Reborn in 2011, I am the chief designer of aerospace.

This is where dreams begin, and where dreams come true.

Chang Jian immediately protested, "It's not like we're building an atomic bomb! Besides, with the sandbag array blocking the way, at most we'll hear a bang, what danger is there?"

Jiang Mian asked worriedly, "What about the subsequent fuel tests?"

Zhao Yuehe flipped through the progress chart in her hand and sighed, "There are still at least thirty different formulas to be tested. We can't exactly send them to the Fengxian Research Institute to borrow a test bench, can we?"

"It's not that bad," Song Xingye waved his hand.

"Cheng Chang isn't the kind of heartless guy; he's already helped us contact the next supplier. For the next ignition test, we won't go to Fengxian; we'll go to Pudong."

"Pudong?"

The three of them stared at each other, wide-eyed.

With things having come to this point, everyone had no choice but to accept the decision, so they immediately packed their bags and moved them into the trunk of the car like ants carrying food.

Zong Ping stayed in the fifth workshop, continuing to lead the workers in figuring out the supporting equipment for the Thor rocket.

After all, to attract lightning, in addition to the most crucial rocket, metal wire, and launch pad, there are also accessories such as atmospheric electric field meters, high-frequency lightning pulsers, Doppler weather antennas, as well as Faraday cages, coaxial shunts, Logowski coils, and diversion rods.

Every component is indispensable. Song Xingye's current focus is on the rocket, so these tasks have been left to the mechanics to study.

After Zong Gong waved goodbye to them, Song Xingye drove his gray Mazda 6, carrying his three friends, from Songjiang to Pudong.

The organization that Cheng Long helped contact was a test site located in Laogang Town, Pudong.

Song Xingye had heard of this testing ground; it was part of the Eighth Academy's assets, but it had been abandoned many years ago.

"The test site in Laogang Town was formerly known as the Nanhui Laogang Rocket Base... This place can be considered the birthplace of the East China Academy of Space Technology..."

Song Xingye drove and gave his companions a brief introduction.

"In 1960, our country's first sounding rocket, the T-7M, took off from here."

"The research and development environment at that time was extremely harsh. Most people had never even heard of the concept of rockets, and they didn't even understand how rockets take off. It was thanks to Professor Qian that everyone was able to develop the T-7M by attending classes and conducting research at the same time..."

"In the dead of winter, a group of young people huddled in a cowshed, sparing no effort to burn even a small amount of charcoal. They even made a makeshift cleanroom for the rocket engine using tarpaulins... and they managed to build it out..."

As Song Xingye spoke, the others listened thoughtfully and couldn't help but sigh.

Soon, when the car entered Laogang Town, the desolate landscape before them instantly shattered everyone's hopes and expectations.

Laogang Town is located on the south side of the Yangtze River estuary, with the vast East China Sea just outside. Everywhere there are large areas of mudflats, reed beds and windbreaks, and a faint stench wafts through the air.

Seeing his companions holding their breath, afraid to breathe deeply, Song Xingye pointed to the west, "There's a landfill over there... the air quality is a bit poor..."

However, he quickly responded optimistically to the crowd:

"The good news is that we'll be using this large, abandoned test site temporarily from now on. We're developing the propulsion fuel for the Thor rocket on the very land where Qian Xuesen once toiled!"

"Back then, Qian Xuesen and his colleagues used an abacus to calculate the first sounding rocket. Our conditions are much better; at least we have computers and electronic calculators."

"So we can't let our predecessors laugh at us; we must strive to restore this old port testing ground to its former glory!"

The group was eager to try, and their fighting spirit finally lifted. They hurriedly carried the equipment out of the trunk and, with some difficulty, made their way to the small building in the center of the test site.

The chains on the barbed wire gate were already rusted. After Song Xingye opened it with the key given to him by Director Cheng, they first used sickles to cut a passage leading to the small building.

After all, this place has been abandoned for many years, and the East China Institute's production and R&D focus has long since shifted to the Songjiang, Xuhui and Minhang areas.

This piece of land in Pudong will at most be preserved as a historical symbol of Dongguo Aerospace.

On both sides were tall reeds. The four of them worked hard for half a day, sweating profusely, cutting grass, and finally cleared the path.

As they entered the small building, waving their cobwebs, the sight before them was astonishing.

