Chapter 215 - 209: It’s him_1

On the morning of July 21st at 9:09 a.m., the Progress mission "Yao Six" carrying personnel was concluded with complete success.

Outside the New Yuan Aerospace Launch Site, over a hundred thousand people had gathered here, watching as a tiny white dot in the sky grew larger and larger until it safely landed and began to taxi.

The appearance of the space shuttle changed many things, and landing was an important part of it.

In the past, when the Shenzhou Spaceship landed, there was only a rough area where the bell-shaped return capsule could touch down, requiring search and rescue personnel to constantly call out after the spacecraft passed through the ionosphere, driving helicopters and leading convoys racing across the great plains of Siziwang Banner, even after locating the return capsule.

With the space shuttle, the return location was fixed, allowing people to comfortably observe from outside the airport without any concerns about secrecy.

Therefore, to welcome the first man in space back safely, quite a large crowd still gathered around the launch site.

Progress taxied on the runway for a full 1,800 meters before coming to a halt. The ground crew that had been waiting swarmed in but did not approach the shuttle’s exterior directly.

Having just traversed the atmosphere at tens of Mach speeds, its surface still held temperatures of over a hundred degrees at the lowest, so placing a hand directly on it was clearly not a wise choice.

To avoid having the astronauts wait half a day in the cockpit for it to cool down, the cabin door was designed with both electric and manual modes. Normally, prying open the control panel beside the door and pulling down the electronic valve would open it.

The anxious workers opened the cabin door as quickly as they could, and seconds later, a gust of air burst from the cracks.

A group of workers tensely stared at the inside of the cabin door, fearing as they had thirteen years before that they would witness a scene from hell.

Seventy seconds after Progress had stopped, with the cabin door open, what people saw was a rugged smiling face.

Li Wei stood behind the door with his left hand cradling his helmet with the face shield open.

Feeling good about his physical condition, Li Wei unfastened his safety belt to stand upon landing. Finding himself not as weak as expected, he simply stood at the doorway, awaiting the exterior workers to open the door.

Outside the door, a mix of people in white and blue work clothes and photographers with cameras on their shoulders was visible.

Seeing Li Wei, helmet in hand, standing there surprised and at a loss at first, was followed by an immense joy.

Li Wei walked to the doorway, waved to the people outside, then was surrounded and moved forward by the excited crowd, enveloped everywhere he went by applause.

Cameras followed his face the entire time, not like thirteen years ago when his mouth was cut by a microphone; everywhere visible was intact, showing no signs of injury.

Although the in-cabin space suit was somewhat heavy on him, Li Wei was also excited. The discomfort of returning to gravity was ignored as he naturally received a bowl of noodles.

It wasn’t just the tradition of "dumplings after boarding a vehicle and noodles after alighting." Although the Tiangong Space Station is no longer from the era of the Shenzhou V, which only had snacks and a bit of coffee, now even fresh lettuce is available to eat.

But steaming hot noodles are still not available on the space station. At least thinking of eating them in a bowl with chopsticks is impossible, not to mention sipping the noodle soup.

The sight of Li Wei holding the noodles with a contented face was faithfully recorded by the cameras, for quite some time without realizing anything was amiss.

Minutes later, the photographer suddenly remembered something, turned the lens toward the direction of Progress.

Hu Dong was assisting Lin Ju; the two hapless souls left behind by the commander and ground crew stood forlornly beneath the cabin door, ready to sneak away quietly.

...

Famed painting of the world: Progress astronauts safely returned, but there was only one commander.

To avoid embarrassment in front of the entire country, Lin Ju and others returned to the space shuttle to re-record the scene of exiting the cabin, smiling as they walked down the steps in succession.

But this was the footage broadcasted in the evening. The morning’s landing was live, and nearly a hundred million people saw the truth of the matter.

That day, the top trending topic was, "Li Wei returns safely from space and steps out of the space shuttle."

The top comment below it read, "Factory Manager Lin: So should I leave?"

The photos of Lin Ju and Hu Dong, unsure of what to do due to the lack of a welcoming party, were widely shared, and upon zooming in, one could see Lin Ju’s confused expression, which became the hottest topic of discussion that night.

"The race between the first man in space and the first man in private spaceflight has been decided,"

"Turns out, there’s a difference between a tractor factory manager and a bomber pilot."

"Can’t you guys show some concern for Vice Commander Hu Dong? He’s also worked really hard, you know?"

"When will Factory Manager Lin start a giveaway to send people to space?"

"..."

At night, Lin Ju was browsing Weibo on his ARJ21 private jet, reading the comments from netizens and finding it quite amusing.

Still not quite over his latest space trip, Lin Ju thought about it and decided to create a lottery event, then posted a new Weibo:

"Follow and share this post for a chance to win one of five tickets aboard the ’Resolute’ ship, each valued at 88,888,888. Results in 24 hours, and yes, you can resell your tickets."

No sooner had the post gone live than the comments section refreshed continuously, with hundreds of comments filling the screen.

Each netizen who came across the post only had time to read the content before quickly sharing, then rushing back to leave a comment below the Weibo.

Netizen A: "I declare, Factory Manager Lin is my father!"

Netizen B: "Isn’t this better than the lottery? Flip a ticket and easily make 100 million, now that’s what I call a real benefit!"

Netizen C: "A Weibo post worth over 400 million, Factory Manager Lin is so domineering!"

CASA: "666"

"..."

Reading through the comments, Lin Ju felt he had made another contribution to humanity’s space efforts.

He hadn’t forgotten about his long-term mission, "Fly Higher," considering occasionally sending random people on a space tour as making progress.

A few minutes after the post, his Huawei P9 PLUS began to ring.

The latest Huawei model was already using a Type-C charging port and 18W fast charging, with the only complaint being that the 5.5-inch screen did not offer the immersive experience of future full-screen models. But for that era, it was still pretty good.

This generation of phones was equipped with HiSilicon’s Kirin 955 chip, which performed about the same as Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 810, quite decent.

However, the next generation Kirin 960 chip, or the 970, might be different from history.

"Hello?"

"Boss, did you complete some sort of incredible task?"

"??"

Lin Ju was a bit puzzled by Guo Shen’s words, and reflexively asked:

"What’s up?"

Guo Shen: "A big shot has arrived at our base, a super big shot. Didn’t you check the list of senior engineers at the research institute?"

It took Lin Ju a while to remember that he had summoned a legendary A+ grade engineer during his trip to space. The system indicated it would take no more than 15 days for the engineer to arrive. Was it time already?

Before he could open the system panel in his mind, Guo Shen’s excited voice came through the phone:

"It’s Korolyov, Sergey Pavlovich Korolyov!"