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

Freeman couldn't believe that Professor Robert would make such a fallacy, and immediately found a chair to sit down and re-analyze the information obtained by the Hexagon Building.

Hexagon's detection methods are mainly satellites, and some rays collected by X37B are also analyzed. The information that can be inferred is very limited.

But Freeman still checked carefully. Anthony poured a cup of coffee for each of them, and then began to wait patiently.

An hour later, Freeman put down the pen in his hand, took off his glasses and rubbed his sore eyeballs.

"Yes, that's right. Judging from the position of the heat source, one end of its NX-17 should be placed in the center if it is a closed Brayton cycle, so there are two possibilities now."

Anthony: "What two possibilities?"

"First, XAP installed a huge heat dissipation mechanism or counterweight, or both, in the remaining space. That launch was a single-stage orbit test, and 22 tons was exactly the limit load of a single-stage orbit. This makes sense.

The second possibility..."

Freeman sat up straight and crossed the fingers of his hands.

"The remaining two-thirds of the space and mass are installed with other equipment, some kind of extremely energy-consuming device that consumes more than 200 kilowatts; and it must be required to maintain high power regardless of whether there is sunlight or not, so nuclear power is needed. ,That's it."

Anthony: "So... this is probably some kind of secret weapons test?"

Freeman shook his head crazily: "You AAF have been under too much pressure recently. You think the worst of everything you see. There are so many conspiracies. Don't always hype conspiracy theories.

Moreover, NX-17 is large in size and has a low orbit. If it does not consume fuel to maintain the orbit for about a year, it will have an obvious orbit decline. This shows that it is indeed not an important secret weapon test carrier. On the contrary, it shows that there is something wrong. "

Anthony: "I understand. Anyway, thank you doctor. I think the Air Force has another project group that can apply for funding."

Freeman heard Anthony's obviously relaxed tone in the second half of his sentence, and felt relieved.

He doesn’t want to inexplicably become an evil scientist who hypes up conspiracy theories, and his involvement in the development of nuclear propulsion is for space exploration, not for the war on Earth. He is a vegetarian and a pacifist!

…

Southeast of the outside of Qom Crater, where the Dawn-2 "Full Moon" lander is located.

In order to protect the hard-earned samples from being lost, the two Explorer II robots slowed down and walked over a little bit. Fortunately, the samples they carried were large pieces of moon rock and ice, so it was relatively easy to clamp them.

On the ground, an appeal has been trending:

"It is highly recommended to provide a carrying bag for the detector"

This topic comes from a photo sent back by Explorer 6. It uses its four legs at the head and tail to grab a piece of ice placed on its back. It looks very awkward.

So I don’t know which platform someone suggested to equip the explorer with a bag to hold samples, and they also guessed that it could be made of various materials such as metal foil and woven mesh.

When the camera of the "Full Moon" lander captured two large spiders gathered around the lander, each carrying samples, the topic quickly became hotter.

At the same time, some people created emoticons at a very fast speed. The text is:

"The poor relatives in the moon country are coming to see you with souvenirs."

Don't tell me, it seems like that's really the case.

The "full moon" only stays for two or three days and is a visitor to the moon, and these robots will obviously stay on the moon until they are scrapped. It makes sense to give some "souvenirs" to the guests!

However, the climax of the live broadcast on the lunar surface is the picture captured by the camera in the ascender cabin. After the ground issued a command to unlock the hatch, Yutu 3 put down the lunar rock sample and climbed up to the hatch from the ladder for humans to climb up and down, and then used its two front legs to Hooked the handle and opened the ascender hatch.

Imagine the scene inside the ascender in which the hatch is opened by a half-erected eight-legged robot from outside. To use a currently fashionable word, it is very "cyberpunk".

Yutu No. 3 climbed into the ascender that can accommodate up to three people. It did not occupy a large area, but the extremely high-definition eight-legged robot expansion screen under normal conditions still made people think that some alien creature had climbed in.

Yutu 3 easily grabbed the cylindrical storage tank, carefully inserted its front feet into the dedicated fixed port, and carefully retreated toward the hatch with its six hind legs, once again shocking the global audience.

