Chapter 528 - 517 A Modest Fortune is Sufficient for Comfort_1

"03, check the fuel gauge again."

"Yes!"

Two linked trailers had slowly towed the Tengyun Aeronautic Aircraft to the start of the runway, where the four astronauts inside the cabin were rapidly carrying out pre-flight checks.

The "Tengyun" project, which started out merely as a code name for the aero-space plane, saw the Aerospace Administration brewing up other new-generation space vehicles two years ago. According to the original world line, they were set to conclude into the "Five Clouds and One Vehicle" next year.

"Flying Cloud," "Fast Cloud," "Moving Cloud," "Rainbow Cloud," "Tengyun," and "Flying Vehicle," with the first four encompassing long-endurance UAVs, airships, and satellites within a near-Earth orbit information network.

The last two were the new-generation transport tools: "Tengyun" is the aero-space plane; "Flying Vehicle" is a hypersonic train traveling at 4,000 kilometers per hour, which was to use electromagnetic acceleration and vacuum tube technology as a precursor to the mass driver project.

Now, the "Tengyun" had been undertaken by the Third Academy and Xinyuan Company and turned into reality; the "Flying Vehicle" was still waiting for the prospects of electromagnetic technology to be fully confirmed, but that was nearly settled this year.

The Tengyun project demonstrator aircraft had completed manufacturing and was just at the naming phase. After discussion, the first six were named: 001 "Tengyun," 002 "Ruiyun," 003 "Liuyun," 004 "Yiyun," 005 "Piaoyun," 006 "Poyun";

"Tengyun" and "Ruiyun" were delivered respectively to the Aerospace Administration and Xinyuan Company, while aircraft numbers 3 to 6 were to be delivered to the military.

The next one to be manufactured was 003 "Liuyun," under a system of alternating between civil and military manufacturing and delivery, with the first three aircraft ensuring the needs of the Aerospace Development Committee.

Some parts for "Liuyun" had already started production, while the last of the first batch, "Ruiyun," was to undertake optimization on its own base and would use more key components produced in-house, for faster speed and more reliable quality.

However, although the Tengyun was to be delivered to the Aerospace Administration, it actually undertook many of the test and verification tasks for the first plane, with all three parties closely involved.

For example, the configuration of the four pilots of the 001 aircraft illustrated this point: the command leader cum captain was an active-duty pilot trained by the military, the deputy captain was an astronaut from the base, and the other two flight engineers came from the Aerospace Administration and the military, respectively.

The two that came from the military, the captain, and the flight engineer, were topics of debate within the military about pilot selection after the Tengyun project was officially established as an aero-space plane last year.

This was similar to how America and Russia had each set up their Space Force—it wasn’t just a simple name change but represented the future’s main military branch and direction of development.

Once the four Space Force aero-space planes were delivered, it would inevitably necessitate a discussion about new military branches domestically. The current opinions were mainly divided into three factions: establishing a standalone Space Force, reorganizing the Air Force into a Space Force, and the minority view of reorganizing the Navy into a Space Force.

Without delving into the first two, most supporters of the last option were fans of "Three Body," and they all agreed with the viewpoint that "space warfare is more like naval warfare." Moreover, although current space warfare hasn’t seen battleships but only aero-space planes, the Navy does have its aviation troops!

Strictly speaking, the Navy has aviation troops, Marines, and warships; it’s complete with sea, land, and air forces, very much fitting the profile of a Space Force.

This viewpoint was immediately met with fierce refutation from the Air Force. With the three opinions coexisting and none prevailing, the higher-ups decided to muddy the waters:

Last year, by selecting 12 elite pilots each from the Naval Aviation and the Air Force and sending them to learn about and understand aero-space plane piloting with the Aerospace Administration and Xinyuan Company.

The command leader Chang Lihai had been a Colonel in a certain naval air brigade. Although he was slightly older, his physical and psychological qualities were extremely strong, and he managed to outperform the first in the Air Force during training. He became the most outstanding among these 24 trainees and snagged the position of command leader.

Now he was directing his flight engineer, Wang Yan, to check the fuel gauge—it would be more accurate to say the fuel gauge, as well as the fuel lines and the engine, to see if they were functioning normally.

The design challenges of an aero-space plane weren’t simply a matter of combining a spacecraft with a conventional airplane, especially when it came to fuel:

Unlike rockets and spacecraft that move straightforwardly up and down, aero-space planes have a gradual ascent and attitude transition during takeoff, which can cause the stored fuel to slosh around in the tank.

Ordinary aviation fuel isn’t too much of a problem, but a cryogenic fuel mixture like liquid oxygen-methane is a different story. Sudden shifts in the position of the cryogenic liquid fuel within the tank can cause localized pressure to instantaneously exceed the threshold, resulting in the tanks being unable to withstand the pressure and exploding.

That’s why rockets almost always explode when they launch at a steep angle. The Starship has suffered from this as well, but eventually, this issue was addressed with the revolutionary zero-boil-off tank technology developed at the base.

Another issue was the design of its ten engines. While this might be acceptable for rockets, its reliability is certainly questionable on an airplane, and besides, to reduce weight and enhance performance, these ten engines were connected through shared piping, which made other stakeholders beside the base a bit concerned about potential malfunctions.

An aero-space plane lacks an ejection escape system, and parachuting out is almost an impossibility, so it’s vital to perform thorough checks before takeoff.

Meanwhile, on the ground, the crowd waiting for the maiden flight was engaged in heated discussions.

The Big Shot, who had hurriedly flown over after hearing the news, looked at the solitary aero-space plane left standing by itself after the towing vehicle had been removed, and expressed his doubts to Zeng Hongwei:

"Where’s the ground support vehicle? Why is there only the bare plane?"

From his understanding, the preparations for the launch of such an aero-space plane should be extremely complex. There were many operations he could think of, yet there was only one plane on site running checks by itself.

Zeng Hongwei, "We have the zero-boil-off storage technology from Cloud Ascend to thank for this. It has directly solved our problems with cryogenic icing and fuel pressure release. As long as the airframe is sound and filled with fuel, we don’t need any ground support vehicles!

With three APU (Auxiliary Power Units) on the ground, just running one can guarantee the power supply for the airframe, which also saves a significant amount of operational costs. Including the cost of ground support was part of our initial agreeement of 1 million flight costs, and we haven’t exceed that amount if we don’t count the cost of the aircraft itself."

The Big Shot nodded in approval; this would save the space agency a lot of money.

"Cloud Ascend has indeed done an excellent job in this aspect. However, I still want to be nitpicky and say that the freight version’s 2.8-tonne cargo capacity is a bit on the low side. If it could be increased to 6 to 10 tons, it could also handle future manned mission-related cargo tasks, saving at least 70% of the costs," he said.

"There is a way."

Xie Liaofu appeared beside them at some point, and he didn’t seem particularly thrilled about the aero-space plane’s maiden flight, treating it as if it were a trivial event.

"If we could replace all those ten engines with nuclear ones, I could guarantee a 40% reduction in fuel on the current payload, freeing up the weight to easily achieve 15 tons of cargo capacity.

Is the Aerospace Development Committee interested in investing? If you agree, I’ll modify the ’Ruiyun’ like that," he proposed.

The Big Shot tactfully took a step back and made his refusal clear:

"There’s no need for such high-end upgrades just to go to space. We’re already very satisfied with Tengyun!"