Chapter 259 - 253 Air Show_1

On October 20th, the CZ-7A Rocket had its maiden flight and successfully delivered three Laurel series resource exploration satellites into Moon orbit.

Its seemingly cumbersome yet actually ingenious, and not too heavy overall recovery system also achieved complete success.

The first stage and a half of CZ-7A successfully landed at the Qiongzhou Space Launch Site’s landing field. Compared to the CZ-6, its stability due to greater weight and size meant a much steadier descent.

For this launch, CCAV (China Central Audio Video) still broadcasted live, and the female news anchor, as always, was unprofessional, exclaiming over the recovery process of CZ-7A and successfully raising viewer expectations.

In fact, the conditions at the Qiongzhou Space Launch Site are quite superior. Although it is at 19 degrees north latitude, not on the equator, it is still much better than America’s Cape Canaveral, which is at a latitude of 28 degrees.

Ma’s enthusiasm for sea recovery stems from the fact that for the Falcon 9, sea recovery involves a shorter distance, which allows for lower-latitude recoveries to reduce the fuel needed and thereby increase payload capacity.

The Falcon 9’s land recovery LEO capacity is 13.7 tons, while its sea recovery LEO capacity can reach 19.4 tons—a significant difference.

Qiongzhou does not have this issue, because at this latitude, the payload capacity is not much different from equatorial launches. Land recovery is sufficient, and there’s little point in going to sea except for a few times as technological reserves for New Yuan-1.

The space agency was extremely excited about this successful recovery. The CZ-7 (recovery) has an LEO capacity of 25 tons, GTO capacity of 14 tons, lunar transfer orbit capacity of 9.8 tons, and Mars transfer orbit capacity of 4.4 tons.

Such payload capacity has already qualified it as a heavy-lift rocket, capable of launching manned spacecraft, space stations, large cargo ships, large lunar probes, and large Mars probes, all at low cost, only one-seventh of the original CZ-5B’s development cost.

Compared to the CZ-6, it is the CZ-7 that truly enables the space agency to mass-launch payloads into space at low cost, with internal launch costs at least half that of the Falcon 9.

The entire CZ-7 team received collective commendation. Chief Designer Feng Ruixing and another researcher who designed the rocket body (first stage and a half) were directly selected for next year’s space training program as an encouragement.

The 6th Institute, however, felt a bit of pressure, because the success of CZ-7A was attributed to the second-stage H80 engine and the third-stage YF75 hydrogen-oxygen engine. The original YF115 would definitely not suffice, although the third stage could still manage with YF75.

With only one H80 engine, in order to maintain the 25-ton recoverable LEO capacity instead of being forced to drop to 20 tons due to stability issues with the YF115, the 6th Institute must ensure the YF77’s special stability.

After all, the YF77 has already made a fool of itself in front of the entire nation. Both the CZ-7 and the CZ-10 are to be manned, and their stability should ideally approach 100% as closely as possible.

The slimmed-down version of the CZ-7, the CZ-8, has also been completed, but its launch mission is primarily for high-orbit and sun-synchronous orbits. Satellites will have to wait until next year, so for now, it is just sitting tight.

...

"Mr. Guo? How are you feeling right now?"

"Happy, I’m very happy!"

Inside the Unity spacecraft, Guo Shen connected with a television host from Capital, loudly expressing his feelings.

The timing of the interview connection was not great—it was one hour before the launch of Unity, and ground staff discovered a bit of a smell in the crew cabin due to interior maintenance, so they were ventilating at full power, causing the microphone to be somewhat noisy.

But even if Guo Shen’s words were not clear, it didn’t matter. At that moment, his elated mood was more than evident, his smile almost crinkling into one big bundle.

Because he was wearing a spacesuit, Guo Shen’s receding hairline was perfectly covered, making him look a bit handsome.

Zhou Qingfeng enviously watched the live broadcast of the Unity interior on the square screen, imagining himself sitting inside.

And next to him, Zhou Rui wasn’t constantly paying attention to his grandson as before but was engrossed in his phone, occasionally letting out an uncontrollable chuckle.

Zhou Qingfeng caught a glimpse of the middle-aged woman swinging back and forth in the video, planting a seed in his growing mind that wasn’t quite proper.

Looking around, many people were also looking down at their phones, giggling foolishly; the BGM that had recently gone viral could easily be discerned from the music playing aloud without needing to listen closely.

Having been online for over a month, and with much more aggressive promotion, TikTok was even more popular than on its original timeline.

The charm of short videos was unprecedented, and with the advent of the 4G era, data had found its true destination.

Zhang Yingming, having opened an account for Meridian Satellite Network and started live-streaming sales, had video views surpass ten million in three days and gained millions of followers, a feat other social platforms could only dream of.

New Yuan Aeronautics was now breaking through five million followers. Not only were they the first official account to join, but their content was also one-of-a-kind. Many short videos from Tiangong Space Station were posted here, something you couldn’t see anywhere else.

But although Zhou Rui himself was addicted to short videos, he was acutely aware of their addictive nature and strictly limited Zhou Qingfeng’s time on them.

In order to find something else for Zhou Qingfeng to do so he wouldn’t think about short videos all day, Zhou Rui took a day off plus the weekend, giving them three days to attend the Zhuhai Airshow and look at technological products.

"Grandpa? Green light, green light!"

"Hey... uh, oh, let’s go, let’s go."

Zhou Rui tapped the heart icon twice, turned off the screen, and quickly walked across the road with Zhou Qingfeng, only a few hundred meters away from the exhibition hall.

Suddenly, a loud noise came from the sky; Zhou Qingfeng instinctively looked up and saw two silver-gray fighter jets passing by at low speed, flying off into the distance from above the combat zone.

This year, the J-20 had officially entered service and announced in advance that it would be shown during the air show. The opening was tomorrow but evidently, this was a simple rehearsal.

Many passers-by exclaimed "wow" "wow" and took out their phones to record short videos, but Zhou Qingfeng and Zhou Rui didn’t do the same. As citizens of Rong City, they had grown accustomed to the J-20, both yellow and grey, flying over their heads daily. It had already been five years since the locals could look up and see it since its maiden flight.

"Qingfeng, when you grow up, do you want to fly the J-20?"

Zhou Qingfeng: "No, I want to be an astronaut, I want to pilot a spacecraft and land on Mars!"

"Joining the air force gives you an equally good chance of becoming an astronaut, and the astronaut brigade even has little stars for you."

"But, flying with New Yuan happens more often."

"..."

A simple reason, but Zhou Rui had to admit that the allure was indeed very strong.

From the public information available, it was clear that New Yuan kept its internal flying costs low, which was why they could keep sending people into space continuously.

There were rumors at Southern Aeronautical and Astronautical University claiming that the earliest batch of students from the Aerospace Institute, which consisted of over two hundred students who switched majors, would graduate in 2017. Among them, the top 100 students with excellent academic records and flying school performance would have their graduation ceremony in space.

Whether it was true or not, it sounded frightening; sending 100 people to space was within New Yuan’s capabilities.