Chapter 426 - 417: Live Streaming Path_1

Capital time, July 1st, 5 AM.

Yamamoto Ikki was busy adjusting his equipment, and despite the crowd and the salty humidity he’d experienced all night, he didn’t feel cold at all.

The efficiency of the local police was astonishing; helicopters had passed overhead three times in the last several hours, and patrols were constantly informing tourists of newly added portable toilet and free mineral water pickup locations—extremely considerate indeed.

Celosia Tamafu, who had been noisily fussing earlier in the wee hours, had somehow crawled into his tent to sleep, leaving Yamamoto alone, patiently waiting and adjusting his camera.

As he was bent over tuning the tracking software, he suddenly heard a chorus of shouts from the crowd.

Looking up, he saw the assembly building housing the rocket opening up, with the tall white body of the rocket especially conspicuous against the brightening sky.

Experienced residents nearby already knew that the rocket had officially entered launch status.

"Make sure to speak with authority, we can’t be upstaged by the Yankees!"

Standing in front of the gangway leading to the spaceship entrance, Meng Senlin and Zhang Zhiguang embraced each other, the former’s eyes filled with complex emotions.

Originally, Dawn III was to orbit the Moon, and Dawn IV was to land on it; but now the Dawn No.4 Crew was orbiting first, with Dawn III taking on the lunar landing mission.

Feeling a mix of regret and irritation, Meng Senlin knew he would definitely have a chance to go to the Moon in the future.

Apart from the subsequent missions of the Dawn project, he was aware that New Yuan was expanding its professional astronaut corps—exclusively military personnel were being discussed for employment with the Aerospace Development Committee—though it should be a collaboration without payment.

Zhang Zhiguang smiled, fully understanding the feeling; it was indeed a moment for the history books.

"Don’t worry, we will outdo America by being faster and better."

With that, he took one final look at the people who had come to the gangway to see them off, now far more numerous than when they had left the guest house, all hoping to witness history.

The three astronauts stood at the entrance to the gangway, silently looking back for two or three seconds, and then crisply turned and walked into the corridor, disappearing into the spaceship.

On the big screen in the command center, their figures appeared inside the empty spaceship.

The interior space of the Dawn Spaceship was a vast 13 square meters, much more spacious than the Shenzhou Spaceship, and entering was more convenient—the cabin was free of crammed cargo and switches to worry about bumping into.

What were originally seven seats, now there were only three, making it seem even more empty.

Academician She’s assistant, who had been waiting since early morning, nodded, and the latter immediately understood.

...

Cape Canaveral.

Central time, 8:14 PM, 106 minutes to launch.

The four astronauts of Artemis II had already entered the Orion spacecraft and started calmly conducting various checks in coordination with the ground crew, following the manual.

Claire stood on the lawn, taking one last look at the SLS rocket, now refueled and emitting vapors, before turning to board the pickup truck and heading for the control room.

"Any latest news?"

Claire asked from the passenger seat as the assistant drove, who first shook his head, but soon after glanced at his suddenly lit phone, slammed on the brakes with force that heavily depressed the front of the car, causing Claire to wince from the safety belt’s pressure on her chest.

"Fuck! What are you doing?"

The shocked assistant didn’t have time to apologize to the director but instead read the news headline again before exclaiming in a lost voice:

"Dawn III, Dawn III has announced its launch time!"

"So what? They’re launching at 1 AM, way later than us!"

"No!" the assistant shook his head frantically: "It’s... ha, at 9 PM, they’ve moved up the launch!"

Claire’s eyes widened as she glanced at her flustered assistant, then snatched the phone from the stand. The black headline succinctly conveyed the message:

[CADC: To avoid thunderstorms, the launch mission will take place around 7:00 AM]

He froze for several seconds at this line of text before turning his head to look back at the SLS.

Neither more nor less, it was exactly an hour ahead of Artemis II.

Avoiding thunderstorms? Qiongzhou does indeed have many tropical thunderstorms, but how could it be such a coincidence that they’d move up 4 hours without disrupting the deployment plan?

Or should I say, were they prepared for this all along?

Claire’s first thought was to move up the launch time of Artemis II even earlier, but that would undoubtedly bring greater psychological pressure to the astronauts and constantly changing times might also become disruptively chaotic.

The assistant watched as the chief smashed the plastic decor of the co-pilot seat with a punch and then ferociously glared at him and roared:

"Drive!"

...

Who was the happiest after Dawn III’s mission was moved up?

Of course, it was the audience who had gotten up before dawn to watch the live broadcast.

Outside the CCAV broadcast room, the director watched the viewership rate climb almost vertically within 10 minutes after the news release and felt his heart stop.

At 5:05 AM, within 5 minutes after the live broadcast started, the viewership rate had reached 9%, and last year’s Spring Festival Gala’s nationwide viewership was only 36%, meaning it was already a quarter of the Gala’s rate.

This was also considering the advent of new media, where a large portion of the younger population might be lying in bed under the covers watching the live stream on their phones or computers. Optimistically estimated, the number of domestic viewers watching the live broadcast at that time could have exceeded 500 million.

After the Aerospace Development Committee officially confirmed the specific launch time at 5:25 AM, the viewership leaped from 12% and surged to 26% within 10 minutes. It really seemed possible it would surpass the Spring Festival Gala.

Such terrifying data was almost impossible to find a precedent for in history—if one had to compare, it would be the live broadcast of the Apollo 11 moon landing. But that was a moon landing, this was just a launch!

The director suddenly thought of those four companies that had spent hundreds of millions on advertising fees. Their commercials played during the intervals of the live broadcast switch, and he thought the money was collected too cheaply, as he had underestimated the allure of a moon landing.

And as he suspected, the number of live viewers was far more than this.

Apart from television channels and online streams, satellites in the sky were also transmitting live broadcasts to the entire world.

Domestic satellite TV actually had a significant market overseas. Although not many understood Chinese, satellite programming included various provinces along the borders, and many ethnic minority languages were similar to those of adjacent countries.

For example, in Central Asia, there was a constant sale of pirated satellite antennas, receiving television programs from the Western Regions, and there were many in the southeast and north. These places might be underdeveloped, but they had large populations, and the number of pirated viewers might add up to a billion.

Furthermore, New Yuan was working hard to expand the broadcast methods.

In Texas, the smart key on Musk’s computer desk began to vibrate. On its small intelligent screen, a line of text appeared:

"Watch the launch live in your car."

With the Xin’an car’s high computational power chip and dependence on high-speed satellite network communication, the bandwidth was sufficient for transmitting 480p standard definition video.

Chen Jun had already instructed his team to quietly update a plugin for all the cars. With one touch after starting up, you could watch the live broadcast on the screen.