Chapter 400 - 391 Test_1

"Mr. Spokesperson, was the izakaya vandalism in Edo Mansion instigated by your office?"

Spokesperson: ...

As the spokesperson for foreign affairs, Zhang Lin told himself that the foremost quality of his profession was to stay calm, but the question still rendered him silent.

"...That is a fallacy, next question."

The next to stand up was a UK journalist, "Mr. Zhang, may I ask why your party has rejected the Royal Physics Society of UK’s request for space station cooperation?"

Zhang Lin, "This is due to a divergence in the specific content of the cooperation, the details of which are not convenient to disclose. You can inquire with the Royal Physical Society, next question."

CNN reporter: "Recently, Russia has expressed openness to unrestricted foreign investments across multiple sectors in an area of 3 million square kilometers in the Far East, and there’s word that Russian astronauts will be part of the Dawn No. 6 mission. Is this a secret deal?"

You’re already calling it a secret agreement, sheesh!

"This is pure, malicious speculation filled with a sense of conspiracy; please refer to the official statements for any information, next!"

"..."

Having barely handled a messy bunch of journalists, Zhang Lin was taking a break backstage when a colleague rushed in and threw a stack of freshly printed papers on the table.

"Zhang, we have a serious situation!"

Zhang Lin quickly glanced over the documents and felt his blood pressure skyrocketing instantly.

"Dammit! Are these people out of their minds!"

The first page of the document was simple; it was breaking news just sent by Edo Television Station, with the headline:

"Edo Electric Power Company claims sewage storage tanks have reached their limits, must consider discharging into the ocean."

...

Aitken Basin, about 1.4 kilometers from the perimeter of Kuom Impact Crater.

The JPL was operating the Isis No. 1 Lunar Rover, performing yet another 1.2-meter-deep sample drilling at the 17th sampling site.

Over the course of more than three months, the Isis No. 1 Lunar Rover had circled around a large part of the Kuom Impact Crater, finding shallow ice blocks in over 50% of the sampling sites and creating a rough distribution map of the ice regions with the help of its detectors.

This achievement was exhilarating for NACA; even without going into the crater to compete with the Chinese People for territory, they could still find sufficient water resources within a dozen kilometers of the perimeter, which was indeed great news.

But the capabilities of Isis were still too limited, everything on the Moon was much slower than on Earth, not only was there only half the work time, but due to the size of the equipment, the work efficiency was also relatively low.

Take the drilling, for instance, just 1 meter could take as little as 40 minutes or, when encountering tough Moon Rock, grinding away for two hours wasn’t surprising.

Boris, in charge of the shift that day, had prepared coffee and desserts early; operating extraterrestrial robots required patience, and he happened to have it.

As a tranquil engineer... "shit!" a low curse caught Boris’s attention.

"they are coming again!"

Before he could say a word, the young engineer had uttered a nightmarish statement.

Boris’s face immediately darkened as he looked at the large screen on the wall.

In the black and white view of the Isis Rover, a plume of smoke arose undeniably signaling the annoying spiders were back, harassing them with their robot.

"Is this the Americans’ detector? Square and neat, but why is it sitting here?"

Above Isis, over twenty kilometers up, Hu Dong held a remote control and saw the motionless Isis No. 1.

Meng Senlin, "Hey! Look down there, it’s taking samples."

Hu Dong: "Ah, are they trespassing on our turf to steal soil?"

Meng Senlin quickly glanced at the live broadcast camera, and after confirming it was turned off, he said:

"Calm down, calm down, Hu. We haven’t planted a flag yet, and besides, international conventions forbid claiming land."

Hu Dong: "So what if we claim it? In the future, we need to encircle this area with barbed wire and have robots patrol day and night. This is our property! Not a single grain of Moon dust is superfluous!"

Meng Senlin: "..."

Indeed, coming from private aerospace does give one wild ideas—such "treasonous" talk, if overheard by their boss, might even elicit a thumbs up and a "well said."

It is now May 31, and Storm has overstayed on the Moon by two days.

