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

Texas.

A C17 transport plane landed at the military airport here, and a truck covered with a white cloth and the Canadian Space Agency logo drove out, with a line of small words below: "Canadaarm3"

The "Canada-3" robotic arm, which is equipped with the HALO (Habitation and Logistics Outpost Module), the first part of the "Gateway" space station in the Artemis program, was manufactured ahead of schedule and arrived at the Texas assembly base.

The HALO cabin has a mass of 8 tons and is the core part of the "Gateway".

The current Gateway Space Station roughly has four identified parts:

PPE (power and propulsion elements), which provides propulsion and 60KW power, manufactured by Aramco MAXAR Company;

HALO (Habitat Logistics Outpost Module), which together with the I-HAB provides 8 cubic meters of space for four people, manufactured by Northrop Grumman;

I-HAB (International Habitat Module), manufactured by ESA;

HLS (lunar surface lander), currently the "Blue Moon" manufactured by Blue Origin, may also be the StarShip starship in the future.

What is still being discussed is the science, airlock module and extended logistics module, but among the first four parts, the PPE and HALO have been completed, and the robotic arm can be installed and sent to lunar orbit.

The two parts, with a total weight of 13 tons, will be launched using the Falcon Heavy rocket. The launch date has been set in mid-January.

At Cape Calaveral, Lao Ma squinted as he watched a Falcon 9 reused four times launch four satellites from Singapore, Australia and the United States into the sky. He was excited for a while and then suddenly stopped.

The excitement is that Falcon 9's reusable technology is becoming more and more mature. It is frantically buying orders in the international market. The outside world's valuation of SpecaX is getting higher and higher. NACA has continued to support it, and its development trend is extremely good.

As of now, although the total launch quality is far inferior, the number of commercial order launches of specaX has exceeded Xinyuan Aerospace Power by a large margin.

At this time, he couldn't help but feel grateful for the Wolf Clause. Xinyuan and the space agency's external commercial orders were limited to a small surrounding area. Although it was quite a lot, it was definitely not comparable to specaX.

Xinyuan's biggest advantage is manned launches. At least according to outside analysis, most of their income comes from commercial flights. Together, Unity and Steadfast have maintained an average of one launch mission every eight days in the past four months, with a total of 95 missions. When people are sent into space, the amount of completed travel orders alone is as high as 900 million U.S. dollars, or 6.03 billion yuan.

There are still a lot of people queuing up behind. What’s even more outrageous is that there are more wealthy Europeans than Asians passing through the Oriental International Space Hotel Company. This is incredible.

There are also rumors circulating that after Alenia Aerospace’s space hotel is launched and docked with the Tiangong Space Station in 2017, the Oriental International Space Hotel will be reorganized and prepared to be listed. The New York Stock Exchange predicts that its market value may be more than 50 billion US dollars. The prospect Extremely optimistic.

In this regard, specaX plans to use the Falcon 9 rocket to join forces with Dream Chaser and Boeing, Grumman and other manufacturers to start a benchmark space tourism plan, which is expected to be completed by the end of 2017.

Starlink is not bad either. Since the Latitude and Latitude satellite network and several six-ton ​​geostationary satellites are rotating overhead, NACA and the International Telecommunications Association fully support Starlink. There are no launch problems at all, and the first generation is quickly built.

The first-generation Starlink weighs 260 kilograms and is mainly used for testing. However, due to the huge discovery of the Qom impact crater, Lao Ma decided to send it to the moon to provide navigation services in conjunction with the Artemis program.

But it is precisely on the moon that the ADC is too far ahead.

Not to mention anything else, the eight rovers that have landed and three landers equipped with considerable scientific research equipment have left the world far behind.

In fact, both NACA and SpecaX are extremely interested in the technology of Explorer robots. Half a year ago, the artificial intelligence laboratory composed of Google, MIT and NACA carried out several months of advancement before they could get a handle on it.

According to their research, it is not difficult to make an explorer with existing technology, but it requires a lot of precipitation. But if it is on the moon, it is exaggerated. At least the power consumption of the chip will be a troublesome problem.

The lab's schedule is to launch an intelligent robot like the Explorer in 2018. No matter how fast it is, AI training takes time. For this reason, they also acquired Boston Dynamics.

They believe that ternary chips have huge advantages in AI, but it is too difficult to turn around at this time, so they still stick to the original route.

As for Tesla and SpecaX, this aspect is just getting started.

After complex negotiations, the former's super factory in Shanghai finally agreed to start construction in March next year. It is expected to go into production in 2018 and produce one million Tesla cars annually, but in the end it is just a plan.

Musk stretched out his hand to mess up his hair. Although he looked a bit like a fat nerd, it was very comfortable and allowed people to relax and think.

The first-generation Raptor engine has been successful after receiving support from NACA, its reliability has passed acceptance, and the production line is being established, which also means that the starship is about to enter the substantial construction stage.

The take-off thrust of Starship-Super Heavy will exceed 6,000 tons. Although it is much smaller than the more than 7,000 tons of Xinyuan-3, both the booster and the spacecraft are reusable. Generally speaking, they are at the same level. It greatly surpasses the Long March 10 and SLS rockets.

Starship is SpecaX’s second reusable rocket project. The difficulty is exponentially higher than that of Falcon 9. Connecting 33 engines in parallel is an unprecedented challenge, but Musk is not afraid.

…

"What is the name of this new generation of manned spacecraft? It hasn't been named yet?"

"The Aviation Development Commission is collecting applications. The whole society is participating. The results will be available in a month. Anyway, it's too late."

At the Qiongzhou Space Launch Site, a Long March 7 rocket was erected, and above it was a new generation of manned spacecraft - the official version.

Androv was tossing the Pioneer here, and happened to chat with Academician She who came to the launch site.

The new generation of manned spacecraft has completed two unmanned flights so far, one was the suborbital atmospheric test test ship in July, and the other was the fully unmanned test ship carried by the Long March 10.

Today, the third ship launched on December 25 is also a manned version.

The Shenzhou spacecraft originally used four unmanned prototype ships because it lacked experience in the first development and did not dare to take risks. The new generation of manned spacecraft is different. After careful discussion, the Aviation Development Commission decided to conduct a manned test before the end of the year. shooting mission.

This first mission will carry three experienced astronauts from the space agency. They will take the spacecraft to live in low-Earth orbit for about three days without docking with the space station to simulate the living conditions of flying from the earth to the moon during the moon landing. .

The Long March 10 Yao-2 mission in two months' time will send a new generation of manned spacecraft to the moon and return in about 15 days. Because it is the first test flight, the YF-77GA will not be manned.

The Yaosan mission will be a fully manned flight around the moon equipped with a lunar lander. It can theoretically land on the moon as the last exercise before landing on the moon.

Academician She clenched his fists and suddenly felt that time was flying so fast.

Sending a man to the moon in less than three years, is this the true strength of China's aerospace industry?

Due to inflammation of the eyes, I have to rest for 3 days. There will be less updates. I will resume on Friday with chapter 3-4 updates.