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

You're starting to have paranoia, Mira.

Go ahead and speak freely.

As soon as he finished speaking, the plasterwork outside the window began to rapidly descend.

"Friction generates heat," Song Xingye said, his gaze sweeping over the ever-increasing temperature of the spaceship's lower surface on the sensors.

According to the current design, this biconical spacecraft represents the most advanced MEM configuration developed by various contractors. This four-person spacecraft will enter the atmosphere belly-down and then glide down like an airplane. Therefore, its entire underside is covered with heat-resistant panels, forming a massive radiator to absorb the enormous energy generated by the impacts of molecules in the thin Martian atmosphere.

"Get ready for a communications outage." The simulator's cold voice rang out again. "See you later, guys."

"I hope so," Mira said.

Outside Song Xingye's porthole, a pinkish plasma glow was gradually gathering and brightening.

Mira snorted: "All you do is bluff."

"I think it's pretty cool," Song Xingye said in a low voice.

The two began closely monitoring the system display screen in front of them, comparing it one by one with the checklist mounted on the console. The subsequent simulation operations gradually became routine, even somewhat tedious…

Song Xingye knew perfectly well that if all this was real, the pulling sensation during the first deceleration as the spacecraft sank deeper would be palpable. He could even feel his pulse pounding in his throat. This simulation system was designed specifically for engineers, not for astronauts to practice on; it was as crude as a shadow puppet show, lacking even the most basic motion simulation. However, in this still cabin, the fragmented details of the simulation were enough to stir his imagination, making him feel as if he had personally experienced the entire process of hurtling from orbit to the surface of Mars.

A childlike thought suddenly popped into his head: how wonderful it would be if all of this were true. He wished he could skip directly to the long years ahead filled with training and uncertainty.

Oh, I really want this. Seriously, I really want it.

He thought to himself that even if he had to team up with Mira, it would be worth it.

At an altitude of 130,000 meters, we are about to enter the initial phase of atmospheric surface control.

"I'll do it," Mira said, gripping the joystick and pedals with both hands.

In this computer-simulated dive, the bicone penetrated deep into the atmosphere, and the immense dynamic pressure caused the forward attitude control rocket to fail. Simultaneously, the atmosphere became dense enough that the bicone's aerodynamic control surfaces began to interact with the air.

Song Xingye realized that this twin-cone spaceship was an unprecedented and bizarre combination of a spacecraft and an airplane.

"The dynamic pressure is rising," Song Xingye reported, "120,000 Pa."

"Understood," Mira replied.

Then, the final thrusters shut down. The spacecraft transformed completely into a glider, relying entirely on aerodynamic control surfaces to maintain its attitude and flight trajectory.

The plasma glow outside the porthole reached its peak, with pink, yellow, and blue-white colors intertwined. As the computer filter was switched, the color changes were clearly visible.

Mira gripped the joystick and pedals, grumbling about the outdated pneumatic control system: "It's so sluggish!"

She jerked the control stick forward, "Trying to slow down, the elevator retracted, the tail fin retracted, but it was like it was dead, stuck again. I quickly adjusted the pitch to stabilize the rate of descent, gripped the stick again, the elevator retracted, no lift, the tail fin plummeted. And the reaction... Ah! Finally! Now I feel like a pig rolling in the mud!"

Song Xingye knew very well that flying a double cone was more difficult than flying most land-based aircraft. Piloting it was more like sailing a boat: you could only adjust the control surfaces first, then quietly wait for the new configuration to cut into the thin airflow, and then slowly change the flight attitude.

"One hundred and three meters!" he shouted.

"Here it comes," Mira said. "Prepare for the first aileron roll reversal."

In the computer, the bicone was tilted eighty degrees to the right. Song Xingye squinted at the tilted scene; due to a malfunction in the television camera's control mechanism, the tracking lens trembled slightly, and the plaster model also shook.

The design of the biconical shape was intended to allow for a series of S-shaped turns in the upper atmosphere of Mars.

