Chapter 207 - 201 Enjoying All the Spring Scenery in the World_1

July 10, Factory Manager Lin’s fifth day in space.

Over the 7th, 8th, and 9th, Lin Ju had fully acclimated to the Tiangong Space Station, rapidly adapting to the weightless lifestyle.

His physical condition was also very good, except for some facial puffiness due to the lack of gravity on his blood, he still felt very comfortable, and all his vital indicators were completely normal.

In these three days, Lin Ju posted 11 Weibo updates, all photos taken on the space station, which greatly envied his numerous online followers, while also attracting a large wave of new fans.

He was also specially authorized to open accounts on Twitter and Instagram, surprisingly without being banned.

Twitter was still in the hands of Jack Dorsey at the time, and Ma was not yet the richest man in the world, so he could not change the name of Little Blue Bird to X.

He copied and pasted the content he posted on Weibo to Twitter, and the interaction he received was even greater than that within China, even Ao Xiaohei retweeted his posts.

Other space agencies, as fellow aerospace enterprises, were also actively interacting. Jeff Bezos commented asking for his opinion on the New Glenn Rocket, Ma Yilong shared several imaginative images of Starship landing on Mars tagging Lin Ju for likes, and NACA also tagged XAP and Lin Ju himself when releasing the new Artemis program logo.

After three days of activity, Lin Ju tweeted last night that he would undertake a spacewalk on July 8, with no plans to live stream it.

As soon as the message came out, his comment section was filled with wails, as everyone strongly condemned Factory Manager Lin’s inhumane action, while also begging him to post more photos and videos.

Lin Ju, Deng Lei, and Li Wei were in the spacious transition chamber, waiting for pressure to be released.

They were clad in space suits with red stripes, much thicker than the indoor versions, and even in the broad transition chamber of the Tianhe Core Module, there was only just enough space for the three of them to move freely.

Deng Lei stood next to the airlock switch, waiting until the pressure reading dropped to zero and the light turned green before placing his hand on the switch.

"Check your spacesuit status again, we’re about to go out!"

Lin Ju heard the voice over the radio, lifted his left hand to check the comprehensive monitoring gauge, everything from the spacesuit to his body was in excellent condition, with life support backpacks full of power and oxygen, capable of sustaining up to 8 hours.

Li Wei’s situation was the same. Deng Lei checked them again, pulled on the safety tether to make sure it was secure, and then pressed the button.

Lin Ju and Li Wei both looked up at the same time, peering through the thick glass visors in the direction of the hatch.

The hatch opened smoothly outward, revealing the true expanse of space.

Suddenly, Lin Ju felt a bit afraid; at that moment, he was a mere 5 centimeters away from space: the distance from his face to the outer surface of the helmet.

The helmet of the space suit was state-of-the-art, comprising 14 layers of material with a vacuum-drawn gap between two layers, making the price of this transparent visor extremely high.

If anything were to go wrong with this visor, a human exposed to the vacuum would be as vulnerable as a slug entering a pile of salt, fragile like a piece of wet rice paper.

It was then that Lin Ju truly understood the immense courage needed by Aleksey Leonov, the first man to walk in space, as he climbed out of the airlock.

Space travel was indeed a venture filled with adventure.

As his thoughts wandered, Li Wei and Deng Lei were not idle; Li Wei gently pushed with his feet, and he drifted towards the opened circular hatch, with Deng Lei carefully supporting his body, slowly ushering Li Wei out.

Due to the pressure difference between inside and outside, the spacesuit would swell due to the pressure, making their movements somewhat stiff and clumsy.

When Li Wei’s head emerged from the hatch, the first thing he saw was the stars.

Due to the timing of the spacewalk, the Tiangong Space Station was currently on the far side of Earth, not exposed to sunlight.

Though Li Wei had seen stars in space before, he had never felt them to be so beautiful and awe-inspiring.

At this moment, he was clutching the handrails outside the station, the universe in his eyes like a giant bowl, with stars swarming and twinkling all over the base and the sides of the bowl, so small yet so numerous, imparting an immense sense of inclusion.

In the face of such embrace, both distance and time lost their meaning, easily conjuring the illusion that the starry sky was just before his eyes.

But the Milky Way that nearly spanned his entire field of vision reminded him that they were millions of light-years away from the center of the universe, and the farthest distance humans could travel was still not even one basic unit: a light-year.

The universe, constantly displaying its brilliance with an all-encompassing, silent vastness.

"Li Wei? Li Wei?"

Deng Lei’s voice awoke him from the visual shock. Li Wei came to his senses, helped pull Lin Ju up, and then Deng Lei also climbed out with practiced ease.

Lin Ju, on his first real foray into space, was somewhat flustered, but luckily, with the help of two veteran astronauts, he quickly adapted to the weightlessness of space.

All three of them floated outside the Core Module, but in disarray, with Lin Ju completely upside down.

Li Wei saw the starry sky, while Lin Ju was watching Earth from a prone position.

The Tiangong Space Station was now above Africa, about to enter the Arabian Sea.

The famous East African Rift Valley stretched out below, this natural wonder known as "Earth’s scar" was quite spectacular even from a view in space.

There was an old but famous rumor that one could see The Great Wall from space.

Of course, this was just a rumor; in actuality, no man-made structures were visible from an altitude of 400 kilometers—only natural scenery could be so magnificent.

From this vantage point, overlooking Earth was like observing an incredibly detailed map table, giving an unreal sensation.

The thought of over seven billion humans living on the land below filled Lin Ju with a sense of suffocation.

"Captain Li, Factory Manager Lin, how does it feel to enter space!"

Having undertaken his third spacewalk, Deng Lei knew all too well how breathtaking the sight was, and did not interrupt the two immediately. Only after several minutes did he finally call out over the radio.

Suddenly, Lin Ju remembered a few lines of poetry and spoke them:

"To come forth out of the blue, overlooking Kunlun, having witnessed all the worldly spring. Now, having seen the entire Earth, can it be considered ’having witnessed all the worldly spring’?"

Li Wei, "If beneath our feet lies the mortal world, then the starry sky above must be heaven. In ancient times, they said heaven was where immortals lived. I have not seen any immortals, nor have I seen any palaces, but through our own efforts, we have built a Tiangong in the heavens that belongs to the Chinese People."

...

The first spacewalk for Li Wei and Lin Ju was carried out simultaneously and was not broadcast live, just a short video was released.

However, they forgot about the ongoing, year-round external live broadcast of the Tiangong Space Station, where one camera position just happened to capture the three of them during the spacewalk, displaying their disordered drifting to the whole world, and afterward, the footage, jokingly named "Factory Manager Lin’s Private Sneak Shot," went viral...