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

Gulf of Mexico, Boca Chica.

The combination of Starship spacecraft SN25 and super-heavy booster B20 was erected on the launch pad. This is the fourth Starship to be prepared for a complete launch test.

According to the latest naming standard issued by SpecaX, the complete body will be named SS (StarShip) + number, so the name of this one should be SS-4.

The launch date of the first SS-1 was May 28. In 7 months, SpecaX launched four combinations in succession at the craziest speed, and this amazing efficiency has not yet reached its limit.

Including the SL-X rocket first stage delivered to NACA, they have produced 301 Raptor V1 engines this year alone. On average, one Raptor engine comes off the assembly line every 29 hours.

In addition to Musk’s heroic slogan of “one starship a month”, what’s more important is that NACA has been secretly providing technical support and a large number of orders since last year. Starship Town, where starships are manufactured, has experienced its second major event. The upgrade is almost complete.

It is planned that the Starship Factory will have the ability to produce 30 SS rockets and 900 Raptor V1 engines annually after January 15, but in reality there are definitely not that many.

Even if launches are used instead of tests, the improvement of the starship will take time, and the Raptor V1 engine has been completely stable during the continuous launch tests this year, and Tom Muller is looking for ways to upgrade it on its basis.

The new Raptor V2 engine will increase thrust from 185 tons to 225 tons while reducing weight by 20%, second only to the 250 tons of the bald Bezos BE-4 engine. It is expected to completely replace the V1 engine by this time next year.

If all SS rocket engines are replaced with Raptor V2, the thrust will increase from 6,100 tons to 7,400 tons, the take-off mass will increase from 4,800 tons to about 5,300 tons, and the uplink capacity will be increased by about 30 tons.

But for Tom, the prerequisite for achieving all this is that the reliability of the SS rocket, at least the reliability of a one-time launch, proves that the two-stage fully reusable configuration is correct.

The goal of the SS-4 assembly is to successfully put the upper stage SN25 into orbit, which means that the starship can at least undertake a one-time launch mission and send at least 120 tons of payload to space.

Even if the launch price of a one-time use SS rocket will not exceed 500 million US dollars, this is definitely exciting news. Even with a little effort, it is not possible to replicate the feat of XAP launching 500 tons of payload into space in one week half a year ago. impossible.

Tom was in the control room praying that SS-4 would go well when he suddenly heard footsteps coming from behind.

"Thank God I'm not late."

Musk, who was tired of traveling, had just returned from Washington and finally did not miss the launch of SS-4.

The news he got from the space agency was too shocking and took time to digest. He and Tom had to think about coping strategies together.

The uninformed Tom obviously didn't think too much and told him the latest news with great interest:

"You must not know what stupid things Rocketdyne has done recently. They resurrected the old F1 for the NOVA rocket and plan to develop an F1R that can reduce costs to 10%.

God, reduce the thrust from 700 tons to 70 tons! Yesterday they conducted the first test and found that after throttling, the ignition failed more than ten times in a row without success. A friend of mine there told me that the media must have been bribed!

By the time they figure this out, I'm afraid we'll all have launched the SS-20! Ha ha……"

Musk forced a smile and asked:

"Tom, what do you think is missing if we're going to land on Jupiter or the moons around Saturn?"

"Well……"

Tom scratched his hair. Although he didn't quite understand the meaning of the question, he still answered seriously:

“Power, excellent and reliable nuclear engines, just like XAP’s nuclear engines, their technical strength can already do this.

Didn't DARPA reach an agreement with us? If the starship spacecraft can be transformed into nuclear power, then solve the gravity problem, and ignore the problems not considered in deep space navigation, it is theoretically feasible. "

At this point, he stretched out his hands and waved them a few times, pretending to be scared:

"Of course, this requires a lot of money, which is so much that we can't even imagine it. There is also the problem of fuel. If liquid hydrogen is used, it will be a super bomb that can explode at any time. It is so dangerous that astronauts cannot buy insurance.

This should be what we should do in the second half of the 21st century. Mars and the moon are enough to keep us occupied throughout the first half. "

"Tom, Korolev used to think so too."

Musk's expression became more serious:

"After Gagarin entered space, we launched the Apollo program, but scientists from the alliance believed that landing on the moon would not be possible until at least 1980. They believed that the Apollo program was just a scary cover, and it was not until 1967 that they realized Start catching up.

