Chapter 138 - 134 New Year_1

"Factory Manager Lin, good morning."

"You too, good morning."

From February 5th to February 14th was Xinyuan Company’s New Year holiday period, but by the end of January, many employees could already leave on the rest days they had accumulated, so essentially, the B-level Base was half-shut down for about 20 days.

During this period, aside from a few personnel required to stay at certain posts, system engineers, security staff, and Lin Ju, not even many cooks remained...

The security staff consisted only of a few locals from Xinyuan, including an almost 60-year-old uncle from the tractor factory who watched over the place in his quiet home, but that wasn’t an issue, as there were soldiers patrolling outside the B-level Base.

Around the perimeter of the base, local military districts organized patrolling troops. Within a 10-kilometer area, there were various overt and covert sentries, preventing any outsiders from casually entering.

Lin Ju would occasionally receive reports that the number of unidentified individuals in the surrounding villages and counties was rapidly increasing, fortunately, none of them could breach the multiple levels of guards to get close to the base.

Moreover, the base was equipped with a vast array of cameras and sensors, and "Mountain and Sea" faithfully monitored everything, ensuring that there was absolutely no possibility of a security guard nodding off and letting something slip in.

Protected by countless unseen personnel, Lin Ju went for a morning run to breathe some fresh air before returning to the small cafeteria to dine with the system engineers.

The remaining cooks and cleaning ladies quietly discussed a phenomenon they had noticed: the big boss and several senior engineers were all single, which was quite the spectacle.

Unaware that he was being dissed, Lin continued discussing the plans for the next fiscal year with the engineers.

The most important was the NAPE nuclear propulsion plan. Cheng Nankai had spent over seven months and had basically mastered the basic reactor design, involving more than 1,300 new technologies; over 200 of them were major technological challenges.

The budget for the fiscal year of 2016 was set to increase to 6 billion yuan, with over 4 billion allocated to supporting enterprises for breakthroughs in new technologies and equipment manufacturing. The first experimental reactor was expected to undergo trial operation between October and November, along with the design work for the XN90 spacecraft, preparing the necessary technologies.

At the same time, technical validation for ion-gas spike combined propulsion was planned, with a prototype to be manufactured between July and September.

In 2017, the nuclear propulsion team believed it would take at least half a year to master the perfect combination of these technologies, with plans to manufacture five prototypes. Early in that year, the A100 was to be finalized for production, and the H2 equipped with a nuclear thermal engine had to make its first flight by the end of the year, as a backup plan for any potential delays with NAPE.

Although the system had a complete set of technical data and experimental results, to fully grasp and possess self-research capabilities in this area, they still had to go through the process themselves.

The actual NAPE operational engines were expected to begin production in October 2017, with the construction of the first XN90 spacecraft starting as well.

By mid-2018, the XN90 spacecraft equipped with six NAPE engines would come off the production line and perform two test flights that year. The earliest manned lunar mission would take place in January 2019, leaving a margin of six months from the system’s deadline, enough to accommodate one unexpected event.

Just to be safe, the goal for 2016 was to complete the design and manufacturing of the H2 spaceplane’s body and to produce two models equipped with the conventional liquid oxygen and methane engines first.

As this year, Xinyuan Company officially started the construction of the "Advance" Centrifugal Space Station, which required assistance from large spaceplanes.

They planned to produce five more New Yuan No. 2 rockets, forming two New Yuan-2A and two New Yuan-2, with the former specifically modified for launching the 130-ton H2 into space. Additionally, two New Yuan No. 3 giant rockets were also set for their inaugural flight soon.

This year’s budget was a conservative investment of 30 billion yuan, and funds were still ample. Moreover, many manned commercial flights were scheduled, which were expected to make a substantial profit.

On February 15th, the two bases of Xinyuan Company officially resumed work.

After an all-out recruitment drive, the number of official employees finally exceeded 3,000, with over 400 of them being returnees from abroad, attracted by Xinyuan Company.

Many were interviewed and passed at the end of the year and officially began working at the beginning of the new year.

Together with personnel seconded from universities, the B-level Base was finally able to operate at full capacity, unleashing its terrifying manufacturing power.

