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

At the same time, the Great Wall 5 rocket quickly flew towards the southeastern sky.

After the rising rocket passed through the scattered clouds, it quickly shrank into a tiny dot in the field of vision, making it difficult to track with the naked eye.

About two minutes later, the two boosters of the Long March 5 rocket shut down as planned, and they fell into the Gobi Desert, where they will be retrieved by the ground recovery team.

Meanwhile, the first stage continued to propel the payload into space, and after about eight minutes, even telephoto cameras on the ground could hardly keep up with the rocket.

The Long March 5 rocket has completely become a virtual point that is becoming increasingly distant and indistinguishable.

About fifty minutes later, the Jingzhou Flight Control Center announced over the loudspeaker that the launch mission was successful and the payload had been deployed. A thunderous applause erupted in the command hall.

Song Xingye knew that he needed to make progress quickly and try to catch up with the construction schedule of the Tiangong space station.

Let's not wait until the space station is built while the payload specialists are still training.

……

The training courses for the Jingzhou Astronaut Corps are not particularly demanding, but they are not exactly easy either.

Song Xingye attends classes for up to 10 hours a day, and also has to do physical training. The coach will frequently check their training progress with a physical fitness chart.

After all, the physical requirements for a payload specialist, even if far less than those for the positions of commander and pilot, cannot be that of a sponge.

In some extreme situations, every bit of increased muscle strength in an astronaut could give them a better chance of survival.

The astronaut team's apartments are located in Tangjialing Space City. Song Xingye has been to this place many times before, but unlike his previous fleeting visits, he has now actually moved in.

In this aerospace town of Tangjialing, hundreds of experts from research institutes and renowned universities across the country have gathered. They are outstanding leaders in their respective fields, providing comprehensive technical support and medical advice to 10 reserve payload experts.

Song Xingye and his nine companions quickly began a series of specialized training courses, most of which were concise and to the point, covering subjects such as biology, chemistry, physics, information technology, geology, and astronomy.

At the end of each course, there will be a small final exam, and their scores will be recorded in their academic records.

Every teacher is very patient in guiding students through their lessons, and they certainly feel a great sense of accomplishment in teaching.

After all, the 10 "reserve" astronauts in the classroom are probably the smartest group of students they have ever taught. Each of them is quick-witted, able to apply what they have learned to other situations, and can integrate the knowledge they have learned in class.

Song Xingye doesn't know when he'll be able to put what he's learning to use. Maybe in a year or two, or maybe three or four years. Even if he goes to space, he might not be able to use it.

But what everyone knows is that in space, no one on the ground can save you. Perhaps the little things you learn today could save your life someday.

In the teaching building of the Tangjialing Astronaut Corps, there is an exhibition hall displaying a model of the International Space Station.

This is basically a scaled-down version of the current International Space Station. Before the Dongguo Space Station was officially deployed, all astronauts' imaginations about the space station came from this.

Song Xingye had visited this model with others. The main body is a large aluminum alloy tank with a diameter of four or five meters. To be precise, it is a sealed pressure vessel, or in professional terms, an experimental chamber.

The experimental module can maintain the same atmospheric pressure as the ground, and it is connected to other experimental modules, with a mechanical structure called a node module serving as a transition between them.

The scale model of the entire International Space Station looks enormous and bulky, like an airplane.

The teacher who led the tour explained that Dongguo's future space station will draw on the construction experience of the International Space Station and choose modular construction as much as possible to simplify the overall structure.

In the hall next to the life-size model of the space station is a huge pool resembling a swimming pool.

This is used to simulate the weightlessness experienced by astronauts in space, which is of great help in training reserve astronauts for extravehicular activities.

Many training exercises for extravehicular activities require diving underwater.

To be fair, Song Xingye hadn't really been exposed to swimming much, and besides, it was impossible to actually swim in space. But in order to keep up with the training, he still stayed up late studying several swimming books.

Finally, his swimming style was no longer the ugly doggy paddle. Even the swimming coach assigned by Tangjialing was amazed, saying that he was quite quick to learn and could learn many movements after seeing them only once.

