Chapter 178 - 174: New Yuan No. 3, Rolling Off the Production Line!_1

On June 18th, this year’s 618 was not only an Internet shopping festival, but also a shopping festival for many private aerospace enterprises.

Because New Yuan Aeronautics opened up its entire engine series and recovery control systems for sale, the previously struggling private companies suddenly picked up steam.

There were 5-meter-class reusable rockets using single K380V engines, which covered a near-Earth orbit capacity range of 9 to 30 tons through a combination of CBC configuration and second stages.

There were also companies developing 7-meter-class heavy rockets using multiple K120 engines, and even some copying Musk’s Starship or developing small spaceplanes.

Having engines indeed enabled them to do as they pleased, and other previously inconspicuous private aerospace companies emerged from isolation, starting to accelerate development through commercialization.

Rockets with capacities ranging from several hundred kilos to hundreds of tons were instantaneously encompassed by the diverse rocket spectrum of a few companies.

And although key components were procured, they could still lower costs in other aspects to turn a profit, as reusability is the best cost compressor.

However, to prevent unrestricted vicious competition from constantly driving down prices, the Aerospace Development Committee took the lead in making mandatory regulations to completely cut off the market impact of excessively low prices, ensuring everyone had a chance to compete.

Having dealt with commerce for many years, the nation was far from naive and had laid out regulations from the get-go.

These actions strongly boosted domestic confidence in private aerospace, making people believe that New Yuan Aeronautics and the national space agency would not monopolize the market alone, which garnered a very positive response from the aerospace sector.

The international reaction to New Yuan’s initiative to open up its products to other private enterprises was significant.

Aerospace has always been quite insular, with each entity doing its own thing; something like sourcing parts from various places and assembling them to reduce costs, as seen in the automotive industry, is quite rare. But opening up could be very beneficial to small space enterprises.

Several small space companies in America took the opportunity to call on firms like SpaceX, ULA, and Blue Origin to open up their engines and the much-coveted rocket recovery control systems. However, unexpectedly, the major players responded coldly, seemingly indifferent.

For large companies, their aim is to monopolize the market; previously, in the original timeline, Sky Fork leveraged the continuously launching Falcon 9 to create the miracle of claiming 70% of the world’s annual launch volume.

If they sold these technologies, what if they were reverse-engineered and used to compete with them in business? Even buying their components would be unacceptable; their goal is to maximize profit.

NACA remained silent too, as they currently relied on a few large enterprises for the Artemis program, which was far more important to them than a bunch of small fry.

Moreover, their primary focus wasn’t located here, but in Qiongzhou.

That same day, it was rare to see two An-1250 aircraft take off simultaneously from the B-level Base.

Plane B4043 mainly flew between New Yuan and Qiongzhou, which was quite fixed, while the second plane flew everywhere, originally planning a round-the-world flight, but due to various factors, it might be delayed for some time...

These factors, apart from American interference, also included the continuous requests for companies hoping to use the An-1250 for cargo transport missions.

The largest request came from CRRC Corporation. They carefully reviewed the An-1250’s data and then rented it to transport Harmony train sets.

The Harmony has a width of 3.2 meters, a height of 4 meters, and a length of 25 meters. The An-1250’s cargo bay could accommodate two sections side by side for a total of 8 carriages.

Eight carriages, just enough for a train set, were transported just like that. However, due to the An-1250’s cargo bay load limit of only 360 tons, for safety reasons, only 7 carriages totaling 335 tons were placed, taking off right at the line.

After five flights, the An-1250 transported two connected 16-carriage train sets to their destination. The crew switch was completed in 48 hours with frightening efficiency, and the train set was worth the high rental fee paid by CRRC, just a matter of selling a few train tickets.

There was also transportation of large medical equipment; the An-1250 completed these in a single trip. Various unexpected industries required moments of super-sized air transport capabilities.

Because plane B4143 was too prominent, people jocularly said that "the eldest miss" was living in luxury, just transporting rockets, while "the second miss" had to work hard to earn money to support the family. Some even created a chibi airplane mascot of the second plane, which sold quite well.

This time, since the second plane had no scheduled tasks, it flew back home, loaded with the disassembled New Yuan No. 3, and arrived in Qiongzhou one after the other.

This time, the massive silhouette of the An-1250 couldn’t hide the rocket body it was carrying.

meters, compared to the Saturn V Rocket’s 10 meters and the N1 Rocket’s maximum of 17 meters. However, because the N1 tapered upwards with a gradually narrowing diameter, it didn’t have the same visual impact as the New Yuan No. 3, with its consistent 11-meter diameter along the entire rocket.

Thus, for the media to refer to the New Yuan No. 3 as "the world’s largest and thickest rocket," there was not much objection.

New Yuan was revealing less and less information to the public, becoming ever more mysterious. There was almost no news before New Yuan No. 3 was shipped out.

When people captured images of the An-1250 with the rocket’s first stage on its back, they naturally also saw the nineteen engines arranged in three rings behind it.

Nineteen K380 liquid oxygen-kerosene engines, with a total liftoff thrust of 7,500 tons, twice that of the Saturn V Rocket’s 3,400 tons!

The carrying capacity did not disappoint, reaching a staggering 247 tons, capable of sending 101 tons to lunar orbit.

There was a moment when even NACA felt despair.

Whether SLS or the Heavy Falcon Rocket, both were only capable of sending about 20 tons to the Moon, while New Yuan No. 3 could handle at least three times as much.

tons! That mass could send the spacecraft, lander, space station, and a simple lunar habitat all in one trip, a level of transport capacity so abundant that it made people question the necessity of the Artemis program.

And with a rocket diameter of 11 meters, if the fairing was made just a bit larger, it could accommodate a space vessel with a diameter of up to 15 meters!

Such a large diameter, one could almost set up a basketball court inside!

Some believed that arranging nineteen engines on the same rocket body would reduce reliability, potentially repeating the N1 Rocket’s fate. But considering that New Yuan-2A’s twenty-one engines all worked properly, the possibility of an issue with nineteen seemed unlikely, right?

The national space agency, which had been shaken psychologically by New Yuan-2A just the previous month, was suddenly under immense pressure. The capability of 135 tons to low Earth orbit was no longer sufficient for Lin Ju, who was aiming for a giant rocket with more than two hundred tons of lifting power.

If Lin hadn’t clearly stated that the current mission for New Yuan No. 3 was to build a space station, rather than going immediately to the Moon, the national space agency could have directly given up on lunar plans.

The gap was too vast to compete; 101 tons of lunar orbit capacity meant brute force could perform miracles. There was no need to painstakingly reduce mass or optimize; they might not even fully utilize the 100-ton capacity.

But even though Lin Ju repeatedly clarified that they would not compete for the Moon landing, focusing instead on preparing the lunar surface for later manned missions, the Big Shot still urged the progress of the CZ-10.

CZ-10 was about to complete the final assembly of its first prototype rocket for body testing, and if the pace was pushed to the limit, it could fly by early August.

Yun Hongjun’s CZ-10 team was virtually residing at the Jingou Rocket Manufacturing Base just to oversee the progress of the first CZ-10, ready to make modifications at any moment.