Choosing the right flight path hinges on precise energy management: the spacecraft must exhaust its orbital kinetic energy before reaching the landing point, but simultaneously, it must retain sufficient energy to reach that landing point at every stage of its flight path. Therefore, it must skillfully coordinate the lift generated by the biconical shape with the kinetic energy generated during descent, dissipating excess energy precisely, much like heat dissipation…

"Speeding too fast," Mira muttered. "85 degrees. 86 degrees. Left yaw correction. Come on, simulator. Is this the obstacle you set for us? Left yaw. Okay. Start. Okay. First roll complete. Start. Second roll reverse." Mira's voice turned serious.

Song Xingye felt that she was taking these "games" too seriously.

At this moment, in the simulation, the bicone is hurtling at an astonishing speed several times the speed of sound in the Martian sky. It still trails light as it cuts through the Martian night sky, leaving steam trails across the boundless wasteland, unleashing a massive amount of sonic energy like a tsunami on this desolate land that has remained undisturbed for billions of years.

He admitted that it was absolutely the most spectacular moment of the mission, a dream come true for any pilot.

He couldn't help but feel a pang of melancholy, thinking that perhaps that ill-fated space shuttle had also experienced this feeling. The graceful descent from orbit, skimming across the vast desert, was worlds apart from the Dragon spacecraft's headlong plunge into the sea. When humanity abandoned the space shuttle, it also lost so much grandeur and poetry.

"Sixty-one thousand meters," he read.

Entering operational mode. Reduce air brakes to 65%. Collect atmospheric data.

"receive."

Song Xingye flipped a simulated switch. On a real bicone, a row of Pitot tubes would now extend from the surface to measure dynamic pressure and airspeed.

"Looks good," Mira said. "We're only on the third round." She grinned at Song Xingye. "Hey, maybe we can actually make it through this extreme simulation."

Maybe. Fifty thousand meters.

The fourth round.

The plasterboard that wasn't obscured by the false plasma halo collapsed once more.

Okay, let's change it from the rolling posture. Change it out... Come on baby... Change it out from the rolling posture... Damn it.

"Well," Song Xingye thought to himself, "every simulation designer will find a way to trip you up." His stomach clenched.

The attitude indicator was shaking violently. Mira frantically operated the controls, her eyes scanning the emergency checklist. "The aerodynamic surface is stuck, only partial access. Damn it! What's wrong now?"

Song Xingye looked out the porthole. Mira was unable to recover from the roll, and the scenery outside the window was tilted at more than ninety degrees; in the computer's imagination, the bicone was almost completely upside down.

"I suggest you terminate the simulation." The simulator's voice calmly broke the radio silence.

"Go to hell." Mira spat, completely ignoring it, and continued checking the instruments according to the list and flipping the switches.

Song Xingye realized that this was exactly what a pilot should do in this situation. Read the manual thoroughly, stay logical, but act quickly. Try Plan A. If that doesn't work, try Plan B. If that still doesn't work, try Plan C…

But now, the landscape made of plasterboard has been completely reversed, and the imitation volcanoes and canyons now look like a deep red dome hanging overhead.

Song Xingye was shocked to realize that only a few seconds had passed since the first sign of a malfunction appeared. That's all the time you have: a few seconds to investigate a malfunction that may involve multiple complex steps and have intricate causes.

It was a task that was virtually impossible to accomplish.

If something goes wrong, you must make a decision immediately, or you will die.

We must stop.

Mira didn't even bother to answer; she just continued what she was doing even more frantically.

The sloping terrain drew ever closer, and a sense of oppression grew palpable. The biconical structure began to rotate at hypersonic speeds.

"Stop!" he yelled at Mira again. "Stop it now, Mira! If we lose control, we're finished!"

The cabin lights began to flicker, and images simulating the Martian sky rushed past the portholes like a carousel. A comical image suddenly flashed through his mind: a small television camera's robotic arm was spinning wildly on the plaster floor, capturing images that spun around in the air.

If this were true, my head would be slamming violently against my helmet right now, my inner ear being churned up by the Coriolis force. If this were true, the spaceship would disintegrate, perhaps before I lose consciousness.

MEM, we recommend you terminate it. We recommend,

"Mira! Oh my god! Mira!"

A violent tremor erupted, and a cloud of white plaster dust suddenly sprayed out.

The landscape is frozen in time.