The small building is filled with old-fashioned equipment that exudes a sense of history: a simple rocket launcher, a diesel generator, a crane winch, and a gray-green pair of binoculars engraved with Russian characters.

Song Xingye climbed the stairs and saw a sign that read "Command Room" on the third floor. Inside, there were no electronic communication devices, microphones, or loudspeakers, only a few signal flags of different colors.

Chang Jian, Jiang Mian, and Zhao Yuehe also walked in one after another. Looking at the extremely simple environment, they couldn't help but be moved.

They could almost imagine that when this small building was first built, the man named Qian Lao stood in their spot, gazing at the sounding rocket that stood tall on the mudflats.

Without walkie-talkies, they shouted at the top of their lungs and used signal flags to direct the countdown ignition on site.

Since the rocket lacked pressurization equipment, people used bicycle pumps to pressurize it as much as possible.

Without professional telemetry radar, they used hand-polished antennas to track the rocket's flight attitude...

Chang Jian murmured, "I never imagined that our country's first rocket would be developed in a place like this. It's unbelievable..."

Song Xingye nodded calmly. "What's even more incredible is that the team members who worked on this rocket were only in their early twenties on average. They combined classes with practical experience, and completed the rocket's design, assembly, and launch in just over a hundred days. Isn't that amazing?"

Jiang Mian added, "Effective flight altitude of 8,000 meters, payload of 19 kilograms."

Zhao Yuehe, resting her chin on her hand, said, "Foreigners definitely won't believe it; they'll think it's just bragging."

"But the fact is, they did it."

Song Xingye smiled and then instructed, "Clean this place up, set up camp, and get to work!"

Everyone immediately got to work.

Song Xingye went to the mudflats outside and inspected the launch pad and test stand that the T-7M rocket had used back then.

The launch pad, over twenty meters high, was rusted and many of its crossbeams were teetering on the verge of collapse. However, the overall structure still appeared relatively stable. If Zongping and the workshop workers were to re-weld it, it might just be revived and become as vigorous as ever.

The test stand can still be used, but it's completely unnecessary for a small thing like the Thor rocket.

There are large areas of seawalls and wasteland here. Just find a mudflat, dig a pit, fix the rocket launcher on it, and ignite it.

Song Xingye strolled around again, hands on his hips, and found a monument commemorating the successful launch of the "first sounding rocket in the East," with an inscription personally written by Guo Moruo.

There are a few abandoned observation points nearby, but nothing else of value.

In short, this is the place where the Eighth Academy rose to prominence.

However, times have changed, and half a century has passed. Everything has changed, and it has become a wild place by the sea.

However, this land still belongs to the East China Institute, and it is a large area with almost no one around to bother it. As long as you report it, no one will care how long you want to use it.

Song Xingye thought sullenly, "At least I don't have to listen to Director Cheng's nagging anymore. It's just that going back and forth every day is quite a hassle and wastes a lot of gas."

Soon, the four of them cleaned the place inside and out and officially settled down at the Laogang Test Site.

The sea breeze here carries a salty smell, making the reeds rustle. The mudflats stretch as far as the eye can see, connecting to the vast East China Sea coastline in the distance.

To the west is a landfill, and to the north are huge white wind turbines slowly rotating.

Song Xingye also knew that within ten years, those landfills would be completely cleared out, and a super factory would rise from the ground.

At that time, a tech visionary named Elon Musk will fly over in his private jet, build hundreds of thousands of Teslas a year, and sell them all over the world.

"I wonder if I'll ever have the chance to talk to this tech fanatic face-to-face..."

Song Xingye and his research team once again devoted themselves to the development of the Thor rocket.

They met in the research office of the East China Institute at the end of June, and came to the Laogang Town test site at the end of July to conduct ignition tests. Time flies and it's already August.

Compared to the bustling Oriental Pearl Tower and Lujiazui, Laogang Town is like another world.

But the advantage here is that there aren't as many prying eyes.

Apart from scavengers and junk sellers, the area was almost deserted.

Song Xingye really liked the quiet environment here.

It's just a bit far. Driving from the main building in Zhuanqiao Town takes about an hour, even without traffic.

In addition, there are a lot of reeds scattered on this mudflat, which could easily cause wildfires if not careful. Therefore, after each fire was lit, he and Chang Jian would bring a large basin of water to extinguish it completely before they felt at ease.

