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

"Courage AI model? This one is better than this one."

"That's a confidential military cooperation project!"

"Boss, I know there must be a castrated version for civilian use, right?"

"..."

Chen Jun acted like he would not leave until he gave it to me, so Lin Ju could only reluctantly agree to give part of it in the end.

Why does Xin'anlai reach out for robotics technology? Presumably because of the Tesla robot, Lao Ma briefly came to Magic City for two days in the middle of the year. He finally talked about the Tesla Gigafactory and announced the "tesla bot" intelligent robot plan.

Chen Jun, who had been coveting the base's robot project for a long time, finally found an excuse to be a helper, and he got his wish.

Lin Ju suddenly thought that the No. 1 and No. 2 robot project teams would have to go out independently sooner or later. The base would not be able to squeeze in another robot factory. He only felt that more and more parties would lend a hand in the future.

…

Florida.

"Starship Town" is a name given by Aramco Internet to the starship manufacturing/launch base. SpecaX built a huge starship factory here from scratch, continuously producing "exploding steel cans" .

Visitors are not blocked here. Space enthusiasts often come here to check in, and today there are so many people.

Because the super-heavy booster B6+ Starship SN12 will be launched as planned today. This is currently the second largest rocket in the world and a super rocket with the potential to send a 250-ton payload into space.

The familiar stainless steel assembly has been hoisted on the concrete cement base. It looks very spectacular at a height of more than 120 meters.

Elon Musk sat calmly on his chair in the control room, feeling as excited as he would have if he were to fly into space aboard the Crew Dragon spacecraft.

No matter how much doubts there are from the outside world, there is no denying the status of the starship itself. It is a cheap rocket that can be fully reused in two stages, with clean fuel and low price. In his opinion, it is the most advanced rocket in the world - not counting the Storm. Nuclear power cheating!

When asked in an interview with reporters: "Elon, do you think this launch will be successful?", he responded with a smile:

"SpecaX moves forward with a bang, giving us the best data possible with every trial."

Although he looked calm on the surface, he was still looking forward to succeeding, at least at the first level.

NACA's demand for super rockets after Storm flew to the moon was morbid, and its support for starships reached an unprecedented level.

They do not require that the starship can really achieve as many capabilities as the PPT, as long as the 33 first-level engines can work normally - it does not matter if they are not recycled.

As long as the super-heavy booster is stable, it can be stacked with various upper stages to derive a series of rockets. It doesn't matter if it is not reused, because SpecaX's starship town can produce one first-stage booster every two months. The price of the pusher is just over 100 million US dollars, and it is completely affordable for one-time use.

In Lao Ma's anxious mood, there were only 15 minutes left before the estimated launch time.

The control room performed a self-inspection of the engine for the last time. The 13 swingable Raptor V1s in the inner circle twisted in a clockwise direction like sunflowers, which looked quite pleasing to the eye.

The N1 rocket of the last century mainly relied on adjusting the engine flow on both sides to achieve differential thrust steering. This method was not flexible enough and has been abandoned by Starship.

The nearly 4,000 tons of liquid oxygen and methane injected into the upper and lower stages of the rocket body caused a thick layer of frost to form on the surface of the starship, changing the background color from stainless steel to white, and white smoke continued to emit.

After passing the last self-inspection, the control room looked at Lao Ma's determined eyes and entered the launch procedure.

"ten, nine, eight..."

Musk followed the countdown on the screen and counted silently in his mind. When he counted to 6, his heart skipped a beat.

Logically speaking, at this time, the 13 central engines had begun to ignite one after another, but nothing happened in the real-time video.

The countdown quickly returned to zero, and the mechanical arm connecting the electrical pipeline and filling the fuel had been detached. However, nothing happened except for the white smoke coming out of the rear of the starship in the picture. That should be the fuel released before the engine started. At this time there is still no ignition.

The control room suddenly fell into silence. They thought about various scenarios, but they did not expect that none of the engines would start after the launch command was issued.

Tom Mueller immediately directed an inspection of the starship's various signals, but the results were surprising.

"We lost control of all the engines and the signals were all offline."

This is what Musk heard from the headphones 5 seconds after the countdown ended. At this time, he had not yet reacted, or did not know how to react.

Losing control of the rocket is the worst situation. At this time, the starship has been filled with thousands of tons of fuel. Who dares to release the fuel when the ignition command has been issued?

The only option is to wait for the fuel to evaporate on its own or to self-destruct, which will result in the destruction of a launch pad.

People in the control room were at a loss and fell into a state of confusion along with the audience waiting for the launch outside.

Thirty seconds after the countdown ended, Musk was about to take off his headphones and tweet when he suddenly saw a cluster of flames coming from the rear of the starship.

One, several, half a minute after the launch command was given, the 33 engines began to ignite one after another under the control of the starship's automatic computer. Although some of them looked a little strange, they were ignited anyway.

People outside the venue waiting for the launch were confused and started cheering when they saw the starship finally ignited.

The launch pad of the starship did not have a diversion trough, leaving only a height gap of more than ten meters below the annular launch pad. Dozens of engines began to start one after another, and the converging tail flames leaked out from the west and enveloped the entire rocket. The thick smoke made it difficult to see what was going on below.

In the control room, the rocket computer finally restored the engine control signals after starting the engine on its own, and transmitted back the working status of all engines.

Musk saw 33 circles representing 33 engines starting to light up one after another, but several circles flashed for a while and then returned to their extinguished state. After careful counting, there were 5 such circles.

Five engines failed to start successfully, which meant that the thrust dropped by almost a thousand tons, but fortunately it still exceeded its own weight and stubbornly pushed the starship to tilt away from the launch pad.

Why is it sideways? Because the two adjacent engines on the outermost side were both extinguished, the thrust was already unbalanced.

The starship's computer apparently also discovered this. It tried to correct the oblique force through the deflection of the central engine, but the thrust difference was too great and could no longer be reversed.

The melon-eaters on the beach watched as the starship took more than 10 seconds to break out of the smoke - and appeared from the right side, diagonally upwards like a translation.

At this time, the ground tracking camera could finally see the working status of the engines at its rear: 6 engines stalled.

No doubt another one broke during takeoff.

Musk looked at the launch pad where the smoke had dispersed, and seemed to understand the reason.

The simple concrete launch pad was now unrecognizable. Almost all the concrete blocks on the surface were blown off by the tail flames, exposing the steel bars inside. A large hole was created on the ground without a diversion channel, and various debris was scattered everywhere. All of them have launch pads and engines.

Looking at the sky again, the remaining 27 engines are finally no longer broken, but at this time the trajectory of the starship has been completely skewed and it is impossible to enter orbit, and it seems that something is falling from the tail again?

The starship flew for more than three minutes. The consumption of fuel made it faster and faster. The fuel supply of the first stage also began to have problems. The control room decided to separate the upper stage starship spacecraft. Although it could not enter orbit, it could at least struggle.

Orders are given, orders are given.

The starship, which was already close to an altitude of 40 kilometers, showed no response. Changes in the atmospheric environment began to disrupt the engine's working environment. The already unsmooth fuel supply coupled with unstable combustion chamber pressure caused the engines to stall again.

One minute later, all the engines of the starship, which still had a mass of more than 3,000 tons, stalled and spiraled toward the sea off Florida.

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