Chapter 368 - 360: JFT is Waiting_1

"Sun, keep at it!"

Xie Miao grabbed a piece of sugarcane and tossed it through the feeding window, a treat the number seven gorilla relished for its high sugar content.

The researcher in charge of looking after the experimental subjects during feeding times stood by, preparing tonight’s dinner.

Following the injection of the No. 304 Injection, the subjects experienced a significant boost in physical condition, which also increased their need for nutrient intake from their surroundings.

In the week leading up to the injection, they even had to administer two bottles of glucose and saline solution daily to the subjects, who, unlike humans, couldn’t understand language. Their biggest worry was the subjects pulling out the needles by mistake.

Therefore, the researchers had to use sedatives very carefully, always concerned that the gorillas might not cooperate and that the sedatives could affect the performance of the No. 304 Injection. The dosage was strictly controlled.

When he saw Xie Miao feeding number seven, he paid extra attention, knowing that excessive food intake could lead to diarrhea. The physical condition of these experimental bodies still differed from that of wild gorillas and could affect the effectiveness of the injection.

If these gorillas didn’t die in the experiments, their most humane fate would be to be retired to a zoo to live out their age; the less humane alternatives go without saying, but Xie Miao clearly wasn’t the type to treat subjects purely as objects.

"Zhang, how do you think Sun’s physical condition compares to a human’s?"

"Director Xie, before the medication, number seven was already a 140-kilogram male gorilla. Its physical condition is at least two to three times that of a human. It’s amazing that No. 304 Injection can still achieve the expected effects.

Its mechanism of action is more advanced than current drugs. How great it would be if we too could master such means to control the effects based on the biological genes," Zhang replied.

Xie Miao nodded, gazing thoughtfully into Sun’s eyes.

...

On April 22, several domestic private aerospace companies, the Aerospace Bureau, and some science and technology companies received a varying number of invitations.

The sender was New Yuan Aerospace Power Company, and the content was about the first flight mission of the "Storm" space shuttle scheduled for April 30, the day before Labor Day, in Qiongzhou.

The Storm’s maiden flight would carry seven people and also execute a mission.

According to the launch plan, the second living module of the Forward Space Station was set to launch on April 26, which naturally required the launch of an H2 to perform the truss assembly work.

This coincided with the Storm’s maiden flight, so after a straightforward evaluation, the base decided to abandon the original March launch mission and instead assign the task to the first flight of the nuclear-powered space shuttle, the H2N Storm.

By traditional thinking, it seemed a bit risky, but after all, the H2 vehicle had flown several times before and was theoretically reliable.

However, the Storm’s structure had undergone some modifications. In comparison to the H2M, the Storm’s three A100 engines could generate an unprecedented 30MW of power, unimaginable for any spacecraft.

Such a high level of power output was far more than the Storm alone could utilize. It could supply electricity to other spacecraft and support highly energy-consuming equipment.

The ample energy also allowed its body to be slightly longer, with just the living cabin in the nose capacious enough to accommodate seven astronauts living comfortably for 15 days. The 12 tons of liquid hydrogen fuel could propel it to activate its nuclear engine and fly without any reservations.

Whether in an empty or full load state, the Storm could complete the velocity increment acceleration needed to travel from low Earth orbit to lunar orbit in less than four hours, consuming no more than 1.3 tons of liquid hydrogen. It could reach the Moon in about 20 hours.

Merely being launched into low Earth orbit and then maneuvering to the Forward Space Station didn’t consume much fuel at all; what the Storm was most worried about throughout its entire operational period turned out to be the issue of liquid hydrogen escape.

Xie Liaofu’s zero-evaporation liquid hydrogen storage technology was still in the PowerPoint stage. To avoid damaging the storage tanks, the Storm was releasing gaseous hydrogen every second, which even exceeded the consumption of the engines...

But no matter what, nothing could change the fact that the Storm was a revolutionary spacecraft. If the astronauts aboard the Storm wished, they could completely pilot her to orbit the Moon and then return.

Of course, these plans were temporarily not included in the Aerospace Development Committee’s memo, and even before New Yuan sent out invitations, very few people could confirm that the Storm was a nuclear-powered spaceplane.

...

In the southern part of Nevada, Lincoln County.

Jackass Flats test site, home to the JFT team.

Freeman was closely following all information about his competitor for the FATS project, which was the H2N spacecraft. However, he only now learned the name of the Storm.

"Storm, it truly is a storm."

The launch plan for the Storm had been disclosed by the Aerospace Development Committee and internationally registered. A nuclear-powered spacecraft definitely had to abide by this rule, and Endeavour would have to do the same when it returned to flight in the future.

There were already many people who had taken photos of the An-1250 transporting the Storm, with the Storm’s tail and its three nuclear engines wrapped up tightly, revealing almost nothing, but Freeman could still roughly infer the reasons for the changes to its body as well as the general layout.

Without a doubt, the A100 had passed XAP’s acceptance and had been mass-produced and mounted on the spaceplane. And they must have considered the A100 quite reliable to stuff seven astronauts into it on its maiden flight.

Compared to this, the production of Endeavour’s nuclear engines had only just begun...

The power for Endeavour had been quickly decided to be a modernized improvement of the NERVA A6, becoming NERVA A105 (Endeavour’s code is OV-105), commonly referred to as the A105 engine.

The A105 engine was a modernized improvement based on the NERVA A6. After all, material science and computer design technology had advanced rapidly, offering much room for optimization.

The maximum thrust of the A105 would reach 35 tons, even larger than three A100s, and the peak power would exceed 700MW. The increase in thrust while reducing power output indicated a significant improvement in efficiency.

The rocket’s specific impulse had broken through a thousand seconds, reaching 1145 seconds, with a combustion chamber mass flow of 24 kilograms per second, sustaining maximum power for 90 minutes.

The total weight of the A105 would be controlled within 10 tons, but the mass of the cooling part needed additional calculations. However, Freeman was confident in managing it.

Only, the project had been stagnant for half a century, making it very difficult to restore the manufacturing capability for the engine. Luckily, Endeavour required only one engine.

The bad news was that it was already close to May. By July, the manufacture and installation of this engine... and by the time they completed the test procedures - considering it was a nuclear engine - Freeman estimated it would be around October to accomplish, but he thought the Pentagon would hardly be satisfied.

Unsatisfactory they may be, but there’s no helping it. Letting astronauts sit atop a reactor that could explode at any moment was not an option; if that led to a few astronaut deaths, the investigation would probably take a year.

What Freeman cared about now were the technical specs of the A100. The publicized content had almost no practical value and was written for PowerPoint before manufacture. Freeman estimated that the real parameters of the A100 at best came close to the level of NERVA A6.

According to the flight mission description, the Storm also had to carry trusses to perform space station installation tasks. So, the maximum fuel it could carry was probably 10 tons, which is just enough for an orbit around Earth and not sufficient for a trip to the Moon—unless one considered a one-way trip slightly possible.