If I tell you that the president requires us to land on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn within 10 years and complete unmanned landing exploration of the moons of Neptune, do you think it can be done? "

Tom answered without hesitation: "If I were the director of NACA, I would resign myself."

Musk: “What if he said he would go to the Middle East and eat sand if he couldn’t do it?”

Tom: "Then I'll eat sand."

Musk: "Man, Commissioner Robert doesn't want to eat sand."

"?!"

…

"The fourth Starship launch failed and has crossed the Karman line."

"Musk: The failure may be caused by the fuel being too fluid."

"Starship suffered four consecutive defeats in 2017, and the prospects for full-arrow reuse are bleak."

When the news came back to China, it was already noon on December 31st.

Lin Ju was at the ground command center in Beijing at this time, and the first group of three expert members were counting supplies at the "Black Rabbit" space station in preparation for landing on the moon.

He was trying to convince Academician She of the significance of exploring deep space, but he saw a message on Twitter reminding countless Twitter users @that he hoped to comment on the fourth launch of the starship.

Both of them turned their attention to the starship and quickly read the reports after the launch of SS-4.

"The first stage separated successfully, and the second stage exploded during the secondary ignition... Well, at least it flew out of the Karman line this time and entered space.

Their old problem still cannot be solved. Local pressure changes caused by fuel sloshing are still too troublesome. "

Academician She easily found out the cause of the failure. The first two failures of the upper-stage starship were caused by the sharp increase in pressure and center of gravity caused by low-temperature fuel swinging around in the rocket body during attitude changes. This problem is almost unsolvable.

The first stage of the rocket can also rely on gravity and its own acceleration to push the fuel downwards. It would be too troublesome for the upper stage to do this.

Of course Xinyuan will encounter the same trouble, such as the Jiuzhang spacecraft, but they solve it with zero evaporation storage tanks.

The internal pressure of the zero-evaporation fuel storage tank can be very high. Its working pressure is much higher than the normal pressure of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. It can store more fuel beyond the limit in a smaller space, and at the same time, it can completely Resist sudden changes in pressure caused by fuel consumption.

Starships without this technology would have much more trouble solving this problem, and they would only have to pay the price of performance.

"The starships have been successful enough. Just combining them into SL-X is good news for NACA. One SLS can be exchanged for at least seven or eight SL-Xs. This is... very impressive.

When Musk achieves one launch per month, he will be almost on par with us in conventional rocket technology. "

Lin Ju's attitude was very tolerant, but he knew how far NACA was in the previous world line. In this world line, NACA and the American federal government were like chicken blood, which impressed him.

"That's true, they still earn different dollars from us..."

The Federal Reserve's harvester has not failed. Although the U.S. dollar continues to depreciate, it is still plundering wealth from the world.

For NACA, the US$250 million to purchase the first-stage booster is as cheap as cabbage. The exchange rate conversion is close to 1.7 billion yuan, which has completely different values ​​among the space agencies on both sides of the Pacific.

"By the way, take back your 504 injection immediately. It's best if no one knows about it."

Academician She turned the topic to the two injections given the day before yesterday, and his expression became extremely serious.

This is the Nth time Lin Ju has been criticized. The two injections he took out that day did not achieve the expected results. Instead, they attracted strong resistance from Academician She and He Yuan.

It’s not that they don’t trust the effectiveness of injections, but they believe too much.

They know very well that the audience for this thing cannot be ordinary people, and 99.99% of people will not enjoy the benefits of this technology.

Although today's super-rich can still spend huge sums of money to extend their lives, inject millions of expensive drugs, or constantly replace organs, these are risky, troublesome, and have many restrictions.

Even though the 504 injection has reduced its effects to nothing, it still inherits the good adaptability of the 404 injection. It has a strong universal effect and almost no after-effects. It is convenient and safe.

It allows the old guy who should have withdrawn from the world's mainstream order to be healthy and active for another ten years and invest more energy in developing better drugs. Academician She has reason to believe that the 504 injection will launch stronger 604 and 704 injections in the future.

Although he is also the main audience of this technology and belongs to the small group of people who can touch the threshold of use, he maintains a firm opposition to putting it into practical use, even the younger He Yuan is the same .

