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

On April 27, in the drizzle, the Storm was carefully fixed vertically on the central core stage of the Xinyuan-2A rocket with the help of a crane.

Since both the rocket and the space shuttle were too large to be sent into the final assembly building, the process could only be made public. The outside world finally photographed the combustion chambers of three A100 engines.

Compared with the combustion chamber of a conventional rocket engine, the combustion chamber of the A100 is also a huge bell-shaped nozzle, but there are many protrusions on the surface that look rough. At the same time, the tail is much larger than the H2M. It seems that it can still be used. The structure of the activity.

“The A100 studio will generate huge heat accumulation, most of which can be concentrated on the nozzle. There are many fine pipes distributed on the outer wall of the nozzle. During operation, liquid hydrogen will flow through and take away the heat.

The other part of the heat can only be dissipated under vacuum through the expandable heat dissipation plate at the tail. A total of six sides have an expanded area of ​​more than 100 square meters, so you have to be careful to prevent collisions when docking with the space station. "

Serev, the chief designer of the Tempest's airframe, briefly introduced the layout of the nuclear part to several experts from the Academy of Sciences, and the latter nodded frequently.

Now they were under the tower, shadowed by the complex's shadow.

All three A100 engines have withstood the long test run test, and the radiation is concentrated at the rear of the nozzle, so it is still very safe inside the space shuttle during operation.

When returning to the atmosphere, it is natural to use a gliding landing without starting the engine, but the landing of the Storm still requires special caution.

The three nozzles will also be contaminated with radiation from the core stack after working in space. Most of the radiation can be taken away by diffusion of stored liquid nitrogen before entering the atmosphere, and the remaining small part can just be reduced below the threshold.

But compared to normal standards, it is still higher, so the landing site of the Storm will be a semi-enclosed airport on the grassland. After landing, the runway will be foam-washed immediately, and ground crew members wearing chemical protective suits will put on the three combustion chambers. Protective cover, and then decontaminate the entire space shuttle, and it will take at least an hour before the astronauts can come out.

After all, the radiation value is at the upper limit of the human tolerance range. It is irresponsible to directly follow the normal landing process, so that after decontamination, it will be almost very low.

Therefore, the landing maintenance process of H2N is more troublesome, but everyone thinks it is completely acceptable. After all, its performance is too advanced and it deserves this treatment.

Many nuclear scientists from the Academy of Sciences are constantly developing new topics around A100, and are full of curiosity about its technical mysteries.

It's just that A100 was developed independently by Xinyuan, so we can only rely on guesswork to analyze the internal structure.

Lin Ju tried to get them to sign a technical consultant contract, but unfortunately he failed. Otherwise, there must be a few A-levels among so many old people. Many of them are giants who came from the era of poverty and poverty, and they are still working now.

Serev and Cheng Nankai are both in Qiongzhou, and they must keep an eye on the Storm at all times. All three reactors in the latter are running!

The conditions for starting and stopping the reactor are very demanding. The final design of the Storm was not to replace the fuel throughout its life. The entire aircraft and the reactor were scrapped at the same time, and it would not stop once started.

At this time, the three reactors were running at low power. A cooling mechanism standing next to the launch pad was connected to the interior of the space shuttle to extract heat through external methods. The miniature evaporation tower was emitting billowing white smoke.

This is why the outside world immediately confirmed that the Storm was equipped with a nuclear engine. Now the world is watching the performance of the first nuclear-powered aircraft.

"The A100 has been successful, but what about your other project? The plug-type combined engine is also coming soon, right?"

The 91-year-old Academician Yu still speaks clearly. He has now withdrawn from the front line as a consultant. Because of the emergence of A100, he has begun to conduct research on nuclear thermal propulsion.

The plug-type combined engine he mentioned is NPAE, a sodium-cooled reactor nuclear thermal-ionization-gas tip combined propulsion engine. The Academy of Sciences knows about the existence of this project.

NPAE and A100 belong to two tracks with different technical routes. At first glance, they are designed for SSTO single-stage orbit entry.