"Welcome to Mars," the simulated supercomputer announced. "We are calculating the size of the crater you created upon impact."

"What a piece of junk!" Mira roared, tearing off her helmet and slamming it down on the fake spaceship.

The two climbed out from the back of the simulator. From the outside, it looked like the nose of a small, light aircraft, with the cockpit section roughly cut off and a dense network of wires and umbilical cables hanging from the open tail.

The technician grinned at them: "Hey, Mira, you ruined our camera. You shoved it right into the drywall, how does it feel?"

Mira didn't laugh. She walked straight up to Song Xingye, pointed her gloved finger at his face, and snapped, "You'd better not give me orders while we're flying!"

He found her reaction more amusing than unsettling; he had expected her outburst. Most of the time, he could handle Mira, and while she was rude, she seemed prepared to treat him as an equal partner in these kinds of training sessions. "Orders? Me? You're the pilot, Mira."

"You better remember this!" With that, she stormed off to attend the post-incident briefing.

Sheng Tianhong, wearing a light blue overalls, strolled over with her hands in her pockets: "Don't take it to heart."

"I didn't take it to heart." Song Xingye shrugged and started taking off his gloves. "Soon she'll be beating up the technicians, then the simulator, then you, and finally... all the way up to the commander-in-chief. I'm just the first one to get caught in the crossfire; it's just the beginning. She just can't stand failure."

"She didn't fail," Sheng Tianhong said. "In that situation, no one could have saved her."

"Hypersonic rotation".

“I wrote a book about hypersonic rotation,” he said, and Song Xingye suspected he had a legendary story hidden in his mind. “I know the ins and outs of it. But even before that, you didn’t have any chance.”

What exactly happened?

"Don't you want to wait for that briefing?" The briefing is a long, tedious, and grueling formal process.

He thought for a moment: "But during that ignition operation, there was no indication on the instrument panel. And the RCS couldn't possibly ignite at that stage; the fuel would have been used up long ago."

"You think you've got it all figured out," he grinned, "a series of traps, right?"

"God," he said, stuffing his gloves into his helmet, "sometimes I really feel like these people are deliberately trying to make us fail."

No. It's just that you have to go through hundreds of failures before you succeed at the truly crucial moment. Besides, that's the point of simulation. No one has ever died in flight simulators. Ultimately, this test flight was mainly to verify the double-cone design, not to test the pilot's skill level.

Song Xingye admitted that this was true. The double cone simulator was extremely unpopular; only true simulator fanatics, those who desperately racked up simulation time to secure better seats in the rotation, would consider using it.

People like people like Song Xingye and Mila.

"I don't think this thing will ever fly," Sheng Tianhong said. "The chances of it going wrong are too high. In simulations, the crash rate of biconical structures is ridiculously high..."

Unfortunately, Mira doesn't have that observer's perspective.

"She might be the best candidate we have right now," Sheng Tianhong said softly.

Hearing her say that, Song Xingye was somewhat surprised.

Sheng Tianhong continued, "She kept giving it her all. She poured everything into pulling MEM out of that vortex of failure. Her efforts to keep MEM alive were closer to success than I could have imagined."

"By the way," he patted Song Xingye on the back, the weight of his hand clearly felt through the heaviness of Song's compression suit, "your performance just now was also quite good. Your decision to stop was the second-best correct choice at the time."

"Then what is the best option?"

"That's how Mira spells it. Come on," he patted him on the back, "I'll buy you a coffee later."

The two walked out of the training building side by side.

……

Sheng Tianhong and Ji Ma were staring intently at him.

The three were in a conference room, which was prepared specifically for the landing site selection committee of the "Search God".

The walls are covered with various images and data about Mars: photos taken by the Mariner orbiter, maps drawn by the Geological Survey, colored stratigraphic profiles, and geological survey data.

Next to the long table against the wall, piles of charts, pictures, and binders were stacked up to the brim.

Song Xingye unfolded a map and pinned it to the wall.

This is a color block painting with bright colors and a simple composition, with a few small flags scattered on it.

"Mars," he began, "we only need to grasp the details necessary to understand it. Know your enemy, right? This is a geological map of Mars drawn based on data from the Mariner probe."