There was a basketball hoop at the bottom of the pool. Song Xingye would hold his breath, dive underwater, and dribble a basketball to make a layup.

Of course, you can't shoot three-pointers here.

Song Xingye struggled to take steps in the water, imagining that he was not walking on water, but walking in the vast space.

No one can truly escape gravity.

Whether you're swimming in a pool or standing on a space station, you can't escape it.

Although astronauts on the space station are always suspended in mid-air, it is only a few hundred kilometers away from Earth. This short distance can reduce Earth's gravity by at most 10%.

What appears to be levitation from the cameras is actually the space station constantly rotating, making it seem as if the astronauts have never landed.

In addition, based on the observations of some scientists and the analysis of physical models, they believe that gravity is simply a simple force of Earth's gravity, and there is no force that can balance it.

In conclusion, gravity can never be completely eliminated.

Song Xingye floated in the water. Sometimes he would think of Einstein's ideal elevator theory. Since weightlessness is caused by free fall, if he placed a scale in the elevator and the scale fell with the elevator at the same acceleration, his weight would also show as zero.

After two months of training in Tangjialing, the astronaut corps notified them to go to Moscow for in-depth exchanges and learning.

They departed from Jingzhou, landed at Domodedovo Airport, and then struggled to cross the ring road to reach a small town on the outskirts of Moskov.

After about two hours of travel, a stone with a four-pointed star carved on it appeared by the roadside.

If Baikonur Cosmodrome is the holy land for human space launches, then this place is the holy land for human astronauts.

According to the map, this place is called Star City, hidden in a dense forest on the northern outskirts of Mosko.

This place was once the most mysterious military town in R country. Famous astronauts such as Yuri Gagarin and Valentina Tereshkova were selected and trained here.

Astronauts from all over the world also travel here for closed-door training, including the East Korean astronaut corps.

Song Xingye spent only a week to tour Xingcheng. There was almost nothing mysterious about it; it was just that the various space myths from the Cold War era added a mythical touch to the place.

It's unbelievable that the places the FBI tried so hard to infiltrate during the Cold War are now open to the public.

During the training camp, one of the courses was operating a spaceship. Since this is Star City, the only spaceship simulator is the Soyuz spaceship.

The simulator that Song Xingye entered was completely modified from a real Soyuz spaceship. It was very crowded and the electrical equipment was quite outdated.

He even found it hard to imagine that in the 21st century, with such advanced electronic technology, the control panel on a spacecraft capable of carrying people to the International Space Station still consisted of some old-fashioned mechanical slider buttons, separated by an ugly metal protective cover.

Song Xingye held a telescopic baton in his hand. He used the baton to pry open the protective cover and slide the command button to the other side, which allowed the simulator to execute the corresponding commands.

It's very cumbersome, and you can easily press the wrong button if you're not careful.

Song Xingye couldn't help but sigh. The existence of this spaceship was like a teacher still using a traditional blackboard and chalk to write on a modern classroom where projectors and multi-functional social media are ubiquitous.

Even more incredibly, this ancient spacecraft, designed in the 21s, was one of only two spacecraft capable of sending humans into space during the 10s and 20s.

Even ten years later, when the Dragon spacecraft appeared, it remained the undisputed mainstay of manned spaceflight.

Song Xingye wore headphones, listening to the instructor on the other end of the line rambling on about the steps to carry out the mission.

Because the Soyuz spacecraft is too narrow and small, instructors cannot squeeze in, so this is the only way to conduct lessons.

These old-fashioned black cloth headphones were quite heavy, containing an audio headset and microphone, but they were prone to crackling when the volume was slightly loud. Song Xingye was speechless at the stinginess of the Russians.

He even suspected that the broken headphones were passed down from the 60s, and that Yuri Gagarin might have worn them.

But Song Xingye had no choice but to accept the headphones, listening to the lecture voice that occasionally crackled, and gradually learning the basic operating procedures of the spaceship.

