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

"When will the manned moon landing be carried out? I still say the same thing, don't be anxious, the meal must be eaten one bite at a time and the road must be walked step by step.

The manned life-support part of our ascender has not yet been fully finalized. If it only takes four or five months to develop, it will be irresponsible for the lives of the astronauts and the people's ardent expectations. Some young comrades always want to get it right in one step, which is unacceptable in aerospace.

Landing a man on the moon is a huge project..."

Academician She, an old aerospace academician, spat at the R\u0026D people who attended the enlarged meeting and told them why they chose the fourth rocket to land on the moon. Lin Ju tilted his head and Wu Wen, who was also deeply involved in the design of the Long March 10 rocket and Dawn spacecraft, served as chief engineer. chat.

"President Wu, our Shuguang-3 plan won't be filled with only half the fuel, right?"

Wu Wenzhen: "That's not true. The fuel is full, but we will not carry out a real manned moon landing."

"What if astronauts want to do it?"

Wu Wenren: "It can't be locked remotely..."

Lin Ju: "..."

Well, the chief engineer himself admitted that he can’t expect a manned moon landing this year.

Wu Wenren has always been relatively taciturn, and after answering Lin Ju, he turned his head silently. At this time, Academician She had already appeased the young comrade's adventurous mentality and began to talk about the construction plan of the lunar scientific research station.

The Qom Crater Lunar Research Station, also known as the "Guanghan Palace-1" base, was proposed in early 2016 to be jointly constructed by China, Lucia, France, and Italy. However, now everyone has a tacit understanding to only discuss the self-construction part.

Academician She: "...the core of the scientific research station is first of all the living cabin. There are currently two plans: one is to build a living cabin consisting of more than one single living cabin weighing 10 to 20 tons and providing at least 15 cubic meters of space. The second is the mobile lunar base we envisioned, which weighs about 15 tons and can accommodate three people. To put it bluntly, it is a small RV on the moon.

I think the opinions of comrades are more in favor of fixed bases, but there are two options for fixed bases, namely direct stationing and digging caves for placement...

…”

When Shuguang-2 (the first flight of the Long March 10 is now officially called the Shuguang-1 mission) returned a clear image that was only 15 kilometers away from the lunar surface, the space agency already felt that it was very close to the moon. The construction of comprehensive scientific research stations/bases has naturally entered the actual planning stage.

In particular, the huge discovery of the Qom impact crater has intensified this urgency.

The Aerospace Development Committee is currently soliciting proposals from various academies and private enterprises. The requirement is to design solutions based on rockets under development/in service, which naturally includes Xinyuan.

The plan submitted by Xinyuan Company is relatively small, because it is all designed based on the transportation capacity of Xinyuan 2B. It takes 70% to 80% of the fuel to descend from the lunar orbit to the lunar surface. Xinyuan 2A and supporting landing Serev believes that the limit of the mass that the device can send to the lunar surface is 6 tons.

So when soliciting proposals, he directly submitted a bunch of designs from mining to storing liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, and other departments had no interest in participating.

Xinyuan's current focus is on unmanned base fuel production and the construction of orbital fuel delivery systems, so that large-scale and cheap lunar orbit-to-lunar surface transportation can be achieved.

For example, in the plan formulated by Serev, four 6-ton liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen production equipment are placed, which can produce about 43 kilograms of liquid hydrogen per day, and 4.3 tons of liquid hydrogen can be produced in 100 days.

In addition, the liquid oxygen produced at the same time is 38.83 tons of liquid oxygen/liquid hydrogen fuel. It should be no problem to store 36 tons in 100 days using zero evaporation storage technology.

Assume that a special MTV (Moon Travel Vehicle, a lunar shuttle that can travel between the lunar surface and the lunar surface and between the lunar surface and the lunar orbit) is built, with a dry weight of less than 4.5 tons, a fuel refueling of 36 tons per time, and a take-off mass of About 40 tons.

It consumes about 13 tons of fuel from taking off from the lunar surface to docking with the lunar space station. Then the remaining fuel in the fuel tank is extracted to the lunar space station for storage, leaving 8 to 9 tons of fuel for return to the lunar surface.

Each "refueling" mission can bring about 14 tons of fuel to the lunar space station, enough to fill the fuel storage tank of an H2N.

It takes 100 days to accumulate fuel to perform a replenishment. Including refurbishment, it is no problem to transport more than 40 tons of fuel to the lunar orbit three times a year.

If it is a lander used for landing on the moon, then a manned version of MTV will be developed, with a dry weight of 4.5 tons and a download load of 2.5 tons for personnel and equipment. One takeoff and landing will consume about 23 tons of fuel, which takes about 60 days to accumulate.

In other words, just four fuel production equipment can ensure the production of fuel from the lunar surface that can provide six repeatable landers per year.

If you want to keep landing on the moon once a year, you must use a reproducible lander in lunar orbit and lunar fuel to land on the moon. It is enough for one piece of equipment to work for 250 days, and the liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen produced in the remaining 100 days will be used by science and technology. Used at test stations.

The entire system requires at least one ice excavation/transport vehicle, one ice crushing/pure water production machine, one electrolytic hydrogen and oxygen preparation machine, 5 compression equipment, a storage module that can store 50 tons, and 3 supporting equipment. General nuclear electric vehicle with 40KW generating power.

To form a basic fuel extraction and storage system, at least 8 launch missions of Xinyuan 2B (three-stage configuration) are required. The total cost of rocket launches alone is quoted at 3.5 billion yuan.

The price quoted by Xinyuan for equipment is a minimum of 8 units, including the fixed price of 4.5 billion for the landers. The total construction price contracted by Xinyuan is a minimum of 8 billion yuan, with manufacturing costs accounting for 20% and total costs accounting for about 30%. The profit is quite considerable.

Although the initial price of the entire plan is 8.5 billion yuan (equivalent to 78% of the construction cost of the first two phases of the Tiangong Space Station in this plane and the total budget of the original Tiangong Space Station in the world), the prospects for realization are very good. It should be slightly more than 8 billion, not too high.

So when Academician She presented the unmanned lunar surface fuel production plan submitted by Serev, the participating researchers thought for a while and felt that it was reasonable and believed that the feasibility of the plan was extremely high without considering current needs. The scalability is also relatively good.

However, there are many other excellent plans. Anyway, it is a preliminary demonstration meeting. All kinds of wild ideas can be discussed and it is also good to provide inspiration and ideas.

Lin Ju saw novel ideas from all walks of life here. Some were eccentric, and some were completely beautiful ideas, but there were indeed many solutions that could be studied in depth.

After a meeting, the manned habitation part is still mired in controversy, but the preliminary unmanned preparations have basically reached a consensus:

Launch a short-distance lunar surface mobile laboratory to conduct small research missions;

Launch a lunar soil 3D printer to conduct research on on-site architectural structures;

Launch tunnel boring machines to excavate caves to provide micrometeorite/radiation protection for critical compartments and living compartments;

Launch a large-scale solar power generation array with a power of more than 500KW.