Now that the A100 has been manufactured, NPAE is probably not far away, right?

Serev: "The plug part is being tested, and the SFR experimental reactor is almost completed and will be put into trial operation soon."

There is no need to hide the progress of NPAE from the Academy of Sciences. After all, the raw material input required for the construction of the reactor goes through China National Nuclear Power Plant. You can tell where the progress is by looking at the raw material output.

The Qingshan base will first build a fixed 2000MW fast neutron sodium-cooled reactor for verification before starting the trial production of the first NPAE prototype.

Logically speaking, there is no need to carry out this verification process in the way of base reproduction, but the base has new ideas after the success of A100 manufacturing. It plans to make some improvements to NPAE, which can reduce the quality from 3.6 tons to 3 tons while reducing the The thrust is increased to 20 tons, and the performance is improved by about 10%.

Cheng Nankai speculated that A100 and NPAE are not from the same world line, and they can complement each other in technology, which is a good thing.

The improved NPAE installed on the XN90 spacecraft can increase the maximum take-off mass (Earth) of the spacecraft to about 100 tons and the payload mass to 25 tons, an increase of 25%.

Academician Yu turned his attention to the Storm again, thinking about how it would look after being equipped with NPAE.

NPAE can be started in the atmosphere, and the thrust of two A100s is greater than that of three A100s. In other words, if the three A100s of the Storm are replaced by two NPAEs, it can be started on the ground and fly all the way to space to achieve effective transportation. A single-stage orbital entry with a coefficient of more than 50%.

Originally, this idea was considered completely impossible by the Academy of Sciences, but the A100 has succeeded, and NPAE is still uncertain.

Regardless of price, these two nuclear engines, one for deep space navigation and the other for planetary landing, may be sufficient for aerospace exploration throughout the 21st century.

…

April 28, the day before Storm was launched.

On the runway of the base, the yellow-green C832 was pulled onto the runway by a tractor. One side of the runway was filled with dense crowds.

About half of them are base personnel, and the other half are representatives of various links in the supply chain, government personnel at all levels, and people from the military and space agencies.

It was still early in the morning, about two hours before the estimated first flight time of 9:37.

At 9:37 a.m. on September 26, 1980, the Y-10 completed its first flight at the Capital Airport. 27 years later, the second nationally produced mainline passenger aircraft will fly into the sky at the same time.

At this time, the weather in Chengdu has begun to warm up, and the morning feels cool rather than cold, but the dining car in the base canteen still provides hot soy milk and milk.

Since the espionage incident had just happened, all those watching the first flight were not allowed to leave the runway without permission and could only wait here. Fortunately, no one complained.

Among the crowd, Zhou Lizhong, the director of Factory 132, was telling the details of the C832 to researchers from the Shengjing Aeronautical Technology Institute.

"...You know, I went into the cockpit of the C832 a few days ago. It's completely different from the Boeing series. They brought it in like the space shuttle!"

"space shuttle?"

"Yes, I have visited the Steadfast. The internal layout is almost exactly the same. I heard that even the flight control is transplanted and can complete a fully automatic landing. The layout is the same as that of a space shuttle. It is large, comfortable, and extremely intelligent. "

"I haven't been on the space shuttle yet. If you say so, I will definitely go in and take a look as soon as possible. We have produced tail fins after all. The requirements for the C832's tail are really not low, even higher than those of the An-1250.

The progress of Xinyuan's fourth An-1250 is a bit slow. It should be due to other parts. The tail fin we built has been left there for two months and has not been shipped out yet. "

Zhou Lizhong: "Higher than An 1250? Impossible, right?"

"The strength requirements are not that high, but the processing technology has made great progress. After all, it is a passenger aircraft that flies frequently, and it needs to be significantly reduced in weight, which requires a new surface treatment process."

Zhou Lizhong: “I really don’t know why an aerospace company has such strong aeronautical technology attainments.”

"That's right, what does this mean? Xue... ahem, I'll go get a cup of soy milk first."