Chapter 302 - 295 Advertisement_1

"SF has received the world’s largest transport plane."

"With a month to go before listing, the market valuation is estimated to exceed 250 billion!"

"Wang Wei: The first shipment of An-1250 will randomly include 100 gold-plated commemorative cards."

On January 8th, SF received the third An-1250, which had already been custom-painted with the SF livery, at B-level Base.

Actually, the third An-1250 was ready to leave the factory on December 18th, but SF needed to register the aircraft as a civil cargo plane, rather than with military qualifications like the first two, so the paperwork was more troublesome, and it took several more days to get the B2450 registration number.

In those days, Xinyuan quickly painted the B2450 with the new livery which had taken SF nearly half a year of internal bidding to decide upon, with red, black, and blue colors and an eagle head painted on the nose, making it look particularly imposing.

Of course, imposingness comes at a price, with the price tag of 6 billion RMB, which works out to 15,400 RMB per kilogram, putting considerable financial pressure on SF.

Wang Wei stood in the B2450’s vast cargo hold, which was so wide it didn’t seem like part of an airplane, feeling both excited and nervous, but the nervousness quickly disappeared.

"Mr. Wang, Mr. Wang!"

The secretary, who had come along for the inspection, ran over, reporting the news that had just come in.

"Mr. Wang, someone from the company just came over and said they want to charter this plane for a month, charging commercial operation prices by the hour."

Wang Wei: ??

"Who wants to charter it? I only signed to take possession of the airplane less than two hours ago and it’s being chartered for a month? That’s not a small sum of money."

Secretary: "Ah, it’s said that they want to conduct some strategic airlift exercises in the west. The two planes from Xinyuan are too busy to rent, so they’ve been waiting for ours to be ready."

Wang Wei: "..."

"Then you go ask if we can make an advertisement out of it?"

...

"Comrades, the purpose of convening this meeting is to further refine the arrangements for the next stage of Moon and deep space missions and to discuss recent new findings..."

On the 9th, the Aerospace Development Committee convened a comprehensive meeting that covered a wide range, with a total schedule of 7 days, to discuss missions that had been formulated but not fully implemented or completed and to solicit opinions on the next steps.

This meeting was not open to the public, so the Xinyuan team was relatively relaxed.

Over 7 days, there were 11 separate smaller meetings and 2 larger ones, and the frequency of Xinyuan Company representatives’ attendance wasn’t very high, but each appearance was memorable.

Especially for other private space companies, even an outstanding player like Hengxing Aerospace couldn’t match their composure.

No matter how complex and daunting the tasks discussed by the Aerospace Development Committee, the representatives from Xinyuan Company always had a calm look on their faces, showing no sign of feeling any pressure.

Yet everyone was well aware that their capabilities were indeed ridiculously strong; not only was their aerospace technology outstanding, but they were also exaggeratedly competent in other areas.

For example, recently there was a topic circulating within the industry:

Ever since the successful maiden flight of Lightning Number, the industry gradually learned that Xinyuan had developed a new low-cost, low overloading orbital solution, which allowed satellite and probe optical components to be larger and more precise, leading to Chuncheng Optics making temporary modification requests.

Although the latter said they could do it at that time, they needed about three months to improve the process, and Xinyuan couldn’t speed it up despite their urging. Then they actually sent an engineer claiming to guide them in the process improvement.

Chuncheng Optics was initially reluctant, but constant prodding and the fact that Xinyuan was a big client made them grudgingly accept, though they had no faith that it would really make any difference.

Outrageously, this engineer did manage to solve their process problems in the shortest amount of time, forcing Chuncheng Optics to cancel the lens order in exchange for the technical authorization to improve the process.

Then, word got around that various other partners interfacing with Xinyuan had similar experiences; any technical issues they encountered had a chance of being addressed with guided technological upgrades.

The client sending someone to guide the technical upgrade and then manufacturing qualified products, even offering authorization - this wasn’t a client but a savior.

There were also rumors that the CEO of Yellow River Semiconductor was a microelectronics expert who had left Xinyuan, and the former had a murky relationship with Xinyuan, making the latter’s image mysterious and powerful all of a sudden.

No one thought Lin Ju and his team were just posturing, because they truly had the credentials.

Of course, the reality was somewhat different; Lin Ju did feel that these small meetings weren’t very important, but a bigger reason was the excessive concern from the organization about his personal issues.

The three-day ball was attended by other participants who were mostly local scientific researchers, scholars, and similar young men and women, but it was clear to anyone with a discerning eye who it was mainly prepared for.

Xie Liaofu, the old coot with a young face, was in his element, while the other four System people were also half-hearted about preparing to enjoy life. Only Lin Ju suffered through each occasion.

The reason was simple: he had too many secrets.

Even in his exchanges with the System people, it was confirmed that their future spouses would also be brought into the System Research Institute to ensure loyalty, but he felt he couldn’t quite accept this, no matter what.

Moreover, while the System Research Institute had so far ensured the loyalty of its staff without any anomalies, Lin Ju had never overly relied on it, or else the consultancy agreement with the Guangfa Research Institute would have given him direct control over the world.

Lin Ju decided to drag his feet a bit longer; after all, the allure of women was just a side effect of gravity!

In zero gravity of space, human desires can drop to almost nothing, which is why men venturing into deep space don’t need romance.

I am an emotionless System person.JPG

"Lin, Lin?!"

Lin Ju, who had drifted off inadvertently, was roused by the calling. Mr. Wang looked at the vice-chairman dozing off at the executive meeting with a bit of disbelief, thinking the sleep quality of the young was really not as good as that of the elderly.

"Ahem... We were just discussing the site selection for the nuclear propulsion test base, well, let’s just go with *** over there. There’s a hole that was dug for an underground nuclear test before. Although the A100’s exhaust carries radiation, that place can definitely withstand it. Does Xinyuan have any objections?"

Lin Ju: "I have no objections. In fact, I would say we could go directly to space for the experiments, as the space shuttle is just sitting idle..."

Everyone: ...

A few days earlier, the Qingshan Base had already completed the prototype of the A100, and then they were ready to carry out propulsion tests. Because its working principle was different, the A100’s exhaust radiation levels were high and could not be discharged directly into the atmosphere like NAPE, so they needed to find a remote location to conduct the tests.

Xie Liaofu’s initial plan was to not even bother finding a location and to just throw it into space for testing; worried about potential issues, he planned to send the researchers involved in its development up there with it. One H2 and one Progress, eight people were enough to organize the basic tests, and then this crazy idea was promptly stopped by the Aerospace Development Committee.

They had doubts about the reliability of the A100. If something went wrong and it crashed somewhere on Earth, it would be a troublesome mess, and given the current climate of public opinion, they’d be criticized for years.

However, providing a secret testing site for the A100 wasn’t too much to ask; with its more than 5-ton mass, 100KN thrust, and specific impulse in the ten thousand seconds range, the nuclear engine was definitely a first-class leading level, enough to roam the Solar System.