Androff crammed more than 100 people into the An-1250 workshop, immediately implementing shift rotations to increase efficiency, and sent engineers to various supporting enterprises to urge them to deliver as soon as possible.

He was now responsible for the manufacturing of multiple rockets, space shuttles, and airplanes, overseeing more than a dozen departments, with a packed schedule.

At the same time, four New Yuan No. 3’s rocket bodies entered manufacturing, with the Aerospace Dynamics Department’s K380V production plan sitting at 100 units to be completed within three months, averaging one a day.

The 4,000-plus silicon carbide chips produced during the New Year period were divided among the departments in a single day, with no one knowing exactly where they were destined.

...

Division Six, Chang’an Engine Manufacturing Base.

After four months of hard work, the YF130 design was finalized, and part requirements had been sent out to various units for production.

In March, a combined test of the gas generator and turbine pump was to take place, with a prototype to be manufactured in April and the first batch of 16 YF130 engines to start production by June at the latest.

The parameters of the YF130 had seen further improvement, with a dual nozzle thrust of 510 tons and a specific impulse of 294 seconds, it would increase the CZ-10’s lift-off thrust to 5,100 tons, and astronauts could bring back an extra 100 kilograms of mass when returning to Earth.

Stimulated by Project 2921, the research team at Division Six expanded to 1.5 times its size and successfully established an engine production line for future CZ-10 needs, enabling mass production of large-thrust engines instead of the semi-handmade, one-by-one approach, drawing closer to the paths of SpaceX and Xinyuan Company.

This would also save a great deal of time as mass production lowered costs, allowing for several prototypes to be tested continuously; testing was no longer something that required meticulous preparation.

Thus, Division Six even had the spare capacity to decide to initiate the YF90, a research and development program for a 220-ton class hydrogen and oxygen engine.

Although the second stage of CZ-10 could use four vacuum version YF77 engines, the parameters of YF77 were quite outdated, so the future-mandatory upgrade was scheduled and the YF90 prepared for CZ-9 was kicked off.

For the third stage rocket, the new 25-ton class closed-cycle expander cycle hydrogen and oxygen engine, YF79, was making even faster progress, with design work gradually nearing completion.

But Division Six did not consider these future large-thrust engines to be advanced, since by this time, they also gradually learned of Xinyuan’s nuclear propulsion engine, which had progressed for months!

They learned about it because the nuclear test base next to B-level Base was completed, and it was only then that the research institute under the space agency became aware that it was a nuclear propulsion plan being conducted there.

The specifics of the project were unknown, but it was very likely the A100 engine that Androff had once mentioned.

That was a nuclear propulsion engine with a specific impulse of over 20,000, rendering any chemical propulsion engine as nothing more than trash in comparison.

Division Six had conducted their own feasibility study of nuclear engines, which had a specific impulse of only around 1,800 seconds, although it was also high, it was still far behind in comparison.

Yet, the higher-ups still had no intentions of following up, which made Division Six somewhat anxious. They established a small group on their own to conduct research on nuclear propulsion and at the same time reported to their superiors:

Big Shot, you wouldn’t want us to lag behind everywhere, would you?

The space agency responded: Not approved.

The nuclear engine program was too expensive, and China Power Investment Corporation in cooperation with Xinyuan Company believed that completing the entire program conservatively required about 40 billion, and that amount was difficult to recoup just for the nuclear reactors.

Moreover, even for missions to Mars, traditional engines could do the job, and nuclear engines were for exploring Saturn and Jupiter, tasks for the next generation, and preparations involved more than just having spacecraft.

Despite the setback from the higher-ups, Division Six, still led by Tang Weitian, decided to continue the theoretical research on nuclear propulsion and simultaneously resolved to promote the development of liquid oxygen and methane engines.

The methane engines were not especially difficult technically and structurally similar to hydrogen and oxygen engines, only that previous methane engines had poor performance, particularly in specific impulse, and did not outperform kerosene and hydrogen and oxygen engines.

But Division Six did not want to fall behind in this area of research either. Methane has greater advantages in acquisition and storage compared to liquid hydrogen, and its design as a low-temperature fuel also made common-bulkhead tank designs much easier to realize.