Chapter 159 - 155 New Spaceship_1

A hand rested on his shoulder.

"Unhappy about being chosen? The organization’s selection shows they value you. Would you have gotten this opportunity a decade ago? Even Union members can’t achieve this. Moreover, this isn’t a trip for pleasure; it’s about finding us a direction for our work!"

The speaker was Li Xi, who had come to the Aerospace Development Committee seeking assistance—the challenges of the CZ-5 were simply too great!

Forget the YF135 engines that the new CZ-5 would use, or rather the YF135K as it should be called, which is the reusable version. The 6th Research Institute said they could get it ready by 2018 at the earliest and 2019 at the latest, in time for the CZ-5’s maiden flight in 2020.

Due to the new 6-meter diameter rocket body, the technical difficulty of the CZ-5’s rocket body was indeed significant.

Seven YF135s, delivering a lift-off thrust of 2600 tons, and weighing 2000 tons—placing these figures on a 6-meter diameter rocket body meant the rocket would be very tall, and its structure would need to be further strengthened.

Not to mention that they had to develop a universal CBC, which meant the middle core stage had to withstand a thrust of 2600 tons from each side. One could imagine that at least the connection mechanism had to be completely redeveloped and it had to be incredibly strong.

Another critical issue was how to recover the CZ-5?

For safety, continued recovery with support legs seemed feasible, but a few days ago, Academician She came to him saying that although the feasibility of leg-supported recovery could pass, it was necessary to consider future projects.

Of course, the future project was the future super heavy-lift reusable rocket, the CZ-9.

With a lift-off thrust of 10,000 tons, it would overshadow all other rockets globally, and with a low Earth orbit payload capacity of 300 tons, it could launch an entire Shenzhou spaceship!

The recovery method for the CZ-9 couldn’t rely on vertical recovery with support legs anymore; it was too tall and too complex. The ideal method would be to support the grid fins like the New Yuan-2, avoiding the height issues and offering even greater potential.

But grid fin recovery... Well, when He Tang heard it, his expression was one of "I’d rather die," and he declared that the 8th Institute was too busy and to come back after his lunar mission...

Who would have thought that just by attending a meeting, he’d stumble upon major news?

When the noise started below, the Big Shot timely hushed everyone and said gently,

"This space course actually carries a bit of a reward factor. However, the talents selected this time have all made outstanding contributions in their respective fields, and their contributions to the nation fully deserve such rewards.

Furthermore, upon their return, they will be shouldering heavy responsibilities, working even harder to lead China’s aerospace industry forward! The higher-ups and I have had many discussions, and the message is clear; comrades should not feel any psychological burden. After all, this is a process we must undergo as we advance into space!"

After finishing, the Big Shot sat down, indicating for everyone to express their opinions.

Lin Ju raised his hand in a swift motion,

"Well, I have a question. Since the proposal was first publicized internally within the Aerospace Development Committee, does this mean that the manned flight mission is also decided by the Committee?

If the H1 type space shuttle is used, New Yuan still offers a final bid of 350 million yuan for the space shuttle and its module. If it’s a seat-sharing arrangement, the price will fluctuate, with the individual seat cost on the ’Union’ set at 38.88 million yuan, excluding training fees, which should be a very favorable price."

"..."

The committee members never expected Lin Ju to react so swiftly, and to start pitching his company’s space shuttle on the spot.

However, as things currently stood, the Space Agency was indeed in need of low-cost, reusable crewed transport methods.

The Space Agency’s planned method was only the new generation crewed spaceship, in combination with the strategy for the new CZ-7.

Thanks to the increased funding from the 6th Research Institute, which allowed for the mass production of YF100K and the significant expansion of the Jingu Rocket Manufacturing Base, the cost of the CZ-7 had surprisingly dropped from 680 million yuan for six YF100K engines to 390 million yuan for the ten-engine version.

The batch production line built for the large number of launch tasks is terrifyingly effective at reducing costs. A rocket with a near-Earth orbit payload capacity of 20 tons costs only 390 million yuan, which is indeed a bargain.

The one-and-a-half stages (counting the booster as half a stage) of reusable design can reduce the cost of a CZ-7 launch by about 67%. A CZ-7 that can be reused 15 times can cut the cost per launch to 155 million yuan.

The new generation manned spacecraft test ship costs 1 billion yuan to build, and every reuse requires the attachment of a new service module. After 15 launches, the average cost is just about 113 million yuan.

In the end, each launch mission costs about 268 million yuan, and with 7 people on board, the cost per person is approximately 38.28 million yuan.

That’s cheap enough, almost ten times cheaper than the more than 400 million yuan cost of the Shenzhou Spaceship. It was unthinkable in the past.

Renting the Unity for launching 6 astronauts averages 58.3 million per launch, reducing the costs by about 34%.

Even if New Yuan Aeronautics launched the dependable "New Yuan-2," the new generation manned spacecraft test ship can also be expanded, right?

If it were to completely discard the cargo hold like "New Yuan-2" and change entirely to crewed configuration, it could seat 11 people at a price of 24.4 million per seat, even cheaper than Xinyuan Company!

And these are not long-term ideas; they plan to achieve this around 2017.

The seniors had already thoroughly understood this plan when discussing how to send experts to space. They decided to issue the call for proposals only after confirming that they could use their own rockets and spacecraft to send people to space cheaply next year.

The Big Shot has already received a clear order: this year, outsourcing can be used for further missions, but next year, they must use the spacecraft.

The budget of 400 million was also set based on this plan’s 390 million, and the seniors want them to find a way to reduce the costs even further.

After all, if Xinyuan Company can offer a bid of 350 million yuan and still make a decent profit, it shows that the cost of the rocket can still be pushed down!

Lin Ju was aware of this plan, but he was not clear about the progress, so he wanted to know who would undertake this year’s launch mission.

Although it was unlikely that the project would be assigned to New Yuan, there was still a chance.

From this proposal, Lin Ju, by comparing information from his past life, sensed a significant shift in the upper echelons’ thinking—there was a very heavy investment in space.

The kind that spends 400 million a year just to send space experts to the heavens would have been absolutely impossible in the past. It can only be said that the environment has caused a significant change.

Moreover, there were early signs of this change, evidenced by the restart of the "Dawn" program.

Of course, Lin Ju welcomed this with open arms. He was forced by the system to frantically focus on space, and if he could get everyone else to join in the frenzy, he would be much happier.

Of course, Lin Ju might be enjoying his involvement, but others may not feel the same.

When these experts heard about the 38.88 million yuan price tag, their hearts twitched.

Can high reusability and more seats really do whatever they want? They actually managed to spread the average cost to such an extent.

Fortunately, the potential of H1 has almost reached its limit. The maximum payload of "New Yuan 5B" is just right at 21 tons. Otherwise, if a few more seats were added, would the price be even lower?

The Big Shot coughed and said, "Regarding this year’s launch task, the Aerospace Development Committee has directed that we hold an internal competitive bidding. Anyone capable of undertaking the task without exceeding the budget can apply. However, the training for the five experts will take place in Haidian District. It’s fine as long as the total training time reaches 2 months before the launch; squeezing in a few days every half month won’t be a problem."

Lin Ju sat back down. Competitive bidding within the Aerospace Development Committee—wasn’t that almost blatantly assigning the order to H1?