Chapter 513 - 502: Thousand Machine Formation_1

B-level Base.

Yang Wei entered the base by face recognition, drove in smoothly, parked the car, and took the base’s unmanned shuttle to the assembly warehouse, whose doors were half-open.

A C810 airframe that had just been assembled the day before was towed out by the ground crew. This C810 was the first one to be manufactured according to the Navy’s specifications and would be flown to 611 for installation of other equipment.

But Yang Wei’s attention wasn’t on it, but rather quickly fixated on the large machine behind it.

After a month’s time, the first Cloud Ascend prototype had been completely assembled and was undergoing testing of various subsystems.

Xie Liaofu, wearing a safety helmet, was constantly going in and out for inspections. Due to the parts’ quality incident at Xuehu, the base had now strengthened the quality checks of parts from the external supply chain.

Among the busy crowd of workers, one could also spot a few robotic figures, not industrial robots, but humanoid ones dressed in utility suits.

Paired with Xuehu’s sci-fi colossal body, they added a strong futuristic vibe to the setting.

"Mr. Yang."

Xie Liaofu greeted him and then continued to get busy. Yang Wei also quickly found his own work.

The first ground driving test for Cloud Ascend was scheduled within the next week; if all went well, a test flight would be arranged as soon as possible. The chief designers involved took this very seriously and supervised it personally to ensure there were no quality issues.

An entire morning flew by in the bustle of over a hundred people. At lunchtime, a few chief designers were discussing technical problems while eating when suddenly, there was a loud "buzzing" noise outside.

It was the sound of propeller airplanes, and by the sound of it, there were quite a few. The noise now filled the entire sky above the base.

"Hey, wasn’t it said that the base has a no-fly zone for the club? Why are there so many airplanes?"

Xie Liaofu: "They aren’t passing over here; it’s just that there are too many planes. Just bear with it for another four or five days, and it will be over."

Curious, Yang Wei walked to the door to look outside, and then saw a terrifying swarm of dark clouds completely obscuring the distant sky, even dimming the intense sunlight significantly.

Planes, countless planes in dense formations were flying by, the noise from the numerous propellers making it feel like the ground was shaking.

Xie Liaofu, who was holding his toast, slowly came out, took a picture with his phone, and then explained:

"Isn’t it back-to-school season? The base coordinated with the city to synchronize the military training schedules of all universities and high schools, preparing for a parade flight.

We organized over 400 outstanding students, plus astronaut reserves, base staff, and tech-savvy flight enthusiasts, totaling 1600 airplanes for the ’thousand-plane bombing’ performance."

Yang Wei: "..."

"Oh, the Air Force is also participating. The boss said that since we always see American baseball games start with military jets, we should also step up. It took a lot of back-and-forth with the Air Force to make this happen."

Yang Wei: "Is Mr. Lin also here?"

Xie Liaofu: "No, he was held up in the Capital."

"..."

...

The Capital.

Lin Ju actually wanted to go back and set an example for the 2017 freshmen by flying once, but somehow the news leaked, and he ended up being held back by the flurry of affairs he had to manage.

A couple of days ago, Lingxi Company’s first batch of low Earth orbit satellites was fully manufactured and, after final testing, was shipped to Jiuquan. The Hyperbolic Three Rocket ready for their launch had already been prepped.

Now, domestic private aerospace companies had all been lured into the huge pit of Moon development, continuously contributing to lunar construction, and, as planned, 30% of the Yushu Base would be developed and produced by them, significantly reducing the burden on New Yuan and the Aerospace Administration.

As a result, the domestic aerospace sector became the only somewhat bright spot amidst the manufacturing industry’s trials—the latter currently undergoing a difficult transformation period.

John’s Industrial Act had begun its official implementation. With the start of a new month, a hefty amount of exports to America were intercepted by customs, with over 15% of the related companies charged with tax issues and suspicions of dumping. The volume of trade exports in the first week of the month fell by 42% compared to two weeks prior.

Domestic countermeasures emerged last month when America’s three major acts were passed; they included boosting exports to the third world.

Now, most of Southeast Asia had established closer trade ties with the domestic market, and consumer power in Central Asia had visibly increased in recent years. Although their economic total could not compare with America’s, their vast populations still represented important markets that could not be ignored.

Domestic experts predicted that exports to America might maintain at 40% of previous years’ levels, while digging deeper into the domestic market and increasing exports to emerging underdeveloped countries could compensate for this gap, but a transition period of one to two years would be needed. This was referred to as a "temporary setback" in export business.

The highly anticipated ASEAN cooperatively proposed several policies favorable to domestic exports and consecutively expressed the willingness to establish visa-free travel with the mainland.

One could only hope the post-"transition period" would truly be as they imagined...

Lin Ju could only do his best to make United Mining the next new economic growth point. As long as there was profit to be found on the Moon, the domestic front would naturally shift towards the boundless potential of space.

The three months from now until December were the final planning and preparation period for the entire Moon project, spawning hundreds of direct projects. Lin Ju stayed busy until September 10th, when he was interrupted by a piece of news:

The British had arrived, bringing not only five payload specialists and astronauts scheduled for training, but also a delegation of over 200 domestic scholars and experts.

The UK, seizing the opportunity of the mining blasts, negotiated a profound research and-development cooperation agreement with United Mining regarding lunar construction and resource development. They were working on lunar research projects with several domestic universities, overall a beneficial and harmless arrangement.

But what no one expected, and what the British had not notified us about, was that two very famous physics masters were also on the plane, one with a reputation that resonated worldwide: Stephen Hawking.

Hawking and Penrose were both renowned for their research on black holes and general relativity, but as of now, neither had received the Nobel Prize in Physics—Penrose would receive the award three years later for proving black holes were a direct consequence of general relativity.

The reason for their lack of Nobel accolades was not that they were undeserving, but rather because their research was too profound, mostly theoretical speculations that were unverifiable, and the Swedish Royal Society preferred to honor applications over theory.

The arrival of these two figures caught the entire domestic community by surprise, and more interestingly, after disembarking, Hawking immediately requested to visit the Aerospace Development Committee’s rockets and spacecraft. So, Lin Ju had more work cut out for him.

He didn’t understand their purpose in coming, but just their reputation alone was enough to compel Lin Ju to receive them personally, especially Hawking... this old man did not have many days left.