[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"origin-you-were-told-to-build-a-tractor-but-you-re-buil":3,"chapter-you-were-told-to-build-a-tractor-but-you-re-buil-you-were-told-to-build-a-tractor-but-you-re-buil-chapter-133":6},{"origin":4,"title":5},"english","You were told to build a tractor, but you're building a rocket?",{"chapter":7,"nextChapterSlug":19,"prevChapterSlug":20,"totalChapters":21,"novelImage":22},{"id":8,"novel_id":9,"title":10,"slug":11,"index":12,"content":13,"wordcount":14,"created_at":15,"updated_at":15,"volume":16,"translator":17,"content_hash":18},1306036,1735,"Chapter 133 - 129 Airworthiness Certificate_1","you-were-told-to-build-a-tractor-but-you-re-buil-chapter-133",133,"\u003Cp>\"Chief Designer Yang, hello!\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Hello, hello...\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Discretely freeing himself from Lin Ju’s hand, Yang Wei felt this young comrade was a bit strange, too excited, even his gaze seemed a bit off.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Little did he know, Lin Ju was wondering what level the chief designer would be rated within the system...\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>A chief designer who could create the maneuverable J-20, integrating the small aspect ratio duck wing and vortex lift, must be at least Level A, right?\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Drooling.JPG\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>What excited him even more was that the XW-9 finally had a buyer, and they wanted to install it on the J-20! Just thinking about the main fourth-generation fighter jets equipped with engines from his own company sent his status skyrocketing, didn’t it?\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"I wonder how many units the 611 Institute is planning to purchase?\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Lin Ju asked enthusiastically, and Yang Wei spread his five fingers.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Fifty units, huh?\" Lin Ju’s eyebrows rose, his face breaking into a smile:\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Since you’re getting fifty, we can knock a zero off the original price of 32 million per unit. Let’s round it to 30 million, 1.5 billion to make friends!\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Yang Wei, utterly nonplussed, \"Mr. Lin, it’s not fifty units, we just want five.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"5... 5 units?\" Lin Ju was taken aback: \"What’s the use of just 5 units? If you count one as a spare, at most it can equip two planes. That’s hardly enough, right?\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Yang Wei: \"That’s the thing, the J-20 base model hasn’t even been finalized yet. It will take at least a year to improve the interceptor version. Five units can already supply two prototype aircraft, that’s enough, that’s enough. We can talk about mass production later.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The following Air Force leaders quickly stepped in to smooth things over: \"The planes haven’t even been commissioned yet, Mr. Lin. Once mass production starts, there will definitely be fifty units. Just wait a bit more.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Lin Ju \"Oh\"ed, feeling rather disinterested. Producing XW-9’s cost was 16 million, so five units would only profit them 70 million, which was less than what a single wealthy individual could offer for a trip to the skies.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Right now, eleven foreign tycoons had booked space flights through Belmond, and seven people in China were in training. 70 million... Well, let’s just think of it as recouping some research and development costs.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Seeing Lin Ju’s suddenly lackluster enthusiasm, Yang Wei and the leaders exchanged glances and refrained from discussing technologies to be introduced. It seemed there was no chance of them buying the XW-9 and reproducing it themselves.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Fortunately, it was a purchase from their own enterprise, still in high-level cooperation with the military as a national defense supplier. They would buy it; when it came to bulk purchasing, they could definitely drive the price down further.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Lin Ju also realized that the J-20 wouldn’t be commissioned until next year and, in fact, the production rate wasn’t high, averaging about 30 to 40 aircraft per year.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>So he pitched the XW-10 as well, but the 611 Institute didn’t need it. It was meant for subsonic transport aircraft, which wasn’t their area at all.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Yang Wei also candidly evaluated the XW-10: \"This engine’s size and fuel consumption are indeed well-controlled, but the WS-20 developed by Shengjing Design Institute has higher specifications...\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>However, Yang Wei did give him a tip, suggesting that XW-10 could compete for the C919 passenger jet engine contract. Obviously, he was not very familiar with COMAC.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>China’s COMAC’s predecessor was Modu City Aircraft Design Institute. Back in the day, they had developed a narrow-body, four-engine large passenger aircraft based on the Boeing 707, the Y-10 project, and had even produced prototypes that started flying at airports nationwide.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>However, during the honeymoon period with America, they wanted to introduce the McDonnell Douglas MD-80 and MD-90, so they halted the highly advanced Y-10 project and disbanded the design team.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>To their dismay, McDonnell Douglas was soon acquired by Boeing, and the deal fell through~\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The Y-10 was left with just one prototype aircraft, and they couldn’t reassemble the team to restart the project. From then on, China’s large aircraft development, died.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Despite rebranding to COMAC, they still preferred to set international benchmarks. The C919 aspired to international success; going for a homegrown jet engine wasn’t on the cards, plus that project was still facing a four or five-year delay.