The one-sixth gravity makes the heavy and large machinery on the earth appear particularly flexible at this time. Coupled with the smooth images brought by the large bandwidth of the broadcast satellite, Yutu 3 seems to be alive.

Next, in the camera outside the lander, Yutu 3 and Explorer 6 opened the storage tanks and stuffed the samples they collected into them, and then started the last work: digging soil.

When Explorer II was designed, it was not expected to be used to collect a large number of samples, so the ground brought a shovel that could be installed with the Explorer's forefoot when preparing for the Dawn 2 mission.

Explorer 6 held down the lying storage tank, while Yutu 3 shoveled shovelfuls of lunar soil into the storage tank.

Researchers from JPL and MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory are also watching the live broadcast simultaneously.

Boris Rockwell opened his mouth slightly, touched his chin, turned the swivel chair at an angle, and looked at the people who were also silent.

"Robotic arm, the more robotic arms, the more flexible it is, right? A good robotic arm has too many uses."

"But the lifespan of joints is too short." Someone objected:

"The joint life of Explorer II is only one year at most. Their Explorer I satellite has photographed that the speed of activity has slowed down greatly. We designed a Mars rover, where there are storms and sand with extremely high metal content, and the speed of joint wear is Extremely fast.

The rubber sleeve on Earth cannot be used either. The friction between low temperature and fine dust will wear it out in a short time. We can't just make consumables. "

Boris: “It shows that we need newer and better sealing technology. Also, who says that spacecraft cannot be consumables?

We only launched one detector in the past ten years, but ADC has launched more than a dozen detectors in the past two years. Even if they can only be used for one year, the effect is stronger than one that can be used for more than ten years.

And, Thomas, can all MIT give us is a writhing maggot? "

Thomas: "That's a snake robot!"

Boris: "I don't want maggots or snakes. JPL gave you all the $150 million from NACA, but look at this thing, it's not even one percent as good as the Explorer!"

As he spoke, Boris picked up the laser pointer and pressed the switch. What looked like a piece of mechanical garbage in the corner suddenly began to squirm. A snake-like robot about 1.5 meters long was seen twisting and twisting hard on the smooth floor, and then weirdly Moved near the light spot.

This is the research result of MIT. They envisioned an underground exploration robot that can autonomously carry out deep geological exploration tasks, with ultra-long standby time and strong obstacle surmounting capabilities. In fact, the technical difficulty is even slightly higher than that of Explorer II.

But no one is going to see a burrowing snake, and taxpayers aren't going to pay for such a weird thing.

Boris: "You should be more pragmatic. Google is much better than you. Their humanoid robot can already pour coffee! If you put it on the moon, you can at least pick up a shovel and dig some soil for us to bring back."

While talking, the two big spiders have worked together to complete the filling process. There are about 50 to 70 kilograms of samples in the storage tank. At this time, its outer surface is covered with moon dust adsorbed by static electricity, which cannot be cleaned by the big spiders. , but the problem is not big. It will be put into the metal woven bag that has been opened in advance on the ascender. After it is put into the return capsule, moon dust will not be scattered everywhere.

Explorer 6 took over the important task of putting back the tank. It lifted the tank like an ant holding a grain of rice and spent half an hour putting it in place. Then it exited without any hesitation and gently pushed the external hatch door. Its closed.

Before completely leaving the lander, the two big spiders each raised one of their front legs and waved, and then slowly crawled away to a distance of about 100 meters.

110 minutes later, the ascender took advantage of the docking window passed by the Shuguang-2 spacecraft to start its engine and leave the lander to take off, preparing to rendezvous and dock with the spacecraft.

This process was also fully automatic, and it took only forty minutes to successfully dock. It transported the bagged storage tank that the space agency had been thinking about to the command module through the docking port, and then gently left.

There is nothing valuable in the ascender. It will use the remaining fuel to slow down and crash into the lunar surface into a pile of debris after dozens of hours.

The command module, which has overstayed its stay for more than ten days, will also be propelled by the service module to start its three-day return journey. Finally, it will re-enter the atmosphere with the lunar soil and the dummy, and bring back the first sample obtained by the space agency. .