I started with a ship full of max-level veterans, and I'm just a complete noob.

As the car pulled into the side courtyard of the Institute of Mechanics, the sky was already beginning to lighten. Jiang Ming got out of the car, Comrade Song followed behind with his briefcase, and Lao Sun waited outside in the corridor with his tool bag and thermos.

After verifying his credentials, Qian Xuesen's secretary led Jiang Ming through two guard gates and escorted him to a small, secret room at the end of the corridor.

There was no blackboard in the room. In the center was a round mahogany table with worn edges. On the tabletop were several first-generation missile overall design plans, each document covered with a red-edged cover.

Qian Xuesen sat by the window, with Guo Yonghuai and Ren Xinmin on either side. In front of each of the three was a slide rule, a pencil, and a parameter summary that had been read many times.

Jiang Ming sat down in the empty seat opposite Guo Yonghuai, placed the 800MHz high-frequency silicon tube design report on the table, and only when his hand left the cover did he realize the weight of the silence in the room.

Over the past few months, they have each been working on their own fronts—aerodynamics, general engineering, guidance and control, and electronics—and now, for the first time, these approaches have been put on the same table.

Looking at the autonomous reconstruction task book in Qian Xuesen's hand, Jiang Ming's initial excitement was quickly suppressed by a sense of responsibility. The model's obsolescence was just the beginning; any error in any parameter would be transmitted to the live-fire exercise through the overall interface.

Qian Xuesen clasped his hands together, looked at the three people present, and then said, "The Soviet parameters have been removed from the design guidelines. From the underlying equations to the device implementation, the guidance system must be taken over by ourselves."

Ren Xinmin moved his chair closer to the table and pushed a stack of perforated paper tape summaries and the full-section meteorological correction model to the center.

"The extreme wind field in Jiuquan has been filled with three types of boundaries. Segmented gain is used before and after crossflow separation, and a recalculation entry is also left at the end interface. However, the model still lacks device response and thermal protection limitations before it can be incorporated into the overall model."

As he said this, he pointed to two empty spaces with a pencil. Those spaces involved servo delay, control signal bandwidth, and reentry stage structural deformation, and none of them could be decided on their own.

Qian Xuesen opened the first page of the planning document and drew a short line in the guidance system column with a red pencil.

"From today onwards, the four of you here will form the highest decision-making core for guidance and flight trajectory control at the Fifth Academy. Major models, overall interfaces, and live-fire boundaries must be jointly reviewed here."

When Jiang Ming heard this, his first thought wasn't about the change in his position, but rather that every page of documents on his desk would eventually end up in real factories, real firing ranges, and on the front lines.

He disassembled the silicon tube report and laid out the cutoff frequency, junction capacitance, gain dispersion, and subsequent aging arrangements for the twelve samples in sequence.

"Tubes numbered seven through ten have already crossed the engineering line and are currently capable of handling intermediate frequency amplification, short pulse shaping, and some control interfaces. The first six are undergoing temperature cycling and vibration aging, and long-term drift data still needs to be supplemented."

Ren Xinmin took the report, first looked at the test conditions, then at the fixture correction records, and finally copied the device response time onto his overall interface card.

"With this set of data, the control amplification chain can rely less on some Soviet-made high-speed tubes. However, batch consistency must be maintained, otherwise no matter how beautiful the overall model is, it will look different when installed in the equipment."

"Therefore, this report can only be included in the candidate device catalog for the time being."

Jiang Ming closed the cover of the results again. "After the aging results are approved, it will be transferred to the finalization catalog. The Aksai receiving stage will also be verified according to the same set of boundaries."

Guo Yonghuai kept flipping through the two reports, his pen held between his right fingers. When he reached the last page, he didn't immediately offer his opinion, but instead pulled a folded piece of white paper from his pocket and laid it on the table.

After the pen tip touched the ground, he drew three circles of equal size and wrote ballistics, guidance, and thermal protection in sequence inside each circle.

Guo Yonghuai turned the paper to the center of the table and added a few more lines with a pen, making the three circles overlap and leaving a common area in the middle.

"The trajectory determines whether it can reach the target area, the guidance determines whether it can land and be recovered, and the thermal protection determines whether the missile body can complete its journey intact."

He looked up at Jiang Ming and Ren Xinmin, "If you can't hit the target accurately, it won't fly far, and it won't withstand the ablation, the result will be the same. These three lines should be put together from the beginning of the project."

Ren Xinmin looked down at the paper. The engine thrust reduction, weather correction, control bandwidth and reentry thermal boundary, which were originally scattered in the overall plan, found a common interface in the three circles.

He positioned his interface card at the intersection of guidance and trajectory, and extended the reentry sequence to the thermal protection area. The boundary that previously required multiple departments to confirm finally revealed a clear division of labor.

Qian Xuesen picked up a red pencil and drew a closed line outside the three circles.

"The overall demonstration for the next five years will follow this structure. Whoever discovers that an interface has exceeded its limits has the right to demand a full recalculation. We cannot wait until the test field to patch the vulnerabilities."

Jiang Ming stared at the blank space in the center of the three circles. The microscopic structure knowledge brought by the quantum mechanics, the engineering data of the high-frequency silicon tube, and the temperature control experience of Furnace No. 3 were connected in his mind to form the same manufacturing chain.

"Another layer is needed here, where the projectile material withstands the heat flow, electronic devices perform control, and measuring equipment provides real data. Ultimately, the model above all depends on industrial capabilities to be implemented."

Guo Yonghuai looked at the line of text, picked up the white paper again, and adjusted the positions of the three reports around the circle.

"This base layer is the most difficult to repair and the easiest to get stuck on. In future overall plans, materials and electronic components can no longer be ranked at the end of the list of indicators; they must be included in the boundary assessment in advance."

Qian Xuesen wrote revisions to the planning document, requiring the Fifth Academy's overall group, the Institute of Mechanics, the Institute of Physics, and the 502 Research Laboratory to establish a fixed interface system, allowing key parameters to be sent directly to the core group for review across units.

As Jiang Ming listened to the sound of the pen gliding across the paper, he knew that once this system was put into writing, his work would shift from solving single problems to connecting multiple national-level technical routes.

The sound of a thermos stopper gently tapping against the neck came from outside the door. Old Sun carried the hot water to the door and, seeing that the door was slightly ajar, turned to the side to wait for his secretary to come out and take it.

His gaze passed through the crack in the door and landed on the white paper in the center of the round table. The three circles representing ballistics, guidance, and thermal protection overlapped each other, and the line of words written by Jiang Ming was right in the center.

Old Sun didn't say anything. He took two steps back with the thermos, then straightened his back and stood next to the guard line, even silencing the sound of his tool bag hitting his trouser leg.

He couldn't hear the whole discussion in the room, nor could he understand the formulas, but he recognized the words "materials" and "electronics industry," and he was even more aware that the silicon rods in Furnace No. 3, the springs wound out of the workshop, and every sheet of record paper that Da Liu was guarding had all been incorporated into this diagram.

Sunlight streamed through the wooden lattice window and fell on the mahogany round table, where Qian Xuesen, Guo Yonghuai, Ren Xinmin, and Jiang Ming each pressed down on one of the four corners of the planning document.

Without all four hands exerting force at the same time, the stack of documents was firmly pressed down in the center of the table, and the white paper with three circles drawn on it was already tucked into the first page of the first-generation missile overall design plan.