Chapter 294 - 287 Manned Flight_1

Texas.

A C17 transport aircraft landed at a military airport here, from which a truck covered with a white tarp and bearing the Canadian Space Agency logo emerged, with small letters below reading: "Canadaarm3."

The "Canada-3" robotic arm, manufactured ahead of schedule for the HALO (Habitation and Logistics Outpost) module, which is the first part of the Artemis program’s Gateway space station, had arrived at the Texas assembly base.

The HALO module weighs 8 tons and is the core part of Gateway.

There are roughly four confirmed parts for the current Gateway space station:

PPE (Power and Propulsion Element), provides propulsion and 60KW of power, manufactured by America’s MAXAR company;

HALO (Habitation and Logistics Outpost cabin), along with I-HAB, provides space to sustain 4 people in 8 cubic meters, manufactured by Northrop Grumman;

I-HAB (International Habitation Module), manufactured by the European Space Agency;

HLS (Human Landing System), currently Blue Origin’s "Blue Moon," but in the future it could be Starship as well.

There are discussions about a science and airlock module and an expanded logistics module, but among the first four parts, the PPE and HALO have been completed. Once the robotic arm is installed, they can be sent to lunar orbit.

The two parts have a total weight of 13 tons and will be launched on the Heavy Falcon Rocket. The launch date has been set for mid-January.

At Cape Canaveral, Ma squinted at a Falcon 9 which had been reused four times, sending four satellites from Singapore, Australia, and the UK into the sky. He felt excited for a while, then suddenly stopped.

The excitement came from the increasingly mature reusable technology of Falcon 9, which was furiously sweeping up orders on the international market. The valuation of SpaceX kept soaring, and NACA continued to support it, creating a highly favorable development trend.

Up to this point, although the total mass launched was far less, SpaceX’s number of commercial order launches had already far surpassed New Yuan Aeronautics’s performance by a large margin.

At this moment, he couldn’t help but feel some relief about the Wolf Amendment; New Yuan’s commercial orders from space agencies were limited to a small region nearby. Although also not few, they absolutely could not compare with SpaceX.

New Yuan’s biggest advantage was manned launches. At least external analysis indicated that the vast majority of their income came from commercial flights. Unity and Determination combined had maintained a record of launching every 8 days on average over the past four months, sending a total of 95 people into space. Just the completed tourism orders alone amounted to 900 million US dollars, which is 6.03 billion RMB.

And there was a long queue waiting behind. Even more outrageous, through the Oriental International Space Hotel Company, there were more European tycoons than Asians, which was inconceivable.

There were also rumors that after the Arianespace Company’s Space Hotel docked with the Tiangong Space Station in 2017, the Oriental International Space Hotel would undergo reorganization in preparation for going public. The New York Stock Exchange predicted its market value might exceed 50 billion US dollars, with an extremely optimistic outlook.

SpaceX planned to use the Falcon 9 Rocket in conjunction with Dream Chaser, uniting with manufacturers like Boeing and Grumman to start a corresponding space tourism plan, expected to complete by the end of 2017, which was considered quite fast.

Starlink was also not bad; because of Meridian’s satellite network and several six-ton geosynchronous orbit satellites in orbit overhead, NACA and the International Telecommunication Union fully supported Starlink with no launch issues at all, rapidly creating the first generation.

The first-generation Starlink weighs 260 kilograms, primarily used for testing, but due to the significant discovery at Kuom Impact Crater, Musk decided to send it to the Moon. It could work in conjunction with the Artemis program to provide navigation services.

But it was precisely on the Moon where the Aerospace Development Committee had a tremendous lead.

Not to mention the rest, with 8 rovers already landed and 3 landers carrying quite a lot of scientific equipment, they had left the world far behind.

In fact, both NACA and SpaceX were highly interested in the technology of the Explorer robot. It took an artificial intelligence lab, formed by Google, MIT, and NACA, several months of progress half a year ago to just get a glimpse of the principle.

According to their research, creating an Explorer with existing technology isn’t difficult, it just requires a lot of accumulated experience. However, doing so on the Moon would be quite exaggerated; chip power consumption alone would be a troublesome issue.

The lab’s schedule was to launch an AI robot as intelligent as the Explorer by 2018. Anything sooner was not possible, as AI training takes time. For this reason, they even acquired Boston Dynamics.

They believed ternary chips had a huge advantage in AI, but at the time, a shift was too difficult, so they continued to stick to the original plan.

As for Tesla and SpaceX, they had just started in this area.

After complex negotiations, the former’s super factory in Modu City finally settled on commencing construction in March of the following year. Production was expected to start in 2018, with an annual output of one million Tesla cars, but in the end, it was just a plan.

Musk ran his hand through his hair, messing it up. Although this made him look a bit like a fat otaku, it was quite comfortable and helped one relax and think.

The first generation Raptor Engine had been successful with NACA’s support, passed the reliability verification, and the production line was being set up, signifying that the construction of the Starship was entering its substantial phase.

The Starship-Super Heavy’s lift-off thrust would exceed 6000 tons, considerably less than New Yuan No. 3’s 7000-plus tons, but with both the booster and spacecraft being reusable, it was generally in the same league and significantly surpassed the CZ-10 and the SLS rockets.

The Starship was SpaceX’s second reusable rocket project, exponentially more difficult than the Falcon 9. Coupling 33 engines was an unprecedented challenge, but Musk was not afraid.

...

"What’s the name of this new generation crewed spacecraft, has it been named yet?"

"The Aerospace Development Committee is holding a naming contest. Everyone in society is involved, the results will be out in a month, which is plenty of time."

At the Qiongzhou Space Launch Site, a CZ-7 rocket was erected, with the new generation crewed spacecraft—the official version—on top.

Androff was messing with the Pioneer here, just as he started chatting with Academician She, who happened to be visiting the launch site.

So far, the new generation crewed spacecraft had completed two unmanned flights, one in July for the suborbital atmospheric test flight, and another was the fully unmanned test flight carried by the CZ-10.

But today, on December 25th, the third one to be launched was the crewed version.

The reason the Shenzhou spacecraft initially used four unmanned prototypes was due to a lack of experience and a fear of taking risks. The new generation crewed spacecraft was different. After careful deliberation, the Aerospace Development Committee decided to conduct a crewed test launch mission before the end of the year.

This initial flight mission carried three experienced astronauts from the space agency. They would stay aboard the spacecraft in low Earth orbit for about three days, without docking to the space station, to simulate the living conditions when flying from the Earth to the Moon during a lunar mission.

Two months later, the CZ-10 Remote Two mission would send the new generation crewed spacecraft to the Moon, circling it for about 15 days before returning. Since the YF-77GA was on its first test flight, it would be uncrewed.

The Remote Three mission would involve a full-state lunar orbit flight, equipped with a Moon Lander and crewed. Theoretically, it would be ready to land on the Moon, serving as the final rehearsal before the lunar landing.

Academician She clenched his fists, suddenly feeling how quickly time was passing.

Could China’s true strength in spaceflight be sending humans to the Moon in less than three years?