Chapter 253 - 247 Bringing Goods_1

Ma’s trip to Qiongzhou didn’t include any reporters, so the atmosphere was quite relaxed.

The launch of the Dream Heaven experiment module was near the Xinyuan Launch Site, so Ma wasn’t in a hurry to go there. Instead, Lin Ju took him on a tour of the Xinyuan Launch Site first.

Inside the assembly building of the No. 2 launch pad at Xinyuan, he saw the first stage of the New Yuan No. 3 rocket. It had just completed a launch mission for the axial module of the Forward Space Station and had finished some maintenance work not long ago.

With a diameter of 11 meters and a height of 77 meters, its surface hadn’t been covered with heat-resistant tiles yet, so it still bore heavy scorch marks.

A group of people stood under the rocket, at the same level as the 19 suspended K380 engines. Ma reached out to touch the nozzle, which emitted a metallic bluish glow. He then ducked underneath to observe the structure at the base of the New Yuan No. 3.

Unlike the chaotic cabling under the first stage of the Starship super-heavy booster in the previous world line, the base of the New Yuan No. 3 had been well processed. Except for the swivel mechanism and combustion chamber, all other parts were covered by heat shields to prevent erosive backflow from the tail flames.

After inspecting the engines for a while, Ma, with his hands on his hips, remarked reflectively,

"The combustion chamber of the Raptor Engine isn’t much smaller than the K380’s, but its thrust is less than half. SpaceX is already falling way behind in the engine department. Even the RD181 needs two such nozzles."

Lin Ju: "We’ve also gone through many iterations. In the early stages, about ten K380s would be built for ultra-high-intensity testing, which helped us discover many problems. We used resources to push progress."

Due to Ma’s lack of in-depth understanding of New Yuan, he greatly approved of the rapid iteration approach and nodded continuously,

"Yes, we should mass-produce and test like cars to achieve rapid iterations. However, Lin, why is XAP still using traditional aluminum alloy for rocket bodies? Although stainless steel is heavier, it’s much cheaper, and dry mass ratio isn’t that important for reusable rockets."

Lin Ju: "I quite approve of the stainless steel technology plan, but compared to the substantially lower costs, XAP’s philosophy believes that a lower dry mass ratio leads to higher carrying capacity, which results in a lower cost per kilogram."

"Hmm..."

Ma obviously noticed the difference in approach between XAP and SpaceX but thought it wasn’t that important. For such colossal rockets, the cost of the rocket body wouldn’t be much lower.

He thought of the Starship he was planning. The super-heavy booster B4 was still in the design phase, but it still couldn’t catch up with the New Yuan No. 3.

He tried hard to imagine the New Yuan No. 3 with a stainless steel surface, and it felt as if the Starship was already standing beside him.

...

"A year into the ’Dawn Project’, what achievements has the lunar mission accomplished?"

"Liu Minglu: ’We must win the YF77 battle decisively and create an advanced and reliable large-thrust hydrogen-oxygen engine.’"

"The Ask Heaven and Dream Heaven experiment modules were launched into orbit within two days of each other and successfully docked. The Tiangong Space Station has become the second-largest space station in orbit."

"The number of Chinese astronauts in space has surpassed 100."

"Four astronauts are due to return to Earth in the coming days."

"TikTok, record the beauty of life."

"The founder of ByteDance personally went to space to feature products for Lin Ju."

"Satellite internet speeds far exceed 4G. Is there still a need for 5G?"

"Elon Musk concludes his visit to China."

In late September, a series of news events occurred in succession.

First came the YF77, for which the beleaguered Sixth Institute received timely assistance: two senior engineers from New Yuan Aerospace’s propulsion department guided the improvement of the YF77.

The price wasn’t money; New Yuan exchanged some space instrumentation technology with the National Space Agency, more precious than money.

For New Yuan, the technology of the YF77, still using the original gas generator cycle and having medium thrust, was quite straightforward. The Sixth Institute mainly lacked experience, and with just a bit of guidance in design, there were no absolute difficulties regarding materials.

Now, the YF90 and YF79 were still under development, and even without New Yuan, the Space Agency would have solved these issues sooner or later. It was considered a favor done on good terms.

Starting with the YF79 and YF90, one could say that the National Space Agency’s hydrolox engine technology had officially entered the world-class level, at least on par with America.

The YF77 was merely the darkness before dawn.

The H240 and H80 they had previously purchased were most likely to be used for establishing a lunar base after the crewed lunar landing mission, using these two engines as upper stage power to increase the lunar transfer capacity of the CZ-10 by about 10%—that’s a significant amount of mass.

Then there were the six astronauts who went up in March; the National Space Agency kept one person, New Yuan kept system engineer Ke Yun, and the rest would return to Earth in October.

More than half a year—that was a new record for the longest consecutive stay in space by Chinese astronauts.

The four returning crew members were making room for subsequent personnel; their physical condition was actually very good, and a continuous six months of zero-gravity life had not caused any trouble.

However, Deng Lei was returning with work to do; H2M had its first flight in two months, and for such an expensive endeavor, New Yuan had to find experienced astronauts to lead multiple test flights.

Not to mention, H2 would be performing high-frequency space operations for nearly a year, capturing satellites and transporting the "Sky Patrol" telescope—tasks of a much higher complexity.

Therefore, Deng Lei had no regrets about returning to Earth; he was at the peak of his physical condition, and New Yuan was not willing to keep its most senior astronaut on the ground, certainly planning a large number of flight missions for him.

Each H2 operation required a lot of manpower, and it inevitably involved non-professional astronauts, necessitating the help of professional players even more.

Although since July, New Yuan’s space tourism service had reached a peak and the number of people entering space had rapidly increased, half of them were pure payloads, that is, tourists. It could be said that the space tourism market had been fully tapped.

After the July mission of "March," two foreign tycoons who had just completed a 7-day stay at the space station immediately paid extra to skip the queue for the 24-hour space tour launched on the same day as the Dream Heaven module in September.

Since they were well-trained and brought their own spacesuits, the trip only cost a few million US dollars per person. Averaging the cost of the two trips immediately brought it down, earning them the reputation of travel geniuses.

But the most cost-effective passenger on this trip was undoubtedly Zhang Yingming. His physical condition was unexpectedly good, and after simple training, he took a set of stock standard-size spacesuits and went up on the same day it was released on TikTok.

Xinyuan’s official Weibo collaborated in the promotion, attracting several million downloads with the stunt of its founder going to space. In the morning, everyone watched the launch of the Dream Heaven module, and in the afternoon, they watched Mr. Zhang’s live TikTok broadcast from inside the "March" space tour.

The initiative proved to be a huge success. With Mr. Zhang’s company’s app users gifting him over a million in presents, he was on par with popular anchors. And with meticulously crafted short videos continually posted by many creators, he gained millions of users in the first 10 hours, using a new model to get mobile users hooked.

Many were only starting to realize how data-consuming short videos could be when Zhang Yingming released a video he recorded in a corner of the "March" cabin.

"Families, who hasn’t used Meridian satellite network yet? Carry a gigabit broadband with you wherever you go. Original annual package for 8,999, but now, open the comments section, click the webpage link, enter ’Mr. Zhang 666’ on the New Yuan official website, and receive a red envelope of up to 8,888 yuan. Everyone’s a winner, first come, first served..."