He also did not want to see a 90-year-old president who still controlled power like the island country, and tried his best to discourage 504 injections from being put into the market.

Lin Ju anticipated some of this situation in advance, but he did not expect that the problem was so serious, so he had to postpone the launch of the 504 injection on the market, which he was originally most confident about.

At the same time, he was also secretly glad that the much more powerful 404 injection was still restricted to "his own people", otherwise it would cause even greater trouble.

Therefore, he was not tired of Academician She's constant instructions and nodded in agreement seriously.

Such a reaction made Academician She feel a little relieved, and after thinking about it, he talked about the deep space exploration plan:

"I've asked the International Astronomical Union for you. They can provide you with up to US$300 million in the near future. The mid-term research costs of US$400 million will be paid in early 2019, and the final balance of US$300 million will be paid before September 2020. Launch costs.

They are raising funds from all over the world, which is basically the limit. It should not be a big problem to receive the funds on time.

But why are you so anxious to carry out an expedition to Jupiter and Saturn? Are you going to launch a probe in May next year? It is better to wait until 2019, when the Aviation Development Commission should also make arrangements. "

Lin Ju could only smile bitterly in his heart. He had to wait for a year and a half, and one-fifth of the mission had passed. Eight years was not a long time in the universe.

Now all he can think of is to postpone investment in other projects. Anyway, the base has started working overtime to build the Saturn probe.

However, on the surface, he still acted as if he had listened and vaguely echoed a few words.

…

Moon, Aitken Basin.

The Nine Chapter spacecraft once again stood quietly at the landing site of Tianmu 2, with the side hatch opened and the ramp extending all the way to the ground.

Standing on the last step, Yang Xinjun imitated Armstrong on the radio:

"I'm here on behalf of United Mining. This is a small step for me, but a big step for the mine owner."

But at this time, there were not hundreds of millions of spectators cheering for him, but Deng Lei, who came down first, gently pulled him, causing the latter to jump to the moon's ground with both feet almost at the same time, leaving a messy mark.

"Come down, Contractor Yang. When you finish the cement, there won't be so much dust on our spacesuits."

"Hey, hey, hey... let me say a few more words."

"Yang, you have to let me come out too."

Jamie, the penultimate nuclear weapon expert who came out of the cabin, muttered dissatisfiedly, then stood where Yang Xinjun was just now, took a deep breath and said solemnly:

“On behalf of Her Majesty the Queen of Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom of Great Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Bahamas, the Grenadines, and the Solomon Islands, I come to the moon with peace… Phew, for the common good of mankind. Come for scientific career.”

Jamie finished naming the 16 countries in one breath, which almost made him breathless. Before setting off, he spent a lot of energy to find the optimal solution to arrange the order in order to save energy, but he couldn't help but pause. one time.

The other four people couldn't help but twitch their faces, and they were curious as to why he didn't just talk about the Federation.

"Okay Stevenson, I'm coming down too."

Li Wei stood at the end to confirm that the settings in the transition cabin were all normal. After Jamie, he also quickly descended to the ground, and then used the smart terminal on the spacesuit arm to control the door of the part-time gangway to slowly close.

Now the first official operation of the Tianmu-3 exploration mission has begun. The five astronauts have had sufficient rest before leaving the module. They will start the exploration mission as soon as they adapt to the gravity of the moon.

Yang Xinjun, who had been jumping around in the spacecraft for half an hour, barely mastered the range of motion after falling upside down several times in a row. He first grabbed a handful of dust from the ground, and then placed it in the palm of his hand for observation.

Most of the lunar dust is shiny under the sunlight, and it contains more metal than the samples on the ground.

But this is good news for Yang Xinjun. The rich metal content can improve the hardness and protective performance of space cement. On the contrary, 3D printing technology requires rough selection of the lunar soil components.

Jamie next to him planned to do the same thing, but now he was busy assembling the flagpole.

Due to the special nature of the lunar explosive device, there will be a separate ground cabin used to store explosives. This cabin is shared by five companies, and it is natural to plant the flag.

Dai Ying is about to become the third...fourth person to plant the flag. Before setting off, Jamie accepted the Queen's summons and paid special attention to this matter.

After the five flags are gathered, another United flag will be planted, and then a branch meeting will be held on the moon...