They dug several test wells by sheer willpower beside the desolate seawall, and piled up several small houses like yurts with wild grass to serve as temporary observation posts.

Although it was tidied up, it still looked desolate.

The remote mudflats and howling sea winds masked most of the sounds of dangerous explosions, keeping this place isolated from the world for half a century, but now it is gradually showing signs of new life.

Occasionally, when someone drives by and sees the various abandoned slogans on the gate such as "We must catch up with and surpass the world's advanced level," "Marching towards the modernization of science and technology," and "Defending the development of cutting-edge science in the country," they will only think that this is a mysterious place.

The landfill workers would occasionally glance at their new neighbors next door, watching the group of young people tinkering with explosives on the mudflats, and think they were a bunch of crazy scientists.

Song Xingye, the number one madman of the suicide squad, quickly figured out a fuel formula.

He discovered that using 20% ​​aluminum powder as fuel and 80% ammonium nitrate as oxidant resulted in combustion efficiency and energy release that perfectly met the requirements of the Thor rocket.

The group suddenly found their leader and began to intensify their efforts on the formula, constantly testing the effects of different proportions.

They wanted the formula to give the rocket enough jet velocity, but not so much that it would break the wires.

Rockets are like balloons.

When a balloon is filled with air and then the nozzle is suddenly released, a large amount of gas is ejected from the balloon, causing it to fly in the opposite direction.

The reason why air is ejected outward through the narrow nozzle, propelling the balloon to take off in another direction, is because the internal air pressure is higher than the external air pressure. Therefore, once there is an outlet for the air to escape, the gas molecules that are under intense pressure will not hesitate to flee outward.

Similarly, utilizing the action and reaction forces of Newton's third law, after the rocket's fuel and oxidizer are fully combusted, a large amount of high-temperature and high-pressure gas will be released and accumulate in the thrust chamber.

As long as the size of the nozzle at the thrust chamber outlet is designed properly, the escaped high-temperature gas flow will generate a sufficiently large thrust-to-weight ratio, forcing the rocket to move into the sky.

Common nozzle designs typically employ a Laval structure, which allows the high-speed escaping combustion gases to further accelerate their escape velocity, ultimately producing striking diamond-shaped Mach rings.

However, this structure is clearly not applicable to the Thor rocket, as it does not require such an amazing thrust-to-weight ratio.

On the contrary, it even has to actively limit its speed to ensure that it does not exceed 720 kilometers per hour, so that the metal wire trailing on its tail is not easily torn off.

Despite the harsh working environment, Jiang Mian and Zhao Yuehe, as the only two women in the research group, get up exceptionally early every day.

At five o'clock in the morning, the alarm clock started ringing. Then the two of them got up, put on their carefully matched clothes and shoes, and went out to wait for the gray Mazda to come and pick them up.

They would carefully apply sunscreen in the car and curl their hair neatly, even though their hair would soon be blown into a mess once they arrived at the Old Port Test Site.

The dust kicked up from the mudflats would make even sunscreen-covered faces look dusty. The two girls tried all sorts of tricks, from wearing hats to masks, but it seemed they could never escape these persistent nuisances.

In contrast, the men who worked with them were rather unkempt and didn't care at all about their image in front of the opposite sex.

Chang Jian, in particular, would casually throw on a floral shirt and shorts whenever he went out, and sometimes he would even get on the bus wearing slippers.

Zhao Yuehe couldn't help but feel discouraged and vowed that she would be reborn as a man in her next life so that she wouldn't have to wear makeup all the time.

They made a series of improvements to the previous fuel formula.

The proportion of aluminum powder was reduced to 18%, and the proportion of ammonium nitrate was reduced to 68%. An additional chemical called HTPB was added to the reduced portion as a binder for the solid cartridge.

Song Xingye discovered that aluminum powder and ammonium nitrate alone are difficult to bond together reliably and stably.

Sometimes, the propellant had solidified into a column at the Hongxing factory, but after driving for an hour to Laogang Town, they found that the solid propellant had been broken up inside the steel pipe of the rocket launcher.

With the addition of HTPB adhesive, the strength is significantly improved.

However, the first ignition test after adding HTPB did not go well; the electronic igniter failed to ignite the fuel.

Song Xingye and Zhao Yuehe spent a long time checking before they finally solved the problem.

Then a second ignition was launched, resulting in a deafening explosion.