Chapter 167 - 163 Node_1

Actually, it wasn’t just C832, C822 had also caught the military’s eye.

The C822 platform could be converted into electronic warfare aircraft and anti-submarine aircraft, which have more uses, and the maintenance costs are cheaper than military aircraft, suitable for both military and civilian uses.

This wasn’t without precedent; America had long used Boeing 707-based transport aircraft, anti-submarine aircraft, tankers, etc., all proving that in the field of auxiliary equipment, civilian aircraft are in fact more suitable for modification than military aircraft.

Meanwhile, Commercial Aviation was unaware that even though their official factories hadn’t been built yet, the military had already mentally placed orders for no less than 50 of their airplanes.

As for whether selling to the military would lead to international sanctions, it was as if one wouldn’t be sanctioned if they didn’t sell!

...

Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center.

A New Yuan Type A rocket stood erect, its top carrying a space plane reminiscent of the H1.

Dou Ping stood at a distance, gazing at the new "Shenlong".

As the Xuehu project advanced, New Yuan had also modified an unmanned version of H1 along with them, making significant structural improvements.

After removing the life support systems, the empty weight dropped to 9 tons, with a maximum takeoff weight of 19 tons, officially named "Multi-Function Unmanned Large-Scale Space Flight Test Platform."

The new "Shenlong" adopted a weapon modularization design, with ample space for weapons and detection systems and included foldable solar panels, greatly enhancing its power generation.

The engine too had undergone changes, now an engine using dinitrogen tetroxide as the oxidizer and unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine as the "toxic thrust" fuel.

Although its specific impulse was not as high as that of engines using LOX/RP-1, LOX/LH2, or LOX/CH4, both of these liquids were room-temperature fuels that could be stored for long periods, and unmanned space planes needed to stay in space for at least a few months, requiring highly storage-resistant fuel.

The current SL-1A unmanned aero-space plane was still an experimental machine, and its interior was hastily filled with some of the original Shenlong’s reconnaissance equipment and a multitude of batteries. Weighing only 13 tons, it was ready to be launched and have its performance tested.

This kind of secret spacecraft couldn’t be launched from Qiongzhou; in Jiuquan, other countries only knew something was launched, but they couldn’t take pictures to see what it looked like.

The outside world knew only a simple statement about the launch mission:

"China completed a test launch of a reusable spacecraft at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, which was a complete success."

Only NACA and USAAF knew that this thing had a role similar to the X37B, but they kept quiet; the fewer people know about these things, the better.

However, at Desert Base, the ground center began testing immediately after SL-1A entered orbit, including lowering orbit reconnaissance, space agitation, and simulating attacks on decommissioned satellites, among other things.

After just the initial basic tests, the base couldn’t get enough of the SL-1A.

Size is an advantage for spacecraft; weight is beauty.

H1 was heavier than X37B, but it was very agile in space and had an advantage America did not.

China solely enjoyed the Tiangong Space Station, which could dock SL-1A for maintenance and modification, clearly something the ISS couldn’t do, as the ISS member states would not accept the ISS being used for military purposes.

In the future, SL-1A might also attempt to carry the WCR-09 combined propulsion engine and briefly enter the atmosphere for close reconnaissance or strike missions; the prospects for the new Shenlong project far exceeded that of the old.

This also made Dou Ping look forward to the "Xuehu" that was still undergoing scheme demonstration; it was a Mach 10 aircraft, while anti-aircraft missiles only flew at about Mach 3.

The missile that could not be caught up with will once again be displayed to the world, and Xuehu could even abandon its stealth design, because unless it’s a laser, no other traditional means could harm it.

Visible yet untouchable, this advantage that once belonged exclusively to America will soon be mastered by China.

Furthermore, through collaboration with New Yuan’s high-speed aircraft, China has also achieved a lead over America in another project.

That is the Cloud Ascend project.

Or rather, a variant of the Cloud Ascend project.

The unit in charge of this project is the Aerospace Third Academy, under Aerospace Science and Technology, in charge of projects with a military slant.

The original Cloud Ascend project was a combined aero-space plane, consisting of an atmospheric aircraft and a small spaceplane mounted on its back, with the atmospheric aircraft reaching top speeds of Mach 5.

The carrier aircraft would ascend to high altitudes with the spaceplane on its back, and then the spaceplane would initiate its own engines to enter orbit.

However, after the emergence of WCR09, they found through research using data obtained from the Desert Base that if a flight vehicle could reach speeds of Mach 10 or above 50,000 meters, maybe some changes could be made.

By adding two rocket boosters to the underside of the aero-space plane, designed to conform to the aircraft’s body with a streamlined, low-resistance shape.

When the aero-space plane, weighing around 180 tons (with the two rocket boosters weighing about 120 tons), reaches altitudes above 50,000 meters, it can ignite the rocket engines. The dual rockets could achieve a maximum of about 200 tons of thrust, operating for about 180 seconds, and accelerate the aero-space plane, now weighing only 55 tons, to the first cosmic velocity, entering low Earth orbit directly.

If the rocket boosters could not be discarded and were able to carry the aero-space plane into orbit with them, it would be a complete single-stage to orbit, which is quite powerful.

This kind of aero-space plane could send 10 tons of payload into space, and after being converted into a passenger version, it could carry 50 people, fully meeting the requirements for future single-stage to and from orbit.

With a ground launch mass of 180 tons, sending 15 tons of payload into space, the payload coefficient reaches as high as 8.3%, something launch rockets cannot achieve by any means.

Even with the two-stage orbiting of the Cloud Ascend project, it can only reduce the mass of the carrier aircraft.

Moreover, a single-stage to orbit aero-space plane truly meets people’s ultimate imagination of aero-space planes.

However, the Third Academy is still in the early stages of envisioning this plan because such an aero-space plane is too advanced, and if it’s designed to dock with space stations in 400-kilometer orbits, the standards are still not quite there.

Besides, it is still at the theoretical stage, and there will certainly be many difficulties during the actual design.

...

At a B-level Base, engineers from both the aviation and aerospace departments gathered together, surrounding a huge, thick disc, waiting to be transported.

The thickness of this huge disc reached 6 meters, and its maximum diameter was a terrifying 12.6 meters.

The diameter alone might not convey the concept, but if one imagines that it would take 5 trailers parked side by side to accommodate the horizontally placed cabin section, one can grasp how large this component is.

This is the core part of the March Space Station, connected to the radiating cabin, situated at the central core node, with 2 axial docking ports and 6 radial docking ports symmetrically arranged.

Just the weight of this node cabin is as high as 20 tons, and each of the two axial cabin sections it connects to has a mass of 100 tons. These three axial cabin sections combined weigh 220 tons, which is enough to show the terrifying scale of the entire space station.

The node cabin, with its greatest difficulty and strongest endurance, was completed first; although it weighs only 20 tons, no rocket available to date can send it into the sky, simply because a diameter of 12.6 meters is too exaggerated. Only the New Yuan No. 3 has this capability.