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

On August 28, ESA suddenly announced the "Selene" manned moon landing plan.

This is not a preview before the official implementation, but a very common PPT display. Occasionally, everyone will use their imagination and make some imaginary pictures to make everyone happy.

The Selene plan is to use the power of the European Space Agency to lead the development of manned spacecraft with Italy and Italy, and Germany and Russia to take the lead in developing landers, and then jointly implement the manned moon landing plan around 2020.

The main thing of interest is the rocket. The Selene Project will use a new rocket with a liquid oxygen kerosene core engine core stage bundled with a solid rocket booster to launch the spacecraft and lander into the lunar orbit in two stages, and then dock and land on the moon. .

The solid rocket booster is the EAP currently used by Ariane 5, but the core-stage rocket is interesting. The engine... can I buy it from the dismantled place? And the rocket is recyclable?

Perhaps to prove that he is serious about drawing the PPT this time, ESA has proposed the goal of approving the first batch of US$10 billion in funding and a five-year development plan for the Selene Project.

Of course, given the ESA's style of doing things, it will probably be finalized next year, but it still caused shock in the European and American world.

Europe is: Can we, the old European flag people, finally put people on the moon by ourselves without using Aramco’s big and crude rockets?

NACA: You poor settlers want to rebel? If you tell me that you want to go to the moon, at worst, Artemis will give you two more spots and it will be over.

As for Badis, who is still working hard at ESA, Italy has been very ambitious in recent years and has good industrial strength. However, ESA has too many members and everything is delayed and troublesome.

Anyway, the Aerospace Development Commission has said that it must wait until the Veneto 1 rocket project is approved before approving the engine to pass customs. To promote the Veneto 1 rocket, it is not enough to do it alone with profit...

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B-level base, laser laboratory.

As a confidential laboratory with the same status as the nuclear base, there are not many people in the laser laboratory, but they are all elusive. The outside world basically does not know that such a financial behemoth exists in the base.

As the general person in charge of the laser project, Zhao Xiaowen is not always at the base, but occasionally returns to the school.

On this day, he was browsing the journals on the school intranet, and then saw an interesting paper:

"Concept for a separate water-based rocket booster"

At the heart of the paper is an alternative type of rocket engine: the water rocket engine.

Many people should know the name Water Rocket. For example, if you buy a bottle of Coke, put a few Mentos in it, drill a hole in the bottle cap and turn it upside down, then the expanding gas will be sprayed out with high-speed water flow, and the Coke will be blown away. The bottle is sent up to a height of several meters to more than ten meters.

This is a water rocket, but the water rocket engine is different.

Aramco's ARCA, an aerospace company with a somewhat strange focus, has developed water rocket engines.

Their water engine ground test is like this: water is heated to a boiling state in a boiler at 250 degrees Celsius, and then sprayed out through the engine nozzle. It's that simple.

Using water as the jet, the thrust of the water engine is extremely amazing. The thrust of a single engine reaches 7,000 tons!

The thrust of the Saturn V's F1 hydrogen-oxygen engine is only 680 tons. ARCA's water engine uses a smaller combustion chamber to achieve ten times the thrust of the F1. Isn't it amazing?

Although the thrust-to-weight ratio is the highest among rocket engines, the problem is that the specific impulse of the water engine is too low, only 67 seconds.

This ratio is so hopelessly bad that it is almost impossible to fly out of the atmosphere with it.

There is another problem. ARCA’s idea is that the rocket must not only carry thousands of tons of heavy water, but also carry enough high-energy batteries and resistance wires, which is another huge pile of dead weight.

So the water engine...just take a look.

But this graduation thesis written by a senior student is different. It has an innovative point: water is not heated on the rocket.

Instead, an external heating surface is reserved at the bottom of the rocket equipped with a water engine. Several high-energy lasers are continuously irradiated on the ground to generate continuous high temperatures. The rocket only needs to pump the water down, and the high temperature irradiated by the lasers will be excited to a bumping state to generate thrust.

If the diameter of the water rocket is 14 meters and the height is about 50 meters, it can just meet the requirement of holding 7,500 tons of water. A water rocket engine with a thrust of 10,000 tons is installed at the bottom.

The goal of such a water rocket is not to send the spacecraft into space, but to install a normal rocket of about 1,000 tons on the upper stage and send it from the ground to an altitude of 8,000 to 10,000 meters. The normal rocket on the upper stage then starts the engine. Keep flying into space.

In theory, this method can significantly reduce the weight and volume of the upper-stage rocket, thereby saving the cost of the large thrust required for the low-altitude ascent stage.

Because the cost of the water rocket below is very cheap, how simple is it to just have a combustion chamber that can withstand a high temperature of 250 degrees? Ordinary stainless steel will suffice, and the shell must meet the strength requirements. The cost is pitifully low, and water is free. The expensive heating part is a ground laser, which costs almost nothing.

Of course, Zhao Xiaowen, who is already an expert in the aerospace industry, would only find it interesting to see this, because in fact there is no need to do so. The cost of building ground lasers is extremely high, and the upper stage still requires a rocket, so the cost is not that low. Where to go, it would be better to shoot a few more reusable rockets or a whole space shuttle.

However, this paper itself is very valuable. The author's thinking logic is very forward-looking, and he has given many designs with practical potential, so it must be a good idea.

Such talents can be brought into the laboratory early, and they will become great talents in the future.

Zhao Xiaowen immediately began to contact the school to find someone, but learned that the student was facing expulsion?

It shouldn’t be!

He immediately called his counselor and asked what was going on, only to find out that the student named Gao Qitao had really tricked him.

Gao Qitao's own performance was relatively outstanding. He just transferred to the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics in his junior year when the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics was established, and he still maintained his excellence.

As an outstanding student, he did not fall behind in other aspects. He graduated with fourth place in the flight school and obtained an independent jet flight license in July this year.

Gao Qitao, who has excellent flying skills, has received a lot of bonus flight time due to his extremely excellent performance. He even has a lot of flight time on the "Meteor" high-education aircraft.

You should know that the flight duration of a beginner-level training aircraft is converted to that of a higher-level training aircraft based on 24:1. The flight cost of the latter is very high.

Then in the first half of the month, Gao Qitao illegally flew at low altitude through the valley together - this is a behavior that is repeatedly banned in flight schools, but because it is usually done by instructors or top students, the punishment is not painful. Gao Qitao usually never had any trouble.

As a result, he somehow misjudged the direction that day, flew down the wrong tributary and entered a city area, and then because he slipped through the opening of someone's cross-river bridge...

It is said that the distance between the tail fin and the bridge deck was less than 3 meters at that time. It was an extremely thrilling but highly skilled aerobatic flight. However, the high-education aircraft was immediately warned by air traffic control and flew out of the permitted airspace of Xinyuan. It was found by the Air Force and local city leaders. Trouble.

There are already a large number of residents in the city who complain about the noise problem all day long. Many people make a fuss about this matter and make a fuss. It is not easy for the city to suppress it. They put pressure on them to withdraw from the school in order to quell the protests of the city residents.

The Air Force... The Air Force also severely criticized Gao Qitao, but told the latter that as long as he joined the Air Force, he could be admitted to military school in the future, and claimed that if he didn't become a pilot, he would have a record and couldn't find a job.

After hearing this, Zhao Xiaowen immediately said: "I know these vultures are staring at our students all day long, Xiao Gao, I guarantee it! Let's see who dares to let him go!"