Chapter 237 - 231 Technical Support_1

Gao Qitao’s issue could only count as a minor one to Lin Ju, but the uncontrolled airspace and free flights had indeed brought considerable disturbance to the counties and cities surrounding New Yuan.

Although America’s aviation was more open, and small private plane ownership far exceeded China by dozens to hundreds of times, there were significant differences.

America consists of vast plains with a relatively low population density; most areas are large farms, so the flight density isn’t very high, resulting in moderate impact.

However, the area around New Yuan was different with its concentrated population, plus the Tiger Mountain Airport had so many airplanes. In just a few months, the number of medium and small sport aircraft stationed at Tiger Mountain Airport had surpassed 1,300.

With so many airplanes, especially the thousands of students at New Yuan Flying School, there were often rookies flying aimlessly over the city. Every day, as soon as air traffic controllers opened their eyes, they’d see a radar screen jam-packed with blips—there were so many planes it could make one delirious.

Although there hadn’t been any major accidents, nearly a thousand flights buzzing by daily brought significant infrastructure needs and tourism revenue to the surrounding areas, while also causing no small impact on everyday life.

In July, several universities in cooperation with New Yuan had holidays, and 87% of the nearly 3,800 students chose to stay and study flying. Then, instructors took the opportunity to showcase flights with the first several batches of graduates.

There was nothing fancy about it; it was just a formation flying over the airspace of three surrounding counties and two cities. The number... was 470 aircraft.

The local residents truly experienced the scene of a massive aerial bombardment, with nearly five hundred aircraft densely flying at low altitude. The whole city felt as though it was enveloped in the sound of aero engines, a dark mass overhead was certainly awe-inspiring, but it was too damn noisy!

Even the higher-ups were now somewhat regretful. The original intention was to allocate some free airspace to enterprises like New Yuan for flight testing and other activities, as a form of reward. But as for the flying school... well...

The exploitation of this loophole was too crafty; it wouldn’t look good to take it back now. What about the more than two thousand airplanes of New Yuan? What about Tiger Mountain Airport, an extremely important economic growth spot for the region? What about the supporting industries established over more than half a year?

The senior leadership was also troubled, and with New Yuan’s current important status, any abrupt changes would certainly not be well-received. They needed to handle the situation carefully.

As for Lin Ju himself, he simply felt that the Gao Qitao incident signified that New Yuan’s talent reserve was finally starting to pay off. His future employees would be versatile talents who could be working on rocket construction one moment, and mining Helium-3 on the Moon the next.

Speaking of the Moon, Lin Ju was currently in Capital at a test facility observing a trial.

In a desolate area, a moon lander-shaped object was chained to the surrounding pillars. Then the engine beneath ignited, producing a pale blue tail flame that lifted the lander into the air for a hover of about a dozen seconds before reducing thrust and crashing back to the ground.

"This is our 8-tonne class liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen rocket engine prepared for lunar missions, modified from the YF75D, now called YF75M," explained the person in charge of the site.

As it’s meant to function in a vacuum, the nozzle of this YF75M engine is particularly large, but due to different test conditions on the ground, there’s a slight variation from the actual engine.

In the current Dawn project, the Moon Lander has a mass of about 25 tonnes, with the landing engine being this YF75M with 8 tonnes of thrust. For the Moon, where gravity is only one-sixth of Earth’s, this is more than sufficient.

The lunar mission plan was also set, with the spacecraft carrying three astronauts, one staying in near-Earth orbit, and two landing on the Moon.

It is worth mentioning that after the Dawn project was put into action, the Aerospace Development Committee internally considered that since the country was preparing for extraterrestrial landing missions, the title "astronaut" could be abandoned in favor of the more appropriate term "cosmonaut."

Although no official document has been released, the frequency of the term "cosmonaut" in official use has been increasing.

Lin Ju also knew that if the YF90, a fuel-rich staged combustion cycle 220-tonne class hydrogen-oxygen engine, succeeded before 2020, the second stage of the CZ-10 would switch to this new engine, increasing Moon orbit capability to 50 tonnes. By then, four cosmonauts could be carried, with the possibility of three to four attempting a Moon landing.

However, the prospects for the YF90 did not seem too optimistic.

Accompanying Lin Ju was the chief person in charge of the Dawn project, Academician She.

Academician She: "The test results for the YF77 are out—12 manufacturing defects, 7 design flaws. The 6th Design Bureau assures they can fix it within 6 months, but I still foresee trouble."

Trouble was an understatement!

Lin Ju knew that the YF77 had encountered a failure during a 2019 test in the original timeline, and it was only at that time it finally stabilized—after which the old CZ-5 welcomed a period of high-frequency launches.

It could be said that in the previous timeline, had it not been for the YF77 dragging its feet, the space station would have been completed before 2020.

Although now, because of the high investments in the Dawn project, the YF77 was surely receiving greater personnel and technical resources, it was still uncertain whether it could become reliable three years in advance.

Hydrogen-oxygen engines seemed to have some sort of incompatibility with the space agency; the YF77’s specific impulse, thrust-to-weight ratio, and thrust all seemed somewhat outmoded on paper, and yet it struggled along, impeded by unknown issues.

But Academician She had apparently foreseen this issue, which is why The First Design Bureau had recently placed an order for one H240 and one H80 engine.

If the YF77 proved unreliable, they would replace the second and third stage engines of the CZ-10 with one H240 and one H80—but this was a last-resort measure, likely only for the second launch. The subsequent missions, especially the official Moon landing, would definitely still need to rely on the YF77.

The greatest significance of the CZ-10 was that the space agency was using a domestically researched and developed rocket to send cosmonauts to the surface of the Moon—every word was important.

Lin Ju: "New Yuan will fully support the Dawn project. Whatever we have, we can offer to the CZ-10. How about this, if the YF77 encounters some difficulties in design and materials, New Yuan could perhaps provide technical support."

"Technical support?" Academician She was somewhat surprised.

Since the K120, New Yuan hadn’t conducted any external exchanges on space engine technology—nor was there a need. Their engine technology was so advanced that they had never seen failure!

Yet, the space agency held the K120 in high regard for its high specific impulse, large thrust, high thrust-to-weight ratio, and compact size—a refined piece of engineering.

The potential of the K120 was immense. The 6th Design Bureau believed that by further increasing the combustion chamber pressure and slightly enlarging the nozzle diameter, they could develop a 200-tonne class single combustion chamber large thrust kerosene engine. The only reason this plan was replaced was by the more powerful YF135.

However, both the YF130 and YF135 still carried the lineage of the K120 and could be considered as heirlooms.

Lin wasn’t too concerned about technological support from the space agency—after all, it wasn’t as if they lacked the capability. Their plan to develop the YF90 and YF79 for the CZ-9—especially the latter, closed cycle expansion hydrogen-oxygen engine—was considered the most advanced in the world in its class.

Traditional technology could be considered as giving a boost to CASA (Council of Academies of Sciences in Asia).