carrier begins construction rapidly, most of the United States' eleven aircraft carriers are out of commission.

Even getting it into the dry dock for maintenance requires waiting in line.

This is unprecedented.

However, while the government is concerned about this, most people are looking forward to humanity's first fully commercial space trip!
(End of this chapter)