Life supplies are more than sufficient; in fact, even without them, it wouldn’t matter. The return trip is faster than the journey here, taking just over ten hours to get back to Earth. They could endure being hungry for a couple of meals—or they could simply leave it to the computers to manage.

The impact of having someone orbit the Moon turned out to be much greater than anticipated. The seven of them haven’t been idle in these ten days, with a full slate of experiments and observations. The plan now is to return to Earth after the children there have celebrated Children’s Day on June 1.

Unlike March, the living conditions on Storm are indeed lower in quality. The astronauts who have been in space for a complete 32 days have adapted to this lifestyle and have turned various aspects of their work into routine.

Today’s task for Hu Dong and Meng Senlin is to check the work progress of several robots at the Kuom Impact Crater. Currently, four robots have been "released" to continuously explore the surrounding area, while four others are collecting valuable samples from various locations and bringing them back to the crater, waiting to be retrieved by a manned mission.

The two De Lu lunar rovers have been extremely useful; in just over a month, they have already stockpiled more than 400 kilograms of samples near the anticipated landing site and arranged them in an orderly fashion.

However, one De Lu was rendered unusable after Yutu-3’s autonomous driving system damaged its wheel, resulting in a requirement for the remaining De Lu rovers to limit their top speed to 25 km/h, synchronized with the new national standard.

Hu Dong remotely controlled the Explorer No. 7, driving a lunar rover to find the nearby Isis Rover, circling it twice and kicking up a large cloud of dust.

JPL immediately understood that it was the Explorer Series Robots operating the lunar rover. Over the past three months, they had figured out the habit of these robots:

The China National Space Administration’s Yutu-3 rover might also come over to "watch," but it would only stay for a while before leaving. New Yuan’s Explorers would relentlessly "tease" ISIS without regard for their lifespan, and though their actions were not harmful, they were quite annoying.

Both sides tacitly kept these frequent "encounters" private, though NACA continually bore them in mind, waiting for the time when they could retaliate.

After the routine checkup on ISIS, Meng Senlin left to inspect the reactor, while Hu Dong immediately turned his chair to face the direction someone might come from.

The cameras inside Storm’s cabin wouldn’t always be live-streaming to Earth, a stipulation made at New Yuan’s suggestion to reduce the astronauts’ stress. Thus, unless necessary, the cabin images were offline.

Hu Dong rapidly entered a string of commands and then left his post as if nothing had happened, resuming his usual spot next to the porthole to observe the lunar surface with the astronomical telescope—everyone knew of his habit.

He adjusted the lens to the orientation he had pre-calculated. In just under two minutes, he should be able to see.

Meanwhile, up in near-Earth orbit, Thousand-Jun Stick No. 1 had used its particle thrusters over three months to raise its orbit to 450 kilometers, quietly announcing a "loss of contact" thereafter—base leadership didn’t believe anyone would seriously search for a "test counterweight."

Thousand-Jun Stick No. 1 was now constantly fine-tuning its lens, aiming it far off in the direction of the Moon.

This was a 380,000-kilometer ultra-long-distance attack test, aiming to gather data on the scattering range of ultra-long-range lasers and their effective damage distances.

Given the immense distance and the speed differential between the two, the attack window was less than one second.

The target location was provided by Explorer 2, which was now officially "accidentally scrapped," having chosen a secluded area to offer its last bit of heat in service of the experiment.

Among the several miniature satellites released by Storm, one came from a cooperative university and was equipped with an infrared remote sensing module. It could determine the attack’s strength based on the extremely faint temperature changes at the targeted location.

With the distance and difficulty of attack being so great, Hu Dong had covertly spent over ten days finishing the preparations and adjustments. Now everything was almost ready.

He deftly found each reference point in the eyepiece, checked his watch, silently counted to fifteen, and then swiftly zoomed in the lens.

The image in his eyes began to move rapidly, and just as that familiar spot came into view, a brief pale blue glare appeared in the eyepiece—a fleeting, almost illusory flash.

In near-Earth orbit, Thousand-Jun Stick No. 1’s cooling system was working at full force to cool down the gas laser generator, slipping back into silence afterward.

The 79th space laser experiment, complete.