Chapter 241 - 235 Launch_1

"Centrifugal, centrifugal space station..."

Claire flipped through the Forward Space Station introduction materials on the New Yuan Aeronautics power official website while also sketching on a piece of paper.

Every astronaut was familiar with centrifugal space stations, but they were quite troublesome to build. Not to mention other factors, just the task of launching several hundred tons of mass into near-Earth orbit for assembly required two conditions:

Heavy-lift rockets and space shuttles.

The former would launch the habitation modules, the latter would install the truss.

Having such a heavy space station spin was a severe challenge to the docking ports, and even a fully closed-loop connection like New Yuan’s required an external steel truss structure to be reliably used.

Space shuttle? The three remaining STS were already being restarted, although in poor condition, they were still serviceable. The huge amount of money spent on making them had not been wasted. If not for the high costs, space shuttles could really fly their 100-mission lifespan. Sitting idle for a few years didn’t pose too much of an issue.

So, what about heavy-lift rockets? To save costs and speed up, reuse was best, which also existed: Space X’s Heavy Falcon could do it.

Capable of launching more than 40 tons of payload while being reusable, and with a rocket diameter of 3.4 meters, delivering habitation modules of about 5 meters in diameter was not a problem, so the lift capacity was sufficient and could be launched at high frequency.

Two Heavy Falcons alternating, one launch per month was absolutely possible, the lift capacity was not a barrier.

There was no need for as many as 12 centrifugal cabins like Forward, just like one central module and four to six centrifugal cabins would suffice. They didn’t need to be interconnected; a mass of about 250 to 350 tons would do, and even with the truss, it wouldn’t exceed 400 tons.

That is the weight of one ISS, but it could also support around eight astronauts for long-term missions.

And what mission? Of course, it was landing on Mars!

Although Lin Ju publicly claimed that the Forward Space Station was just a simple space station, as a long-term manned experimental site in near-Earth orbit, anyone who really believed that was being deceived.

The massive effort required, including at least twenty heavy rocket launches for the space shuttle installation alone, all for that? No one would believe it!

It must have been a government mandate, only the guarantee of landing on Mars or even other planets would justify the investment of such vast resources, definitely!

Then, NACA would undoubtedly have to follow suit, and Forward Space Station could definitely be put into use by 2018 or earlier. That meant, after China announced the achievement of manned lunar landing, at most two years of preparation and by 2020, they would definitely start planning for the manned Mars mission!

Just think, if they really acted at the highest speed, by 2018 they would launch an unmanned probe to Mars, by 2020 they would launch pre-manned landing supplies, and by 2022 they could implement the manned Mars mission.

By that time, Forward Space Station would have been operational for four years already, giving them sufficient time for testing and improvement. Just add a propulsion module, and it would be a qualified spacecraft!

Which is to say, NACA was expected to initiate the manned Mars mission at the same time as the first manned lunar landing mission of the SLS?!

bullshit!

So if NACA wanted to build its own centrifugal space station, it had to be completed by 2020, which also meant planning had to start from now.

Claire made a rough estimate, another 10 billion US dollars of expenditure.

Although she complained every day that the funding was not enough, Claire also knew that Congress would not endlessly pour money into space, expenses still had to be reduced as much as possible.

So, it was time to see if private space companies had any solutions.

NACA immediately issued an internal notice, soliciting designs for space stations capable of providing artificial gravity from various major corporations.

...

"Is the kerosene here produced in China?"

"Yes, the thousands of tons of fuel refilled for the New Yuan No. 3 are all refined and produced by Karamay Petrochemical; it is the only aerospace kerosene manufacturer in our country."

Following the development of the YF100 project, the domestic industry began to research high-purity aerospace kerosene. Although it did not have access to the low-sulfur oil fields immediately discovered by the Union, the advances in refining technology made it easy to handle high-purity aerospace kerosene technology.

This was originally for CZ-5, but in reality, the first rocket to use it and reach space was New Yuan No. 1. Karamay Petrochemical has also been a longtime partner of New Yuan, providing a considerable amount of aviation fuel and gasoline at a low price.

Xie Liaofu, listening to the worker’s response, felt as if he could smell the kerosene through the rocket’s body.

Liquid oxygen-methane, liquid oxygen-hydrogen, liquid oxygen-kerosene — all three main engines are so clean, why persist with those toxic, heavily polluting and costly fuels?

Xie Liaofu remembered his competition with Chelomey from his previous life over the moon landing project. He had provided the design for N1, while Chelomey presented the UR700, a massive rocket.

The UR700, known as "Chelomey’s treasure," was a supremely toxic rocket whose first-stage engine consisted of nine magical RD270 engines.

The RD270’s primary fuel and oxidizer were unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine and dinitrogen tetroxide, with a specific impulse of 301 seconds, a thrust of 640 tons, and it was a single-chamber, full-flow staged combustion engine, far ahead of Musk’s later Raptor Engine.

It was even anticipated to be used on a Venus landing, starting up in Venus’ nightmarish atmosphere, perennially raining sulfuric acid.

With a low Earth orbit payload capacity exceeding 150 tons and a liftoff mass of over 4900 tons, the UR700 was a genuine giant rocket that Xie Liaofu, along with Korolyov, deeply abhorred.

Beyond personal animosity, the RD270 combustion chamber also produced cyanides — truly poisonous substances. Releasing them into the atmosphere was sheer madness.

But at the time, constrained by only having the OKB-276 design bureau’s NK33 engine, N1, the brutal rocket using thirty 150-ton class kerosene engines, ultimately failed.

However, the New Yuan No. 3, using nineteen 400-ton class liquid oxygen-kerosene engines, filled in that gap for him. He saw this 5900-ton liftoff rocket as the spiritual successor to N1: environmentally friendly and reliable, how good.

As for New Yuan No. 4, it’s a typical American approach: a core stage of hydrogen-oxygen engines with solid rocket boosters — far too expensive; Xie Liaofu didn’t like it much.

Standing in an exclusive priority viewing area with thousands of cadets, the young Xie Liaofu did not draw attention. Nobody noticed that New Yuan’s second-in-command was standing there, simply looking forward to the ethereal New Yuan No. 3 with anticipation.

To be precise, the two rockets being launched this time should be called New Yuan IIIA since they are both two-stage configurations, essentially a brute-force approach by removing the third stage — after all, having ample lifting capacity.

Launching today are the command module and node module; adding the fairings made the New Yuan No. 3 exceed 160 meters in height, nearly 170 meters tall.

With the module diameter at 14 meters wider than the rocket body’s 11-meter diameter, it looked extremely tall and hefty. Translated into skyscraper terms and calculated with a floor height of 3.2 meters, it was the equivalent of a fifty-story building!

At this moment, the New Yuan No. 3, including its payload, weighed over 6000 tons, setting new records for human rockets every second.

When the nineteen engines ignited one by one, the 7700 tons of thrust converged into flames that instantaneously filled the flame trench and then shot out from the upward-angled channels, covering a nearly one-kilometer radius around the launch site.

The hundreds of new students truly felt the power they would possess in the future.