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But Yang Wei’s words opened up new avenues for Lin Ju:\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Chief Designer Yang, should the No. 611 Institute and we collaborate to develop a passenger aircraft based on the XW-10?\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"This...\" This question was indeed unexpected for Yang Wei. After thinking it over, he replied:\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Mr. Lin, the difficulty of building a passenger aircraft is actually higher than that of military aircraft. For starters, it needs to have a long service life with frequent takeoffs and landings, be easy to maintain to reduce costs, and be fuel-efficient... The XW-10 is indeed very well done, it requires high power output which is different from military aircraft, and it must have good sound insulation and comfort.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Future trends in passenger aircraft are all toward twin-engine designs, and the XW-10 could serve as an engine for regional jets. There’s potential, but the risks are substantial, and the No. 611 Institute doesn’t have that kind of funding.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Developing a passenger plane is no easy feat. It’s quite normal for the direct project expenses for a regional aircraft to reach twenty or thirty billion yuan. If you include other associated construction, the figure could potentially be ten times higher.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The initial R&D costs for the C919 were US$9.5 billion, which later exceeded US$20 billion, but it’s debatable how effective the actual rate of localization has been.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Lin Ju understood that the No. 611 Institute did have ideas for passenger aircraft, but such significant funds had to be approved by the state before they could proceed, otherwise they simply didn’t have the resources.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Xinyuan Company couldn’t come up with that kind of money either. For the first batch of two An-1250s, 62% of the technology was completely absent in China, with over 9,000 outsourced components involving 700 companies. Half required Xinyuan’s technical guidance to produce.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>After including the design costs, the unit price of the An-1250 was RMB 2.46 billion, making two of them RMB 5 billion!\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>This was RMB 5 billion! That would have been enough for 50 years of shipping. Although a well-maintained aircraft could last for forty or fifty years without major issues, the maintenance costs were also significant.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Unlike rockets and spacecraft, which could save on most expenses through system integration, passenger aircraft didn’t have that luxury. There was no choice but to push it, funding it as a national project.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>After all, the nation had already injected tens of billions of yuan into the moon landing project, so perhaps getting approval for another twenty or thirty billion to develop passenger planes might not be difficult?\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>...\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Outside the B-level Base, Zhu Chi, the Deputy Director of the Civil Aviation Administration’s Southwest Branch, poked his head out of the car and spotted the Xinyuan Company executives coming to meet him. Lin Ju was among them.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>After getting out of the car, he hurried over to greet them. Xinyuan Company, now an important national defense contractor, held a high status despite being a private enterprise. Although Lin Ju had no administrative rank, he clearly couldn’t be treated like an ordinary company CEO.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>His invitation here was to discuss Xinyuan’s construction of two transport aircraft for transporting special-sized cargo, which due to their large size required a Certificate of Airworthiness. He was also invited to inspect the site.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>After a tour of the bustling B-level Base, Zhu Chi was finally brought to the final assembly workshop, where he beheld a colossal aircraft nose section.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Approaching the height of a 10-story building, the massive nose section, with its green composite primer, was less than 5 meters from the main door of the assembly hangar and nearly 10 meters wide. It gave Zhu Chi quite a shock.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Then, Androff proudly displayed his design of this gigantic transport aircraft using CG and models, hoping that Zhu Chi would help the An-1250 secure various certificates.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Zhu Chi vigorously shook his head.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Aren’t you guys in the business of rockets? When did you switch to making planes? And this huge aircraft... the An-225 has an 84-meter wingspan, yours is 136 meters? Are you planning an assault on the control tower?\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"Probably only a few super-sized airports in the whole country could accommodate this thing for takeoff and landing, and even then, you’d have to clear the airspace, making other planes wait until the An-1250 lands. Otherwise, just the turbulent wake from this huge aircraft would be enough trouble for both small and large planes!\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"No, no, this won’t do... although I don’t know why you want to build such a huge transport plane, it really won’t work.\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Lin Ju: \"What if it’s registered as a military aircraft?\"\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Zhu Chi was stunned for a moment, then realized that with Xinyuan’s capabilities, it was indeed possible. The An-1250 would surely be a top priority, and two special military aircraft wouldn’t make much of an impact. But if you can do this, then why do you need me here?\u003C\u002Fp>",1541,"2026-06-05T18:20:54.443Z",1,"novelbin.me","7e6a98769de038decb30ee51ed7e8bd82ce121ca48b7472e067f22354bf3434d","you-were-told-to-build-a-tractor-but-you-re-buil-chapter-134","you-were-told-to-build-a-tractor-but-you-re-buil-chapter-132",804,"https:\u002F\u002Fnovelzhen.com\u002Fimages\u002Fcovers\u002Fyou-were-told-to-build-a-tractor-but-you-re-buil-cover.jpg"]