Chapter 458 - 449 Black Box_1

In the frenzied space shuttle launches of the first half of the year, the completion of the Forward Space Station increased rapidly.

Since the CZ-10 rocket had fulfilled its important mission of landing on the Moon ahead of competitors, the Jingu base’s capacity was finally not entirely focused on rockets, and the remaining four service modules were also under construction at the same time, expected to be delivered by October to November.

This also meant that the Forward Space Station would be completed within the year, becoming humanity’s largest and strongest singular space station with a mass exceeding 1500 tons, establishing an overwhelming advantage.

It could serve both as a space station and a spacecraft, and could also act as a starting point for many future projects, such as building space power stations or other large facilities. It would function similar to a floating dock on Earth, becoming a very important support point.

Especially foreseeably useful for navigating within the Solar System, it would be a perfect space vessel provided it was supplied with ample resources, and 0.3G gravity was entirely sufficient.

It was the truly groundbreaking milestone product of the new century, before which the significance of lunar missions seemed to dim a bit.

The H2s of New Yuan had rested for over a month and were about to get busy again.

In Academician She’s mind, the importance of the Forward outweighed lunar mining by far, which is why he kept involving the Aerospace Bureau in its construction.

After discussing the Forward for a while, Lin Ju suddenly shifted the conversation to the Great Wall One, which had been undergoing modifications in Fengtian for two months, surrounded by a veil of secrecy, still an empty shell.

"About Great Wall One, there is something to say. The military plans to change some of the payloads.

They’ve given up on the original plan to carry a giant laser and decided instead to install more flexible small lasers, specifically targeting satellites for anti-satellite missions."

"Anti-satellite? What about the anti-missile component?"

"Well..." Academician She seemed a bit troubled, but as if he had an idea, he still said:

"Originally, this was not for public knowledge, but now that I’ve thought about it, there’s no harm in telling you. You know about the Aurora Project, right?"

Lin Ju certainly knew. He was very familiar with that thing.

"The Union’s laser anti-missile system? Are you planning to revive it?"

Academician She nodded: "After our analysis, we believe that although this system needs to operate in low Earth orbit, the space shuttle as a carrier is not stable enough, and it would be more appropriate to make it a separate satellite.

We expect it to achieve a sustainable output of 5 megawatts, peak power of 30 megawatts instantaneously, with a mass of about 40 tons. It would require a continuous power supply from a nuclear reactor, and currently, the plan is to ask for it from you."

It seemed that domestically the feasibility of laser anti-missile technology was also recognized, and surprisingly, New Yuan was still being involved in it.

The base had changed its own plans after absorbing the technology from the metallurgy satellite; the Thousand-Jin Stick Two was abandoned in favor of the more powerful Thousand-Jin Stick Three. The light source remained at 20MW, but the effectiveness was enhanced fifteenfold, destroying warheads with less than a second of exposure, with a total mass that had not increased much, still only 130 tons.

The technical paper on plasma mirror reflection technology was also published in the internal reference documents; perhaps the domestic scientific community found it not very reliable and had no plan to use it.

Lin Ju: "40 tons, leaving aside other parts, that doesn’t seem to leave much mass for the power reactor."

Academician She: "We don’t need it now, it will take at least two or three years to finalize, it’s only a rough idea at this point.

Actually, the military has another idea, to use the Forward to retrofit and carry a 100MW super laser. Size and power supply would be easily resolved, but there are a lot of objections, and I’m against it too."

Lin Ju: "Then why not connect it to a space power station, which can provide 170MW of power?"

"You’ve reminded me, I’ll bring it up when I get back."

"..."

"Alright, that was just a joke. These things can’t be made this obvious. Actually, all this is just long-term reserve research. We’re not about to go to war anytime soon, and even if it really were built, it would serve as a technological reserve and a form of limited deterrence."

Lin Ju: "If it were on Earth, that would indeed be the case."

