Chapter 321 - 314: No Adventure in Space_1

"Wow, is this where we’re going to land?"

Zhou Qingfeng pointed to a small circle on the screen that showed real-time images of the lunar surface, curiously asking his grandfather.

Zhou Rui: "Qingfeng, the diameter of the Kuom Impact Crater is less than 5 kilometers. Think about it, with the Dawn Spaceship’s operating altitude, how big would this impact crater have to be for you to point it out?"

On the evening of February 14th, the Dawn Spaceship and the Full Moon lander assembly reached lunar orbit, the six YF77 engines had completed their mission, safely delivering the 45-ton assembly to Moon orbit.

Three ultra-high-definition cameras were fixed in the cabin of the Dawn Spaceship. The images they captured were directly relayed back by the Magpie Bridge satellite, providing the clearest live footage to the whole world.

The Dawn Spaceship was expected to remain in lunar orbit for 25 days before returning. During this period, it would perform the separation and landing of the lander, along with the docking and return of the ascent stage, simulating the entire manned Moon landing process.

The reason why the Full Moon lander adopted a separate design for the lander and ascent stage, weighing 14 tons and 9 tons respectively, was not just to save mass and simplify the structure.

It was because the lander was designed to be a part of the future Moon Base, capable of generating power, storing supplies, and conducting scientific research. The ascent stage, however, was disposable. Its crew cabin could support up to three people for a maximum of seven days. After completing its mission, it would be discarded.

Therefore, each Moon mission performed by the Dawn Spaceship would involve discarding an ascent stage and a service module, which was not considered to be too wasteful.

According to disclosures by the Aerospace Development Committee, once the lunar space station and the Lunar Research Station were completed, a reusable ascent stage would be developed that could refuel in lunar orbit or on the lunar surface, serving as a long-term transporter for descending and ascending.

By then, landing on the Moon would be reduced to only needing the CZ-10A or the new CZ-5 with just two boosters, using a direct delivery of 27 to 30 tons of payload to lunar orbit by the Dawn Spaceship, or even by the New Yuan-2 rocket, barely. This would substantially reduce the cost of a single landing compared to the Apollo program, allowing for one landing per year without significant impact on the big picture.

Now, the Dawn Spaceship was orbiting around the Moon at an altitude of about 28 kilometers. Without an atmosphere to obstruct the view, the ring mountains and various terrains of the lunar surface were extremely clear and sprawling.

Zhou Qingfeng leaned against the screen, imagining he was in the crew cabin of the Dawn Spaceship, looking down on the surface of the Moon through the porthole.

In his imagination, he was the astronaut about to set foot on the Moon. Next, he would crawl into the lander, then detach, pulling the control stick to slowly decelerate and lower his orbit...

"Grandpa, are we going to land on the Moon this year?"

Zhou Qingfeng suddenly thought, since this flight was unmanned, the next one should be able to proceed directly to a Moon landing, right?

Zhou Rui affectionately patted Zhou Qingfeng’s head and gently shook his head:

"Next time it’ll be a manned circumlunar flight, followed by another rehearsal. The actual Moon landing should be next year."

Zhou Qingfeng: "But we can clearly do it now."

Zhou Rui: "Qingfeng, during the Apollo program, America went from Apollo 7 to 10, conducting four manned tests before the official Moon landing. It’s already very risky for us to only do it once. Even America has to perform a manned circumlunar flight first."

"Grandpa, if the circumlunar flight is a full-status test, can the astronauts operate the lander and land on the Moon ahead of schedule?"

"This..."

Zhou Rui was stumped, blinking his eyes before shaking his head.

"No, everything must follow the organization’s arrangements."

Actually, such a scenario has happened. On May 18, 1969, astronauts Thomas Stanford, John Yang, and Eugene Sernan lifted off from Kennedy Cape, carrying out the Apollo 10 full-status "rehearsal."

Since automation technology was not yet mature, the Apollo Spacecraft and lander were mainly manually operated. Theoretically, the three astronauts could have directly gone ahead with the Moon landing against the plan.

