Chapter 154 - 150 Objection_1

On May 9, the five crew members of the firm "Jian Ding" officially made their appearance in Qiongzhou, and their attire had undergone a massive change compared to before.

Including the commander-in-chief Hu Dong, Chen Jun, and the other three, the nature of their positions was unofficial—this was China’s first purely commercial manned space orbital flight.

It was also a world first, but with a caveat: it was led by a private company.

Originally, people generally thought Musk, with his Dragon Spaceship, might snatch the first place for a private company to send people into orbit for commercial spaceflight, but now that title belonged to the power of New Yuan Aeronautics.

The two coal bosses and the author Mae Mayu were all too old, after more than six months of professional training, which was of course to justify the 50 million training fee they paid—every project was experienced at least once, with several hours in the market for microgravity experience.

Chen Jun was different; he secured a spot just before the Spring Festival, started training at the end of March, and completed all the training by May 4.

Firstly, he was over forty years old, younger than the three old men, and in much better physical condition; secondly, judged purely by payload standards, in theory, an ordinary person with decent physical fitness wouldn’t have any problems even without training.

The wealthy clients trained more to justify their status and to pay a bit extra, and also because most of them were older and needed to minimize the risk of illness.

For example, System Engineer Ke Yun, having already obtained advanced academic certification from a flight school, underwent just one week of closed training before being sent into space, and now isn’t he doing just fine in space?

The five crew members of China’s first commercial manned flight even had different clothes, with many logos removed to keep the appearance as simple as possible on the outside, while the cabin spacesuits, though all based on the same model, looked very different.

This was also to differentiate commercial missions from official ones, trying to bring space travel closer to everyday life.

While the four passengers were being interviewed and drawing attention, Guo Shen met with Masashi Okada.

"You want to join New Yuan? But your status is a problem; you can’t work in China on a tourist visa, besides, we aren’t short of engineers," Guo said.

Masashi Okada’s motive caught Guo Shen by surprise. This sly old fox who crept close to the B-level Base would have been detained by security if he hadn’t revealed his identity in time, and then he persistently asked to see the executives of Xinyuan Company. Since Lin Ju was currently in Beijing, it fell to Guo Shen to meet him.

However, Okada’s opening remark was about joining Xinyuan Company, and he seemed quite serious:

"Guo-san, I know your company’s status in China is different. I really do want to continue developing in your country. The space program of the Island Country has been locked down, from H1 to H3 rockets there’s been no actual progress—they are just toys for show to the public.

I believe that New Yuan is the place for us Asians to surpass the American cattle in space. I’ve brought the technologies for the H-series rocket’s liquid hydrogen-liquid oxygen engines, solid rockets, electronic engines, and a lot of space detection and control technology. This should prove my loyalty!"

Okada’s self-taught Chinese was quite good. Guo Shen looked at the USB drive he produced, stroking his chin contemplatively.

Technology was, of course, not a trivial matter.

Before the official start of the construction of New Yuan No. 3, JAXA’s LE-9 expander cycle liquid hydrogen-liquid oxygen engine was indeed considered the best in Asia, but now the first New Yuan No. 3 was about to come off the assembly line, and its second stage’s 240 ton-class staged combustion cycle liquid hydrogen-liquid oxygen engine had been used countless times—who would still care about LE-9?

And as for solid rockets, the S-700 with a single-stage thrust of 700 tons was a powerful black tech in the world, a big brick that flies. It was just too expensive and was reserved for the New Yuan No. 4 rocket, which hadn’t been produced just yet.

But then again, if everything in the USB drive was real, then Okada was indeed ruthless, bringing over all of JAXA’s little technical essence, not leaving even the underwear behind.

Having gone to such lengths, Okada must truly have wanted to join.

Betraying JAXA—had New Yuan really become that powerful?

But the issue of Okada’s identity might cause unnecessary international disputes. Should they accept his defection or not?

Guo Shen decided to refer the matter to his boss.

In Beijing, Lin Ju was in the midst of a heated debate with the Aerospace Development Committee and Androff.

The space agency planned to carry out another Chang’e-5 mission next year, to perform an unmanned sample return.

This mission had two purposes, one was to increase familiarity with the lunar surface again and to obtain even more data, and if it was still launched by New Yuan 5B, it wouldn’t cost too much, and the Fifth Academy would have the capacity to design the probe.

The main tasks of the Fifth Academy were still quite important: to follow up with two experimental modules for the Tiangong Space Station and a space telescope, and to develop a lander for manned Moon landings as well as a lunar surface research station.

It seemed like a lot, but the Fifth Academy had expanded its staff and was fully capable of handling it.

So, the second purpose of the Chang’e-5 was: to validate the technology for lunar orbit rendezvous and docking.

The process of unmanned sample return was the same as that for manned return: lander separation, landing, sampling, the ascent vehicle taking off into orbit, rendezvous and docking, then return.

Apart from size, there was no difference with manned Moon missions; conducting such a mission would put people at ease.

Therefore, the Aerospace Development Committee was discussing this project internally, and the space agency had also grown fond of the method of cooperation between the Aerospace Development Committee and private companies.

Of course, another reason was that the only rocket capable of accomplishing this task now was the one from New Yuan Aeronautics, the New Yuan 5B had just the right lifting capacity. The overall mass of Chang’e-5 had to be controlled at 7,980 kilograms, which was achievable.

New Yuan Aeronautics could provide inexpensive rockets and also take the opportunity to increase payload mass. Other private companies getting involved would save some energy and resources, allowing more tasks to be completed without increasing or even decreasing government spending.

However, Xinyuan Company had objections to the Chang’e-5 mission.

Androff believed that an unmanned sample return was simply a waste of resources in the context of conducting manned lunar exploration. A manned return vehicle could bring back a hundred kilograms of samples in one trip; could an unmanned returner manage even 10% of that?

Of course not, Chang’e-5 was expected to bring back no more than 2 kilograms of Moon soil; an astronaut could scoop up more than that with one vigorous shovel.

Androff proposed that the Chang’e-5 could be modified and sent up with a mobile nuclear power vehicle.

That is, to make a reactor into a lunar rover that could provide power for the future lunar surface exploration station, such as charging lunar rovers or living modules.

This mobile nuclear power station weighed about 3.4 tons and had a power output of 38KW, capable of operating continuously for 15 years without maintenance, and could move across the lunar surface on wheels, following the exploration, which would be very helpful for lunar exploration.

In the future, New Yuan-2A will send a larger, fixed-style fission power station to the Moon, with a landing mass of 23 tons and an astonishing power output of 2000KW, sitting stationary at the landing site. Utilizing the Moon’s dry ice and water resources, it will synthesize methane and liquid oxygen to build a fuel supply station.

Actually, this fixed nuclear power station could originally reach a power output of 3000KW, but nuclear power stations need cooling, and vacuum is the enemy of cooling, so nearly 4 tons of mass was used to create a complex cooling system, designed for fuel replacements every 20 years.

If it were on Mars, it would be much easier. Even though the Martian atmosphere is very thin, cooling is much easier than in a vacuum.

Cheng Nankai could get the nuclear power vehicle ready by next year, but the fixed nuclear power station would have to wait until 2018. So instead of launching a not-so-useful Chang’e-5, why not make some preparations for the Moon Base first?