Chapter 355 - 347 Tea Talk_1

Explorer No. 7 drove "De Lu" to check out Isis purely out of boredom, after all, following intense work, the wear and tear on the robots near the Kuom Impact Crater was extremely rapid. Instead of waiting to become immobile junk, it was better to wander around aimlessly.

In fact, the space agency was very interested in the rovers manufactured by NACA, so this operation wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment decision.

As for the behavior of Isis No. 1, it was limited to accompanying surveillance, incidentally capturing a large amount of precious footage of American lunar rovers in flight.

It was just tough on the JPL staff who almost thought it was an alien invasion and were thrown into disarray for quite a while.

This encounter took place 380,000 kilometers from Earth, and neither party disclosed any news to the public; only a few people knew about this amusing incident.

Of course, for some, it was not amusing at all.

"We need to build an insurmountable wall to stop illegal immigration, yes, it’s Mexico, along the entire thousands of kilometers of the border..."

John formally turned his pre-election claim about a border wall into an official bill and submitted it to Congress, clearly stirring up quite a storm. However, this was inconsequential compared to his other series of arrangements.

The real mess now was that he was trying to apply for developing country status at the United Nations and was demanding that allies provide funding for America’s overseas expenditures, or else he would dissolve their alliances...

Even Pio, a real boot-licker, could see the impact of these actions, having to endure pressure from various forces every day.

On the contrary, John was generally continuing his predecessor’s plans in aerospace, although constantly blustering, he still hadn’t dared to officially undertake the God of War Ares program, remaining relatively cautious.

But the teasing of Isis No. 1 still made him furious. He publicly tweeted at NACA, Blue Origin, SpaceX, Boeing, and other companies, demanding they launch more than five lunar rovers to the Moon within six months...

Then, after firing off several tweets criticizing the redundancies within NACA and the inaction of officials, he finally put down his phone, satisfied, and asked his staff.

"NACA is now secretly preparing a plan to land on the Moon first. Is it possible for us to succeed?"

His staff looked at each other with wide eyes. Some were from economic backgrounds, others were courtiers; while there were some with engineering backgrounds, they too had no answer for this question.

Pio: "Boss, you have to believe in the profound heritage of the United States, we’re advancing at an unprecedented pace, faster and safer than the Apollo program, and all our astronauts are ready."

John: "I’m asking, is it possible that CASA won’t discover it and can’t catch up?"

Pio: "..."

"Your Excellency, this is difficult, but we can strengthen our secrecy measures."

...

Capital.

"NACA has sent more engineers to support Blue Origin, is Jeff Bezos the director’s darling son? Why such eager support?"

The Aerospace Development Committee’s daily tea talk, a brief meeting held for 30 minutes before the afternoon shift started. It didn’t interfere with work and also provided a timely opportunity to pool information.

Academician She started the conversation, discussing the latest on Blue Origin, and was quickly met with a response.

"I think they just couldn’t stand Blue Origin’s inefficiency and unreliability anymore. The BE-7 engine, which is so simple, encountered malfunctions. I remember the engine used during the ’Constellation’ program had already succeeded in test runs, right?"

"If you ask me, it’s just commercial spaceflight... *cough cough*, Bezos is using the internet tricks for rockets, even broke his chair and injured his tailbone, NACA is probably also afraid of delays."

"But this level of support is just too much. Look at the reports from Florida, the deputy director came with over twenty key members. They could pretty much go it alone with all that, it’s quite a heavy investment. Hey, they might have seen our lander modules and decided they want to get theirs out half a year earlier too."

"Our ’Full Moon’ lander wasn’t just made by a mere few dozen people; our core team of over a hundred people raced against time to build it! So what if they’re half a year ahead? Their rockets won’t be ready in time. The ’Blue Moon’ will need at least two Heavy Falcons or two SLS to get to the Moon, just the rockets themselves are enough to give them a headache..."

An expert’s words tinged with mockery elicited laughter. The "Full Moon" is a modular lander with a maximum weight of just twenty-three tons, certainly not as advanced as the integrated HLS design, but the goal of the Dawn project was time. Being conservative was understandable.

Moreover, a more advanced integrated lander had entered development as soon as the design work for the ’Full Moon’ was completed, and it was a public tender by the Aerospace Development Committee, so its standards were definitely higher.

However, the Big Shot suddenly spoke while sipping his floral tea, "What if NACA is going mad and is preparing for Artemis II to land on the Moon? It’s also an orbital mission."

Academician She immediately shook his head, "This is not an Apollo Spacecraft, the lander and the spacecraft are launched separately."

Big Shot: "And what if they launch now?"

Academician She: "Then unless they take all of SpaceX’s Falcon 9s to make a Heavy Falcon, it still won’t work. Besides, their lander has never landed unmanned, and while the Apollo program didn’t either, they tested in space several times before landing on the Moon."

The Big Shot picked up his teacup again and sat in silence, his expression one of deep thought.

The topic of America’s space efforts came to an end, and the focus shifted back to domestic affairs.

All eyes turned toward Lin Ju, who was staying low-profile. He took out his tablet with a smile and showed the good news from the base.

Pressing the power button, the screen displayed a series of numbers and text.

"Ladies and gentlemen, YM-12 has been fully debugged. The main structure forging of the full-scale test model for the Cloud Ascend project is underway. Here are the final data."

Although the basic technical indicators for the Cloud Ascend project were set last year, those were just projections. When actual development began, various difficulties were bound to arise, so it was natural for the indicators to change.

But now that they were starting to forge the body of the Cloud Ascend, it meant the actual indicators were almost finalized and the final results wouldn’t differ much.

People hurried to look over the tablet, with Academician She being the first one. After quickly reading it, he couldn’t help but suck in a breath of cold air.

Maximum takeoff weight of 190 tons, empty weight of 49 tons, orbital weight of 62 tons, and a maximum atmospheric flight speed of 10.8 Mach.

The empty weight was nearly the same as the initial concept; other indicators were even slightly improved, though the design was different.

To minimize weight as much as possible, the future Cloud Ascend had to come in two versions: cargo and passenger. The pure passenger version could fit 20 people, while the cargo version had room for 2 pilots and 2.8 tons of cargo.

Why did the cargo version have such low load capacity? Because the cargo bay’s location near the front of the craft naturally limited its capability, and space had to be reserved for the hatch, 2.8 tons of cargo was already the maximum capacity.

Of course, the most important was the estimated flight cost.

The main cost was still the cryogenic fuel. The most concerning thermal protection skin, thanks to the use of highly specialized state-of-the-art insulation materials, greatly reduced maintenance costs. The preparation expense for one flight (not including personnel and ground support) was just over one million dollars.