Chapter 415 - 406: Yao San, Ready to Go_1

"Anthony, give up,"

As Eggy Marshall passed by Anthony’s office, he saw the latter opening reconnaissance satellite imagery and was momentarily at a loss for words.

Using an optical reconnaissance satellite to find an unknown spacecraft in space was less reliable than finding a needle in a haystack.

This obsessive newcomer would not rest until he filled every available satellite window every day, and he always wore a headset on standby, ready to be alerted as soon as a satellite detected a similar communication band.

As usual, the bewitched Anthony paid no attention to outsiders’ comments.

But just as Marshall turned to leave, taking a few steps away, a voice came from the office:

"Eggy, look at this!"

Marshall was taken aback and then walked in. He then noticed that the satellite image Anthony was viewing was of the ground, and it had been zoomed in to a very high level.

Clearly, Anthony was not looking for NX-17.

In fact, he himself was about to give up; he had less than two days of satellite access left, and the hope of finding NX-17 again could only rely on sheer luck for it to appear on its own.

Anthony, numb from staring at radio spectra, had just seen "Lockeye" complete an image stitch over the Pacific Ocean. Out of habit, he glanced at the Xinyuan Company’s base and then, casually, at China’s Jingu Rocket Manufacturing Base.

Both places could be related to NX-17; the same type of satellite might follow up, so he occasionally checked them too, but likewise found nothing.

He had just zoomed in on the Jingou Rocket Base when he spotted several long white objects, and upon closer inspection, two were attached to the fronts of trailers, likely loading or unloading goods—a common sight for a space manufacturing center.

Five identical long containers and two shorter ones—seven containers total. Why did they look so familiar? It seemed like he had seen them somewhere before... Wait a minute!

He hastily called over Marshall, who worked at the public intelligence collection center and had seen a lot. He should be able to draw a definitive conclusion.

Based on the number of trailer heads, Marshall deduced it was most likely a shipment out, sending seven containers at once. What could have seven components?

Oh, he had seen it once at the beginning of the year—it was a video reported by the space agency, also featuring a convoy hauling long containers.

This horrifying speculation caused Marshall to break out in a cold sweat. He hurried back to his computer to check the whereabouts of the "Yuanwang-22" rocket transport ship, which could be publicly queried on maritime websites. According to the site, it arrived at the Jingu port six days ago.

Looking at the time, today was June 15th, Beijing time June 16th.

The third CZ-10 rocket had completed its manufacturing and testing, and was being packed into containers in parts, ready to be shipped to Qiongzhou by sea!

The satellite image and Yuanwang-22 corroborated each other—it was impossible to be wrong!

Realizing the gravity of the issue, the two immediately called their superiors, who then relayed the information to NACA.

...

SpaceX, Starship Town.

The SN15 Starship spacecraft lifted off from the square concrete recovery zone, continuing the yet-to-be-successful 12,000-meter altitude flight-return test.

Before SN12’s maiden voyage with the B6, both SN13 and 14 exploded upon reentry due to attitude control loss, and SN12 is currently the only Starship spacecraft that has breached the 10,000-meter mark.

The launch of the SN12-B6 combination last month could be described as a "disaster." The Starship team is working overnight to address the issues.

Firstly, the bare minimum of a trench is required; the impact force of the flames from the 33 engines far exceeded expectations. The launch pad repair plan decided that after rebuilding the main structure, the surface’s primary impact areas would be covered with steel plates, and trenches would be laid with steel plates at the base of the tower.

Upon investigation, the failure of two engines in the lower stage was directly due to the launch pad’s debris, which had been blown apart, hitting and damaging them. This issue was serious, but the easiest to solve; it could be modified within a fortnight.

The main problem was with the entire first stage’s engine control system. During the development of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets and other spacecraft, Musk abandoned expensive and low-production space-grade computer chips in favor of more powerful consumer-grade chips to reduce costs.

Typically, aerospace chips have much poorer overall performance compared to civilian chips. However, aerospace chips are mainly high-speed processing chips (DSPs) and not general-purpose central processing units (CPUs), which can replace the former in terms of performance and offer more functions and a more complete feature set, but lack the ability to resist radiation and strong vibrations.

Musk’s plan was to replace one specialized DSP with three consumer-grade chips, which would still be cheaper than purchasing a DSP. This approach had been successful on both the Falcon 9 and Dragon Spaceships.

However, Starship was different; almost all of the control systems experienced crashes upon the first stage ignition, relying only on redundant systems kicking in sporadically after half a minute. But the engines continued to ignite under unreasonable conditions, and the recovering computers could only desperately self-rescue, trying to execute the command to self-destruct above 10 kilometers in altitude.

Subsequently, a series of minor problems occurred, such as the failure of engine control systems and abnormal fuel storage pressure. The planned separation of the second stage didn’t succeed either, as the computers seemed to fail again at that time.

The complete Starship assembly exploded upon touching the water surface, scattering debris everywhere, leading to environmental organizations protesting daily at SpaceX’s doors.

Other aerospace companies took this opportunity to kick SpaceX while it was down, constantly bringing up old issues with the N1 and downplaying SpaceX, while Lockheed publicly announced their plans to develop their own reusable mega rocket to try and replace Starship and gain support.

Luckily, Director Claire has been unwavering in her support for "Starship," with the only demand being to achieve success before 2019 and launch John’s "artificial moon."

John, in turn, was vigorously promoting this project, which had been decided on an impulse, and was really pushing for its approval in Congress.

Musk looked towards the horizon, his mood slightly irritable, as SN15 started its wobbly deceleration at a hundred meters high, seemingly stable but descending slightly too quickly.

Seconds later, SN15, with a substantial dent from a collision, managed to stand upright for a few seconds before exploding due to the sudden change in fuel pressure caused by the tilt.

"Buzz... Buzz..."

"This is Elon," Musk said as he answered the phone without even looking.

"Musk! Where is the Heavy Falcon Rocket?!"

Upon hearing Claire’s voice, Musk immediately became serious and replied after a moment’s thought:

"B1033 has already been assembled and taken to the launch pad, B1034 is still in the hangar. What happened? Isn’t ’Blue Moon’s’ fuel tank supposed to launch in a week?"

"There’s no time, we have to launch the fuel module within 48 hours, then launch the lander within a week, and then immediately launch Artemis II!

Assemble B1034 immediately!"

Musk: "There’s no issue with the rocket, but what exactly happened?"

"LongMarch10Y3! It got ready!"