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

"Then it seems that you have been prepared for a long time."

Academician She now understands why the cabin section of the central axis of the Qianjin has to use an oversized diameter of 14 meters. It is not because the capacity is too abundant, but to provide sufficient space for modification and upgrade.

After the second phase of transformation, the Advance looks more like a spaceship than it does now, and it is indeed a very ideal upgraded configuration.

Lin Ju: "The debugging time of Qianjin takes almost a year. We use a whole year to plan the content of the second phase of the upgrade, and another year to complete the upgrade. It will be completed by the end of 2019. It has been 20 years since then. The window period for Mars is still 8 months away, and you can even fly there."

"It was too rushed."

Academician She reminded:

"Landing on Mars is a systemic problem. One spacecraft alone cannot do it. Other preparations also require a launch window. The Mars spacecraft will have to depart in 2022 at the earliest."

Lin Ju: "What if it's not during the window period? We have reliable nuclear engines and Hall thrusters. If the nuclear engine is not during the window period, it can make a trip every four or five months, and we can carry out Mars missions without stopping. .”

Academician She: "If no one is responsible for the task... it may be feasible, but will the burden be too heavy?"

Lin Ju: "Nuclear engines can be used for a long time, just like the lunar ferry. We can build a dedicated aircraft. If the trend becomes more popular, it can already be regarded as an interplanetary cargo spacecraft."

"No, no, no, I almost got you into the ditch."

In the end, Academician She finally realized that there will be enough space missions in the next few years. Coupled with the second phase upgrade of the Advance and the non-stop Mars mission, the Ministry of Finance may have to rush over and knock down the Aerospace Development Commission building. .

The Tianwen-5 plan has also been approved. From April to May next year, at least five Mars exploration missions will be carried out in China. The market is already big enough.

Since a large number of private companies also own medium and large recyclable rockets of more than 500 tons, and a large number of colleges and universities are now trying to launch small and micro probes to Mars, the number of domestic probes in the next window period will definitely increase by leaps and bounds. Come up.

Although it’s late to go to Mars in China, it’s so exciting as soon as you get there…

Lin Ju was not discouraged when he saw that the trick was unsuccessful, and turned to talk about other things:

"Mr. She, the Xinyuan 4 rocket is completed. There will be a factory release ceremony tomorrow and we will go back together tomorrow."

Academician She narrowed his eyes slightly: "You kid, don't wait for me to put on the spacesuit as soon as I get off the plane. I'm warning you. I suppressed the review of Yun Hongjun's matter. There are restrictions on important people flying. You It’s too risky to do this.”

"How could it be possible? Teng Yun just landed yesterday and can't fly again."

Academician She felt relieved now. Although he also yearned for space, if he suddenly imitated Yun Hongjun's behavior at an old age, he might cause heart disease.

Just when he felt relieved a little, Lin Ju made his heart rise again:

"The World Society is coming to an end. I want to try inviting those scientists to go to space. Is this a way of repaying their accelerator support?"

…

October 26, B-level base.

Before the plane landed, Academician She saw the extremely spectacular rocket segments below the base. Among them, the first stage of Xinyuan 4 was the most conspicuous. Its length of 95 meters and width of 18 meters could be seen clearly even from the air.

Looking at it from another angle, this is a 30-story skyscraper that has been knocked down. It doesn’t look much smaller than the factory building next to it.

"Hello? Have you communicated well? What does the Water Conservancy Bureau do for food?"

Under the tall body of the first-level rocket body, Serev frowned and watched the city leader in front of him get angry on the phone, and then said with a frown:

“Mr.

The ferry he was talking about is a slender pass that flows from the tributary next to the base into the Minjiang River and then into the Yangtze River. Because it is inaccessible, there have been no ships for navigation, so last month, an excavator was used to dig out some convenient passages. Submarine ships deliver rockets.

But who would have known that it was blocked again last night. The guard staff along the route immediately organized a clearing process. However, due to the poor conditions, many machines could not enter, and no obvious results have been achieved yet.

Fortunately, Serev had rich experience in giant rocket transportation issues and immediately asked:

“Do you have any drone aerial photos?”

"Yes, I'll have someone pass it over right away."

Serev looked at the aerial photo for a while. At this time, Lin Ju's C810 had already landed and was walking over.

After thinking for a moment, he dialed a number.

"Hello? This is Serev. There is a pass where the rocket transport ship passes. Can you think of a way? Yes, the artillery may not work well and is too slow. Can you drop two iron bombs?

…I can delegate, okay, okay. "

After hanging up the phone, he looked up and saw Lin Ju and Academician She striding over.

"What's wrong? It's already 11 o'clock, why are the rockets still here?"

Serev shook his cell phone:

"The semi-submersible ship and heavy crane have arrived at the floating dock. It won't take long for the core stage to be shipped out, but the channel is blocked. I'm looking for the air force to see if it can be exploded, but there is still enough time."

Xinyuan 4 will definitely not be shipped out today. The temporary floating dock is about 3 kilometers away from the base. The road transportation of these 3 kilometers will take half a day. The hoisting operation and inspection of the four cranes will also take one to two days. Departure should be on the 29th.

Then it will take about 7 days to arrive in Magic City, where it will be merged with the final container shipped from Huludao. The entire rocket will be assembled in the final container for 7 to 10 days, and then it will arrive in Qiongzhou in 12 days. By that time it was roughly November 30th.

Launched in December, just right.

Three weeks ago, the base also shipped out five cylindrical zero-evaporation liquid hydrogen storage tanks with a diameter of 11 meters and a length of 54 meters, each of which can store 7,356 cubic meters and approximately 521 tons of liquid hydrogen fuel.

These zero-evaporation storage tanks took nearly three months to manufacture and have been delivered to Jiangnan Shipyard for installation on a 100,000-ton bulk carrier. They were then filled with liquid hydrogen worth nearly 300 million yuan before heading to Qiongzhou.

The production efficiency of the original spherical storage tank solution was too low. After the implementation of OGAS2.0, the base went crazy with its production capacity and completed the processing of so many storage tanks day and night. The two An-1250s also flew back and forth non-stop.

In fact, the cost of these five storage tanks is less than half of the cost of the Xinyuan 4. Serev once had the idea of ​​directly filling the rocket with fuel at the dock before launching it - anyway, the Xinyuan 4 rocket has a zero-evaporation storage tank. , there is no fear of explosion due to excessive local pressure in the tank, but this crazy idea was rejected by the Aviation Development Committee with one vote.