Chapter 519 - 508: Starry Night_1

B-level Base.

A C810 landed on the runway in the night, and as soon as the airplane came to a stop, the unfolded gangway extended out, and Lin Ju directly jumped down from the middle of the gangway, eager to feel the solid ground of the base.

It’s always better on one’s own turf. When in the Capital, too many problems arose; returning early seemed wise and safe.

The base’s lights would never go out, the streetlights leaving no dead angle hidden, and robots hidden in the corners stood guard, securing the safety of the area.

Though the staff had already finished work for the day, the base remained busy. The OGAS2.0 upgrade was essentially complete, allowing most processes to operate 24 hours a day without human intervention.

Lin Ju watched as an unmanned flatbed transporter dragged a cylindrical object, nearly taller than most of the workshops, out on its side. By connecting his phone to the base’s smart management system, he learned that this massive object was the test model of the Core Stage One of the New Yuan No. 4 rocket.

The design of the New Yuan No. 4 rocket was no small challenge. As a super rocket that, labeled as "the last glory of the chemical engines" by the base, had a takeoff weight of 15,000 tons, its entire design philosophy was entirely different from conventional rockets.

The Core Stage One’s tank had a diameter of 18 meters and a height of 95 meters. It required filling with 12 million liters of liquid hydrogen and 4.4 million liters of liquid oxygen, which amounted to roughly 6,000 tons of hydrogen and oxygen fuel. The second stage, with the same diameter but a height of 40 meters, held 3,600 tons of fuel. After adding the payload, the height exceeded 200 meters, making it set to become the tallest rocket ever made by humankind, with a core stage net weight of just over 10,000 tons.

The initial design of a 14-meter diameter was directly abandoned due to an excessive slenderness ratio approaching 20, causing severe strength and center of gravity issues.

Xie Liaofu originally planned to go for a 24-meter ultra-large diameter rocket body to further reduce the height, but had to consider the lifting issues and reluctantly gave up that idea. In fact, an 18-meter diameter had already surpassed the transport capacity of the An-1250 and could only be shipped by water.

The current transportation plan involved removing a section of the base entrance and then constructing a floating dock on the nearest tributary of the Yangtze River to load the rocket body onto a semi-submersible ship, transporting it via the Yangtze River to Qiongzhou, where a sea launch platform would be built to carry out the launch.

Land launches did not only require consideration of how to move the rocket body, but even fueling was very troublesome. A single launch pad fuel tank was simply not enough; fueling had to be done by fuel ships during sea launches.

The last consideration was the noise and vibration produced by the four boosters and the core stage upon takeoff, generating a combined thrust of 22,000 tons. They might have to remove all glass within a five-kilometer radius in advance to prevent it from shattering.

Manufacturers producing liquid hydrogen for spaceflight were already preparing to expand production. The New Yuan No. 4 rocket required a standard liquid hydrogen refueling amount of 1,400 tons, and the reserve amount for a single launch needed to be at least 2,500 tons. The hydrogen plant manufacturers were now waiting for New Yuan to produce zero evaporation ultra-high pressure spherical liquid hydrogen storage tanks; otherwise, they couldn’t even start amassing the fuel.

The base planned to complete the test of the New Yuan No. 4 prototype this month, but the first rocket’s body was already in production and was expected to come off the line by mid-October. By November, it would be transported to Qiongzhou to await the maiden flight mission of the XH-40.

The prototype Core Stage One being transported to the test workshop now totally blocked most of the lights in front of Lin Ju. And though the slow-moving electric tug made little noise, it still offered an unparalleled sense of awe.

Lin Ju took his time to appreciate the super rocket, which even the base’s production capacity could only handle one at a time, and by the time he reached his office, it was already 10 p.m.

He planned to work a bit before resting, mainly to reorganize the base’s financial issues.

The base’s space business was definitely a loss-maker. Or more accurately, it could have been profitable, but there were too many super projects stacked up, so the best they could do was barely break even.

The profit relied entirely on the supported automotive, chip, aviation, and AI industries, which brought in quite a substantial profit. There was also the very successful Oriental International Space Hotel. Selling some shares after going public for some cash would be easy.

If the TAPE accelerator construction plan were approved, then investing 10 billion from the base would be an underestimation; considering this was a long-term project of at least five years, gritting their teeth and allocating 15 billion was not impossible. After all, the lure of nuclear fusion energy was there, and it would be worth every penny, even if it meant losing it all.

But this required a rerun of the future space program to see where funds could be saved, a decision AI was incapable of making for humans.

Ye Changsi was not around, so Lin Ju had to step up and oversee the process, drafting a plan in advance before soliciting opinions from the other vice presidents.

There were few people in the office building late at night, and the ones occasionally seen were mostly the human-imitating Series 2 robots, who, after a long time of participating in human life, were almost indistinguishable from real people in their behavior.

After casually taking a cup of coffee with sugar and milk from the automatic drink machine, Lin Ju approached his office, and the electronic sliding doors recognized his presence, swiftly sliding open. Inside, a robot secretary was bent over, wiping the table—a task not a waste of resources but for accumulating experience in the AI database.

Lin Ju walked in and directly kicked the secretary robot in the rear, while instructing,

"Go to the cafeteria and get me two..."

His words were abruptly cut off because the sensation under his foot was not the hard steel beneath the robot’s soft surface, but something alarmingly soft.

"Ah!"

The new intern, recently assigned to the president’s assistant team and who had not yet met Lin Ju, was suddenly kicked by the boss onto the couch. It must be said that Lin Ju’s habit of kicking the heavy robots had endowed him with a strong kick, strong enough to send a real person weighing 100 pounds flying off the ground.

Fortunately, she landed awkwardly on the couch and was not hurt. Lin Ju could only apologize while hastily trying to help her up,

"I’m so sorry, I thought that at this hour, only robots would be here... Are you hurt anywhere? I’ll take you to the infirmary right away."

"It’s fine... uh."

The new female intern was on the verge of tears as she rubbed her buttocks. She had only learned in workplace harassment prevention videos how to avoid getting her rear slapped by the boss; she had never heard about how to avoid getting kicked. What a bizarre preference!

Lin Ju stood by, equally embarrassed. In the base, where robots roamed freely, they were hardly ever treated as real people—who would have thought someone would be in his office in the middle of the night?

He wasn’t suspicious of any malicious intent; after all, the offices of all the executives had been fully automatized, leaving absolutely no confidential paper documents to be found. Those were stored in a special storage room, and everyone was accustomed to a paperless office.

"Does it still hurt... Why are you here so late at night? You should have finished work by now."

"I heard you were coming back, so I wanted to practice my etiquette. I spilled some water on the coffee table, so I was just..."

"There aren’t that many rules here at the base. In fact, you’ll be helping with clerical work later on. These are trivial matters, and you can ask..."

After this incident, Lin Ju was no longer in the mood to continue working. Instead, spurred by a desire to mentor, he ended up chatting with the intern.

The deep silence of the night made it easy to become emotional. Seeing her, Lin Ju was suddenly reminded of past life events and felt a strong urge to share, talking nonstop until she was almost drifting off to sleep.

It wasn’t until the stars filled the night sky that the voice in the office finally ceased, plunging back into the deep silence of the late night.