Chapter 224 - 218 Must Take Off_1

The livery of the CZ-10 still followed the aerospace agency’s traditional design, with red digital stripes, and the booster’s fairing and rocket body’s junction painted blue.

Although this design was unanimously considered old-fashioned, it had been used for medium and small rockets like the CZ-2 and CZ-3. On the CZ-10, however, it suddenly looked different.

With four boosters strapped together, the CZ-10 looked more formidable than the New Yuan-2A. Looking from below, one would see a colossal object about thirteen meters wide, bristling with the 20 nozzles of the ten YF130 engines.

Compared to the New Yuan-2A, the CZ-10 carried a sense of classical beauty and legacy.

Yun Hongjun caressed the massive nozzles of the YF130, fully indulging in the sense of achievement that this super rocket bestowed upon him.

"Mr. Lin, although the CZ-10 cannot be recovered and its engines and rocket body are outdated compared to the New Yuan-2A, for the aerospace agency, it’s already the super rocket we’ve been pursuing for half a century.

If it weren’t for you guys, I think we would have had to wait at least another ten years."

The big shot nodded in agreement. Without the advent of Xinyuan Company, the higher-ups would never have poured such crazy investments into space exploration, and such a giant rocket capable of carrying over a hundred tons of payload to orbit would have remained just a plan in the hearts of aerospace workers.

Although the CZ-10 was planned to be used for only five years, to be retired after the new CZ-5 is rolled out, its significance was extraordinary.

Its 480-ton class LOX/kerosene engines would evolve into the single-chamber 360-ton thrust YF135, its 5-meter rocket-body technology would pave the way for 6-meter class bodies, and the separator developed for it would be used in the CBC configuration of the CZ-15.

More importantly, the stick-only CZ-10B and the CZ-10B with its two boosters would cover both LEO capacities of 24 tons and the 70-ton class, instantly completing the aerospace agency’s tiered rocket capacity map.

For the maiden flight of the CZ-10, the aerospace agency had high hopes.

Lin Ju: "The fact that you completed the CZ-10 in just 10 months is... I can hardly imagine at such an insane speed. Congratulations to you all, and if you face some difficulties, Xinyuan is also willing to offer support."

Yun Hongjun: "You overpraise us. Before leaving the factory, we only detected seven potential problems with the CZ-10—all minor issues. We hope that there will be fewer hassles after the final assembly.

Frankly speaking, I’m actually a bit scared right now. The thrust of the CZ-3B was only about 500 tons, and the CZ-10 is ten times that. Such a super rocket, it feels like a dream that it’s here."

Big Shot: "Don’t worry. When America was determined to build Saturn V, their most powerful rocket in service was only capable of a few tons, and they had just started to design the F1 engine, which had a single-chamber thrust of 680 tons. Trust our comrades, the CZ-10’s testing process has not missed a single step."

Lin Ju: "The CZ-10 will be successful. If Sir Qian could see it take off, he would definitely be very happy."

Speaking of Sir Qian, both Yun Hongjun and the big shot’s eyes grew somewhat wet. Unlike Lin Ju, they had met Sir Qian; the big shot had even visited him once before he passed away. To them, Sir Qian was not just a symbolic figure but also a living elder they had actually seen.

Seven years—it had been seven years since his departure. If he could have lived another seven years to see the Dawn project, to see the CZ-10, how happy he would have been.

Yun Hongjun clenched his fist tightly and placed his hand on the white rocket body beside him.

"You must fly, you must take flight!"

...

"Countdown to the moon mission launch: 3 days. The CZ-10 is fully assembled."

"The 2016 Semiconductor Summit has concluded, and significant news has leaked out."

"Many semiconductor companies have invested in the Yellow River Semiconductor Technology Company, suspected to be a subsidiary of New Yuan Aeronautics."

"The Science and Technology Committee has organized a new round of semiconductor technology battles."

"Fu Weiwu: the next generation Loongson will use ternary architecture."

On August 9, the semiconductor summit that had mysteriously been suspended for four days finally ended. A large group of media wanted to know the specifics, but the participants immediately started to take action.

First, the nine state-owned semiconductor companies present at the meeting invested with technology and capital into Yellow River Semiconductor, increasing the number of shareholders to thirteen. The largest shareholder is New Yuan Aeronautics Power, holding 14%, followed by Datang Telecom with 12%.

Wang Minjiang, the legal representative of Yellow River Semiconductor, personally holds 1.5% of the shares and serves as CEO.

The semiconductor company jointly founded by the nine state-owned enterprises and New Yuan has a registered capital of 50 billion Yuan, instantly attracting outside attention.

Such an enterprise is obviously intended for big things, and even if it’s only been a half month since its establishment, the framework alone is intimidating.

The Science and Technology Committee then issued a document organizing a concentrated effort on "new integrated circuit design, manufacturing, and software."

These nine participating enterprises encompass semiconductor companies specializing in hardware and software design and manufacturing, together with Yellow River Semiconductor and 14 research institutes, making up the entire force for the technology battle.

This momentum is all too familiar to most people; it’s a technological battle.

In the last century, due to the relatively weak overall scientific research strength, if the country needed to break through key technologies in certain areas, it would convene experts from relevant industries across the nation to concentrate on technological breakthroughs, with special approvals, aiming to "create miracles through great efforts."

The current technological battle is naturally aimed at digesting and mastering ternary technology in the shortest time possible and then focusing on its widespread implementation.

However, the Science and Technology Committee did not explicitly mention ternary technology due to official constraints, but individuals are not that restricted. Fu Weiwu, the representative of HuaKe Longxin who also attended the meeting, directly indicated in an interview:

The Loongson 4th Generation will employ the ternary "Dragon Chant" architecture, compatible with the also domestically produced, China Academy of Sciences-developed Kylin V17 system. By June 2017, they plan to launch a high-performance domestic computer using all-Chinese produced chips, architecture, and system.

Fu Weiwu especially emphasized all-Chinese production, which left the media at the time incredibly incredulous, even after confirming with him a second time and still receiving an accurate response.

As for the ternary system, these non-professional media were completely unaware, and only insiders and enthusiasts realized the unreasonableness behind it after the disclosure.

But following Fu Weiwu, there was a string of other shocking content.

Unigroup Group announced it will develop the next generation of ternary mobile chips, with performance expected to reach mainstream advanced levels;

ZTE also attended the summit and proposed plans to develop high-performance ternary smartphone processors, and will soon sell phones equipped with these chips, stating that ternary chips are superior to binary ones, being low-power and high-performance;

The official website of Yellow River Semiconductor unveiled a development plan for the "Beasts" series of all-Chinese desktop CPUs, which will use the self-developed "Taishan" architecture, with up to 8 cores;

The Great Wall Computers will launch a fully domestic laptop next year, equipped with CPU from Yellow River Semiconductor or Loongson, domestic memory and hard disk, and a graphics processor from the 709th Institution, priced no higher than 4999, and achieving mainstream performance.