Chapter 303 - 296: Comet-Departing Fire Combination_1

However, as soon as the topic of space shuttles came up, Lin Ju steered the conversation towards the Forward Space Station.

Five months ago, a cooperative construction agreement was reached for the Forward Space Station, and half of the 12 centrifuge segments were to be constructed by the space administration. According to the agreement, the first of these six chambers should have been delivered in July 2017, with the rest delivered by the end of December.

By the end of January, the March spacecraft would begin installing the centrifuge part of the Forward Space Station, and Lin Ju didn’t want the segment construction to lag behind.

However, the Fifth Institute, which undertook the construction task, said there was no problem. They had always understood New Yuan’s pace of spacecraft construction, and had started ordering the necessary equipment as soon as the cooperation was settled. There were no issues expected with everything being in place this year.

The final link was to establish a launch mission timetable, and that was a matter for the big shots.

The latter stood up:

"So the deep space exploration and main launch tasks for the space station in the first half of the year are as follows:

January 17, Departing Fire Detector launch;

January 20, New Yuan No. 3, Remote Control Rocket Four launch;

January 24, March launch;

February 15, CZ-10, Remote Control Rocket Two launch;

February 29, CZ-7A Rocket, Remote Control Rocket Three launch;

...

June 28, New Yuan No. 3, Remote Control Rocket Nine mission launch;

The Meteorological Bureau will review the launch plan and provide risk warnings, tentatively scheduling 17 main mission launches for the first half of the year, with 9 manned missions."

...

"Take it slow, take it slow, this thing is terribly expensive, the nuclear reactor inside has already started running, ah, if it falls, it would be terrible."

In the assembly shop of B-level Base, workers carefully hoist the "Departing Fire" into the cargo hold of Lightning Number, precisely placing it into the recess of the shock-absorbing mold.

Several researchers from Qingshan Base are also highly vigilant by the side, and a team of firefighters in protective gear stand by with water guns.

The "Departing Fire" detector and the fission-electric propulsion named "Comet" will be respectively installed on Lightning Number and New Yuan 5A rocket, and then assembled in low Earth orbit before heading to Mars.

Both devices, carrying nuclear reactors capable of generating tens of kilowatts, require extra care in transportation and installation. Damage is the least concern; a leakage of the nuclear material within would be a truly grave incident.

Especially with Departing Fire, which contains not only the nuclear reactor but also super-precise optical components. Being extremely sensitive, it will be tested for 24 hours to ensure it’s working correctly before heading to Mars, or else it would have to be captured and repaired by a space shuttle instead.

Xiao Okada is quite proud; the common platform of Departing Fire was his design. Such a high-level detector could never be built by the Island Country.

"The reactor of Departing Fire weighs a little over three tons and is equipped with functions for geological surveys, cosmic rays, optical detection, radio telescopes, infrared remote sensing, and communication relays, among others. It is undoubtedly the most comprehensive super-large deep space unmanned detector. The 40KW nuclear reactor, using thermal ion power generation technology, can work continuously for several decades, ensuring constant contact with Earth, something unprecedented in the past."

Shen Zuozhou from the Fifth Institute is also present, as several hundred kilograms of payload on the Departing Fire detector are from the space administration.

The space administration hitched a ride in a rush because the specifications for Departing Fire were provided late, limiting their involvement. However, the subsequent deep-space network construction plan was organized by the Aerospace Development Committee.

The subsequent exploration targets included Venus, Saturn, and Jupiter, and several satellites would be launched at the Earth-Moon Lagrange Point and in geostationary orbit to enhance communication and navigation capabilities.

However, Shen Zuozhou was more interested in the Lightning Number at this time.

"I didn’t expect that the old Russians had really created something good. With aircraft launch, there’s no need for rocket transit, no need for launch pads, no need for cleaning up the surrounding area; that saves a lot of money. The heat shield tiles on the Lightning Number are also downgraded. Without counting the research and development, could the cost of a single launch be brought down to forty or fifty million?"

Xiao Okada: "Uh... I’m not very clear about this, maybe?"

Shen Zuozhou: "High-altitude launch certainly has advantages, only the Cloud Ascend is slightly better than this one, but the R&D investment is too high.

Had the CZ-7 not been cheap enough, I would think the Aerospace Development Committee should set up a similar system."

Shen Zuozhou was aware of the launch costs of the CZ-7 rocket. Its R&D and maintenance costs had reached the expected design targets, and after some improvements, the single launch cost of the CZ-7 had come down to only 150 million yuan. If it was the Type A variant which required adding the cost of a third-stage cryogenic oxygen-hydrogen engine, it would be a few tens of millions more, but still cheap.

To quickly enhance the launch capabilities of the space bureau, three more CZ-7 rockets were under construction, making a total of four rockets, with the second stage of the first rocket using New Yuan’s H80 engine, while the other three were switched to two YF77G engines each.

Just as the Departing Fire was fully installed and the Lightning Number was about to close the cargo bay and be pushed out of the hangar, Shen Zuozhou suddenly asked:

"By the way, Okada, what fuel does your comet propellant use, hydrazine compounds or something? I see your workers handling it as carefully as they do the Departing Fire. Have you already fueled it?"

"Um, ah?" Xiao Okada silently cursed the "Mountain and Sea" computer system that had arranged the transportation, and after his brain raced through possible answers, he played it off with a laugh.

"Comet propellant, ah, that. Because it has to operate for a long time, we’re using a new type of highly toxic fuel. It’s actually safer to fuel here at the launch site than anywhere else, so we fueled it in advance."

"Oh, I just came over and it was almost moved away, I didn’t get a good look. I thought the folded parts on the outside were heat sinks, and that the Departing Fire was where you had installed the nuclear reactor."

"Is that so? That’s really quite a coincidence. They must be solar panels, I suppose."

"But..."

"Come, come, come, Chief Engineer Shen, the cafeteria has recently opened an Island Country specialty section. I’ll treat you to tempura and yakitori; it’s very authentic."

"..."

Meanwhile, on the other side of the base, the Food and Health Science Department.

It was a department that sounded very mundane, and indeed it was precisely that.

In the scheme of the base, the Food and Health Science Department was at the bottom of the hierarchy, tasked mainly with researching good food to eat in space for the astronauts, and incidentally studying the impact of radiation on astronaut health.

However, these lines of work were internationally well-documented with many papers and publications available for reference, so they weren’t seen as high priority at the moment.

But now they were busy. They were the research department tasked with analyzing the formula and process of the USBI Strengthening Drug, with a mandate to understand and assess the principles and prospects of the drug.

The USBI Strengthening Drug, originating from a parallel world in the year 2057, despite having a formula and process provided by the system, still presented a significant forty-year gap in life sciences. Although there were no blind spots in knowledge, many of the processes did not yet exist, and there were no suitable facilities domestically.

Lin Ju, who didn’t have much interest in a drug that even the system advised against using, upgraded a B+ level professional researcher and provided an initial research fund of 1 billion yuan before stepping back; this was the maximum investment he could make before seeing any results.

However, the researchers in the department were full of confidence. They were living, breathing people, and the Food and Health Department was on the brink of becoming the base’s retirement home. They had to produce results to maintain the department’s status.