Chapter 410 - 401 The Light of John_1

"A hundred billion dollars? Director, are you joking with me?"

Claire managed to move her phone away in time to dodge the boss’s sonic assault, while sighing in resignation.

Her only decent sleep of the week was disrupted by a late-night call to analyze the feasibility of a space-based power station.

John had this wild idea to build a two-hundred-acre (800,000 square meters) solar power station to outdo the competition, and Claire had no choice but to draft calculations while fighting off sleep.

800,000 square meters, even with Spectrolab’s (a renowned American solar cell supplier) quote, and after a super hefty discount of $100,000 per square meter, that would still be 80 billion dollars, and launching... let’s assume Starship is successful, a hundred billion dollars isn’t far off.

That figure was far from John’s imagination; he thought it could be done with at most 10, or even just a few billion dollars.

Knowing John was probably daydreaming again, Claire could only offer comforting words:

"Boeing is developing new solar cells capable of generating over 1000 watts per square meter, expected to succeed in five years. If we start construction then, such a large area could generate 800 MW of power. Mr. President, the Hoover Hydropower Station’s generation capacity is only 1300 megawatts.

The Hoover Dam cost 50 million dollars, that’s 50 million dollars in the 1930s, and it was nearly one thousandth of the GDP. Last year, one thousandth of our GDP was already 20 billion dollars. Your project is like launching the Hoover Dam into the sky, so a hundred billion really isn’t much."

John fell silent, not because the expense was wildly beyond his imagination, but because he felt that Claire seemed more useful than his own staff, at least she could rattle off various statistics and sounded much more professional.

Pio, the darling though he was, never came up with anything useful, not as much as a NASA director anyway.

But about that power station... the boast was already out there.

"What! You just tweeted that you’ll build the world’s largest man-made object within your term, over 200 acres?!"

Hearing this explosive news, Claire nearly passed out. The previous boss, Xiaohei, might have been clueless but refrained from interfering rashly, but this one acted entirely on whim!

"Don’t be so dramatic... I know NACA has a way, right?"

"..."

Claire rubbed her temples vigorously, wishing it were only a dream and she didn’t have to be ruled by midnight calls.

"This... it’s not totally impossible; let me think... cheaper, and as light as possible, I’ve got it."

The words ’artificial moon’ emerged in her mind:

"Last century, NACA had plans to construct a 90,000 square meter reflective mirror to provide illumination. Its main structure was metallic foil, like an umbrella surface that could be retracted and unfurled. A 1,000,000 square meter... that’s 250 acres of reflective surface might weigh just a hundred tons, and it would be easy to launch. The costs could be more than ten times lower.

If we don’t include the cost of the launch, a hundred billion dollars should be doable."

"That’s the one!"

John responded eagerly, 250 acres, more than twice the size of the competition - excellent.

"Will it be visible? Surely, it’ll be quite noticeable, right?"

"Uh, it might be more than ten times brighter than the Moon, so it’ll be very bright, the brightest object in the sky."

The brightest, the largest - John’s mood improved significantly. He quickly forgot his prior frustration and tweeted Claire’s words as if he were the space expert himself.

Whether it’s Artemis or the God of War Ares program, in his view, none were as significant as the artificial moon project, especially since the latter was proposed during his term and could surely be completed within it - it was perfect.

In the future, even after leaving office, every time the people of America looked up and saw that light, they’d remember John’s name!

He had already decided that he must push this plan to the limit, and it would be named the John Sun Project...never mind, let’s call it the Second Sun Project! It’s a step further than chasing the sun!

...

Florida.

A 1:2 scale "miniature" Blue Moon Lander ignited its engine at the test site, and with agile swaying, it stabilized its posture at an altitude of 25 meters, the powerful engine thrust quickly blowing a crater into the ground.

This was the Blue Moon Lander’s final test validation before delivery.

Since Earth’s gravity is six times that of the Moon’s, the complete lander’s BE-7 engine simply couldn’t generate enough thrust for testing, so actual engine tests were conducted using a scaled-down model with the same layout, which was sufficient with the help of electronic technology.

The BE-7 engine, an upgrade from the BE-3, was still considered reliable; a previous accident had been confirmed to be caused by human error, and NACA engineers had already resolved these issues.

NACA planned to begin constructing the HLS for the lunar landing in May, with an expected completion by the end of June. If the scaled validation tests were successful, it would be sent to the Moon to prepare for the first lunar landing mission.

In order to rush the already insane schedule, the Blue Moon had most functions temporarily not needed removed.

For example, inside the lander’s cabin, the air recycling system was drastically cut to only maintain 30 hours of operation, and counting the emergency equipment, the redundancy reached the bare minimum requirement;

Other unnecessary decorations, such as chair upholstery, were removed if possible, or had their functions reduced if not; the total mass saved from the cabin was one ton.

Even the mission this time wouldn’t include a lunar rover, which weighed half a ton on its own.

The purpose of reducing functions was not only to decrease weight but also to minimize risks, as the engineering principle of "fewer functions, more reliability" is considered gospel.

Within a not-too-tight time limit, the Blue Moon’s huge development team had made every effort to ensure the safety of the astronauts.

The crew of the Artemis II mission were also aware of the risks of the journey. Outside of their training schedules, they almost always stayed here, familiarizing themselves with the lander’s operations and emergency procedures.

Christina Koch was especially serious; she and the African-American Victor Glover would be the two astronauts landing, the only two passengers on the lander.

In fact, she was now somewhat regretful; she was a former engineer, whose role on this mission as a payload specialist was not supposed to involve her taking risks.

Such a dangerous action should be left to men, but if she didn’t go down this time, the outside world would criticize them for not valuing women, so it could only be her and Victor.

Internally cursing the damn W organisation, Christina picked up the three-hundred-page "Human Landing System (HLS) Operations and Emergency Maintenance Catalog" again to study; this information might just save her life.

Next to her, Victor was still engaged in manual landing simulation training, the control stick that fully simulated real feedback had this fit African-American sweating profusely.

"Damn, I really don’t know how Neil managed to land on the Moon with this thing; it’s so strenuous yet requires such precise control without a single error," he complained.

Christina looked up, "You better learn quickly, Glover, or else next year’s Artemis III will have to bring us back in body bags."

Victor: "The Chinese are also planning a lunar orbit, maybe I can say ’No sweat, I surrender, help help’ on the radio, and they’ll drop the lander to pick us up and take us to a POW camp."

Christina: "Maybe they’ll just drop a pack of vacuum curry from orbit, oh, but they can’t drop it down."

Victor: "I’m also a lay disciple registered with the Shaolin Temple; I even shaved my head for it. The abbot will surely plead for me; they’re Buddhists after all."

Christina: "Shaolin Temple? When did you become a disciple of Shaolin Temple?"

Victor: "A Korean introduced me; 3000 US dollars got me a certificate with a black satin border."