The seat he was sitting in belonged to the commander of the spacecraft crew. According to the training guidelines of the Dongguo Astronaut Corps, Song Xingye might never have the chance to become a commander in his lifetime.

Because the commander and pilots are selected from the Air Force's best test pilots and pilots.

Because the commander and pilots are selected from the Air Force’s best test pilots and pilots, and their flight experience is accumulated in thousands of hours.

Song Xingye has never even flown a trainer aircraft, let alone a fighter jet, so of course he is not qualified to be a commander.

However, the Dongguo astronaut team learned from R country, which required each member of the crew to be familiar with the work processes of their teammates.

If one day a teammate is in danger in space, I must be able to step up in time and not just stand by and watch.

Therefore, Song Xingye will need to study the Commander's course, which is about 500 hours long. He must pass all the theoretical and practical courses on various systems of spacecraft and spaceflight in order to graduate.

Song Xingye had a good learning ability and quickly figured out how to operate the spacecraft's sensors, engines, and software, as well as how the spacecraft traveled to space to dock with the space station and how it detached from the space station to return to Earth.

However, the Shenzhou spacecraft is much more advanced than the Soyuz spacecraft. It is completely computer-controlled and rarely requires human intervention. Therefore, Song Xingye does not need to learn how to pilot the spacecraft for docking.

During this training phase, Song Xingye's main focus is on learning to understand the language of the spaceship.

In actual spaceflight, sensors and scrolling displays on the spacecraft transmit various information to astronauts, including the real-time status of various systems, as well as changes in temperature, humidity, pressure, and tilt.

Astronauts need to master and be familiar with dozens of important parameters. For even more parameters, they need to consult their technical manuals or ask ground personnel for advice.

Astronauts must learn to read these parameters in order to promptly detect and handle various malfunctions and problems.

When Song Xingye first arrived in Xingcheng, he didn't really have any sense of these parameters.

But after a period of study, he came to see these constantly changing parameters as an accurate and understandable elegant language.

For example, during the current training, Song Xingye only glanced at the parameter value in a certain direction and knew what the spaceship wanted to say:

It is rotating on its axis while using infrared sensors to locate the current horizon.

Once the horizon is found, the spacecraft can continue rotating and extend a periscope from its belly, pointing vertically toward the Earth's center.

The days of training in Xingcheng passed quickly. Song Xingye and the other reserve payload experts successfully obtained their graduation certificates and returned to Tangjialing Space City in Jingzhou.

Nearly two years have passed since the last space station verification launch. With the ignition of the Great Wall-5 rocket, the first core module of the Tiangong project was successfully sent into low Earth orbit.

In the next six months, two experimental modules, codenamed Yangtze River and Yellow River respectively, will be sent into space and assembled with the core module.

The Tiangong project has finally entered the countdown phase. As the departure time of the first batch of astronauts draws closer, Song Xingye and his team received an Excel summary table from the astronaut team containing information about the core module equipment.

After reviewing the achievements of the past two years and conducting an evaluation by the review committee, the first astronaut crew to go to the Tiangong core module to assist in the assembly of the Yangtze River experimental module was officially named the Yuanzheng-1 crew.

The commander was an astronaut named Sheng Tianhong. Despite his young age, he was already a deputy division commander in the Space Force and an ace pilot selected from the Air Force.

The pilot was a man named Han Jing, who was also a test pilot, but he did not have as outstanding a resume as Sheng Tianhong.

As for the payload specialist, Song Xingye successfully passed the selection process and secured the only available spot.

The three-person crew then officially met, while a backup crew was undergoing the same training and checks.

Song Xingye met with his two companions during the pre-launch inspection of the Great Wall 2F rocket.

The Shenzhou spacecraft had been installed in the rocket's fairing. The Yuanzheng-1 crew entered the cockpit to check it out, then rehearsed the launch day's procedures before signing the launch agreement.

Another Tianzhou cargo spacecraft is also undergoing intensive ground checks. This spacecraft will be launched three days before the Shenzhou spacecraft's departure, delivering various food, water, living supplies, and experimental materials needed for the mission to the core module.