Academician She: "Are there even aliens? With our current technology, we won’t be counting on it for 100 years!"

...

"Jeff Bezos, you are now being accused of endangering astronauts by illegally reducing quality inspection procedures and forging certification documents, among several other suspicions. I demand that you respond to the aforementioned queries."

Jeff Bezos looked isolated as he was surrounded by the members of Congress, feeling that things were not going well.

Ever since the "Blue Moon" incident was confirmed, he had been worried, and now the moment he dreaded had arrived.

For the past few days, Congress had been strongly demanding the dismissal of Claire and the punishment of related personnel. The former was still occupied with cleaning up the mess and was temporarily let off the hook, but Blue Origin, the direct contractor of "Blue Moon," was a different story.

Unlike Musk, when Bezos founded Blue Origin, he was already at the top as the richest man thanks to Amazon. NACA’s support was comparable to what SpaceX received, yet for years Blue Origin’s greatest achievement was the suborbital "New Shepard" rocket, which couldn’t reach space and wasn’t very reliable.

The BE4 engine test was also resolved after NACA increased technical support, and the development of "Blue Moon" even benefited from three billion US dollars in funding.

So, what was the outcome?

Blue Origin, which had a spectacular start, couldn’t match SpaceX, and this time, they nearly cost the lives of two astronauts. The public was denouncing the "despicable bald" Bezos, and Musk even called Bezos a "half-wit."

The nation needed a scapegoat, so Bezos was brought in for a congressional hearing, with the members even threatening imprisonment.

As for the hearing, Bezos was not particularly scared; he had been through plenty of business hearings, such as antitrust ones. But this time was different, the internet was filled with criticism of how Bezos allowed Blue Origin to slack off and embezzle funds, and it was possible that he could even end up being branded a criminal.

"Senator, I must clarify the causes and consequences of ’Blue Moon.’ When we undertook HLS, ’Blue Moon’ was merely an immature concept, and it took six months of debate before it was finally agreed upon, leaving Blue Origin with less than 15 months to work on it.

In 15 months, we developed the most advanced lunar lander in the world from scratch, and delivered it five months ahead of the scheduled deadline, which is less than a year’s time.

If NACA hadn’t been so desperate to compete with Dawn III, this tragedy would never have occurred."

Senator A: "But we have seen the quality inspection report, and it was deemed satisfactory. The reality is obviously different, however. Why are there no malfunctions with the SLS rocket, the Orion spacecraft, and why didn’t the Chinese lander, which was developed during the same period, have any faults?

They achieved complete success in their unmanned trials earlier this year, which was much earlier than ’Blue Moon.’ This isn’t an excuse, and we gave you three billion, three billion US dollars!"

Senator B: "If Blue Origin cannot give a satisfactory explanation, we will consider revoking its commercial spaceflight license."

Bezos: "We need to know the cause of the accident first, and that requires an investigation to reach a conclusion. It could even be due to non-human factors?"

Senator A: "How long will the investigation take?"

Bezos: "Since communication is completely cut off, we need to find the black box on the lander, which holds all the data.

However, retrieving it is quite troublesome; it would require another lunar mission to bring it back."

Senator A: "You mean to wait for over a year? That’s impossible, utterly absurd. Can you imagine us preparing another lunar mission just to investigate the cause of the last accident? And are you suggesting we need to land with ’Blue Moon’ again?

In that case, I suggest Mr. richest man pays for a Chinese spacecraft, which at least wouldn’t cost us two more elite human lives."

This sarcastic comment made Bezos quite uncomfortable, and just as he was about to defend himself, he was interrupted by another senator:

"Next month, it seems the Chinese will land on the Moon again. Why not let them help us retrieve the black box?"

This remark immediately aroused strong emotions among the other members of Congress. Some thought it was a good idea, while others found it too humiliating and angrily denounced it. The Senate quickly descended into noisy chaos, giving Bezos a chance to breathe.