The real reason they restrained themselves was not due to strict discipline but rather because the NACA’s Administrator James Webb, foreseeing this possibility, only supplied half of the fuel to the lander, allowing only for descending and not enough to return to orbit.

The crew of Apollo 10 still struggled with the idea for a long time, but in the end, they didn’t risk it, betting on surviving in the wilderness of the Moon until Apollo 11 came to rescue. Otherwise, they might have heatedly jumped the gun and attempted to land on the Moon ahead of schedule.

Now the situation was different; the automatic landing program had a higher priority than the manual one, and as long as it was locked, the astronauts couldn’t go against it alone.

After understanding his grandfather’s explanation, Zhou Qingfeng felt slightly disappointed; this adherence to rules seemed to take away all the fun of space adventure.

If you can’t manually pilot the spaceship, what kind of space adventure is that?

...

"Ahhh!"

In Capital, at a certain aerospace testing field.

With a succession of exclamations, the simulator Lin Ju was controlling became severely unbalanced. The tether 20 meters above immediately tensed, and simultaneously, the simulator’s engines cut out, causing it to swing back and forth with Lin Ju inside, who also began to spin round and round.

The ground crew hurriedly manipulated the machinery to bring him down in a flurry, and Lin Ju sat down on the grass, only then feeling his limbs shaking non-stop from being too tense.

"Mr. Lin, are you alright?"

A young girl with her hair tied back ran over to help Lin Ju up, who quickly scrambled backwards, using both hands and feet, like a startled grasshopper.

"No problem, no problem, don’t help me, you all go busy yourselves..."

Five hours earlier, Lin Ju had finished the preparatory meeting of the Aerospace Development Committee and, with nothing else to do, wandered over to the manned moon landing office’s test site.

The Aerospace Development Committee had another meeting in March, however, the important content was all determined before the meeting, with the main event merely a notification.

Lin Ju, without any specific plans, found a manual simulator used for astronaut training for the Moon landing here; it was a machine that hoisted a simulated lander by ropes, fitting rocket engines according to the real lander’s layout, and one could actually sit in it to simulate the situation of manual operation during a Moon landing.

Lin Ju saw that the machine was idle and wanted to try it, but he didn’t expect that to simulate the environment of low gravity, the sensitivity of the feedback was several times higher than normal. Lin Ju, after all, was an astronaut-in-training with advanced training, but he wasn’t prepared for a mistake and almost ended up "dead in both machine and person."

The person in charge here ran over to check on Commissioner Lin’s condition and, seeing there was no serious damage except for some dizziness, he sighed in relief, thinking that this person was someone they couldn’t offend or harm, and his visit here was akin to a small temple receiving a big Buddha.

"Commissioner Lin, the simulator is designed to reflect real emergency situations, so it is quite difficult; usually, even if the computer fails, there are auxiliary semi-automatic systems. This full manual mode is only for extreme situations, which even our astronauts find challenging in training," the manager explained.

Lin Ju knew what he was worried about and quickly waved his hands, "I’m fine, I just haven’t practiced in a long time, just now my head was spinning a bit... urgh, cough cough, I’ll just sit and rest for a while."

"Then I’ll have Secretary Chen help you to rest..."

"No, no, no, it’s inconvenient for a girl to do this. I’m getting up right now!"

Seeing Lin Ju struggle to his feet and walk away quickly, the manager and the bewildered Secretary Chen exchanged glances and both made resigned expressions.

Lin often came to Capital, and originally the Aerospace Development Committee had assigned him a security guard who also doubled as a temporary assistant named Zhang. For reasons that couldn’t be described, this was changed to the young and beautiful Secretary Chen, yet Lin Ju maintained a strictly business-like attitude, never engaging in any actions that might increase their rapport.

However, what they didn’t know was that Lin Ju had long noticed something was off. Lately, wherever he went, he would encounter young and attractive girls, and the people he often needed to contact at various posts were being replaced one by one.

The original Assistant Zhang was quite competent, both in fighting and working; switching to a female secretary made even walking together somewhat awkward, which was truly terrifying.

Society was too complicated. The base was the safest place.