Chapter 551 - 540 We are God_1

United Mining Headquarters.

China naturally welcomed the idea of establishing good relations with these leading scientists with open arms, but also took into account that an excessive number might lead to unnecessary trouble, so Ye Changsi’s proposal to sign a consulting contract with New Yuan smoothly passed.

Although they were receiving a stipend from the Xinyuan Company, the scientists were officially part of the United Space Mining Development Corporation and Scientific Advisory Committee (UCSC).

In just one day, over a hundred scientists had decided to sign up, all converging at the Union Mining Headquarters for the mass contract signing.

Wu Yunfeng, afraid he couldn’t contain his emotions, kept his head down, not daring to meet everyone’s eyes, while Ye Changsi, as usual, calmly faced each person, confirming the agreement with everyone.

The first one, of course, was the most eager, Stephen Hawking. His personal physician, having heard his wish to go to space, firmly refused, but Ye Changsi assured him that sneaking from Beijing on a supersonic jet to the base’s aero-space plane wouldn’t take more than two hours, so they could sneak away.

Since he was unable to sign due to his condition, the contract used a combination of proxy signing and a fingerprint, with Penrose writing his name for him, then grabbing Hawking’s thumb, pressing it onto ink, and gently stamping it next to the name.

The moment he pressed down, he felt Hawking’s body twitch, but immediately thought it was an illusion and let go of his hand, asking:

"Stephen, let’s prepare for the space journey... Stephen?"

The light from the window swept over Hawking’s glasses, revealing a pair of different eyes.

Without a sound, he conveyed some information to Penrose with his eyes, but the latter just thought Hawking was tired and didn’t take it seriously, picking up the pen and swiftly signing his own contract.

The moment he capped his pen, his hand also trembled imperceptibly.

Looking back at Hawking, both saw in each other’s calm eyes the most insane conclusion.

But Penrose simply stood up and pushed the wheelchair to the rest area to sit down, silently watching the people signing contracts in turn with Hawking.

"The universe... is far more miraculous than we imagined."

Hawking typed out this line on the screen, and Penrose, with crossed arms, nodded in agreement. The recent occurrence had shaken his half-century of scientific beliefs, more astonishing than the endless cycle of life theory in the universe.

The system’s constraints were simple: their thoughts were still completely free.

Penrose was now instinctively trying to find theories to explain everything he had encountered but couldn’t find a clue.

More and more people were approaching the rest area, and although their expressions showed no abnormality, a glance from "one of their own" was enough to discern their condition.

When Frank Yang came over and sat down next to Penrose, he whispered in English at an extremely fast pace:

"I now start to believe in God."

Penrose: "But I think, God is ourselves."

After speaking, the two exchanged a tacit glance, their eyes once again deepening.

Only after all 155 people had completed signing the contracts did Ye Changsi, with a smile, approach everyone:

"Ladies and gentlemen, I think we could immediately convene an all-members meeting of the Advisory Committee, in a quiet place."

"Since everyone needs to enter space, why not go to the Xinyuan Company’s base for some basic astronaut training first?"

All members agreed.

...

"Oh my God!"

Robert shook his head as he watched the news video on the web page, hardly believing his own eyes.

The video, posted by a Chinese self-media on YouTube, began with a not-so-wide valley, followed by the appearance of two of their J-20 fighter jets in the sky. As the first J-20 approached, it started to dive and then a large plume of smoke burst from under its wings as it emptied two rocket nests and quickly pulled up.

The second jet did the same, launching a volley of rockets that hit an area at the mouth of the pass and created a huge explosion, immediately causing the surrounding earth to be swept into the river, rapidly widening the channel.

Then the camera shifted to a few hours later when a modified semi-submersible for inland rivers passed by, proudly carrying on its deck the painted "CZ-18B/X-4B" first and second stages of a rocket. Beneath their immense bodies, the semi-submersible looked as though it could sink at any moment.

In fact, the total weight of the stages was just over 340 tons, with the core stage dry weight close to 30 tons—astonishingly light. The temporarily modified semi-submersible could easily cope, basically navigable in the channel.

Following scenes showed the semi-submersible passing through narrows one after another, assisted by several support vessels, sometimes with onlookers filling the banks to watch the excitement.

But unlike the ordinary citizens exclaiming in amazement at the New Yuan No. 4 rocket stages and then posting photos online, Robert only felt his scalp tingle and cold sweat pouring down.

The behemoth with a lift-off mass of 15,000 tons had actually been built!

Although there had been many rumors before, he simply could not believe that such a monster could really exist until he saw it with his own eyes.

Mere estimation with the naked eye convinced him the lift-off mass was definitely over 10,000 tons, and adding the four solid boosters would easily surpass 15,000 tons.

What was even more surprising was that the transportation of New Yuan No. 4 rocket didn’t even cover it with a tarpaulin (as a large enough one was not available at short notice), suggesting that its stages were robust and could easily withstand immersion, likely designed with a specialized water recovery feature.

"Damn... Jim, Jim!"

Deputy Director Jim hurried over, and then he too realized that the New Yuan No. 4 rocket had already been shipped out, meaning that the launch date couldn’t be far away!

The two men looked at each other, and it was Robert who finally gritted his teeth and said,

"How ready is the first SL-X? We must launch it within November."

Today is October 31st, with the final two months of the year left.

Jim: "Blue Origin is not a problem; in the past two months, we’ve produced three test models and continually modified the design. The black boxes from Artemis II provided us with plenty of data for improvement, the new lander is definitely sound, and we can use the very last one produced! As for the rocket, we just completed the combined hydrostatic strength test of the B11 and ICPS models three days ago. It’s fully passed, and we can just move over the ICPS upper stage from that Boeing SLS launch, one month is enough for an unmanned mission."

"Then let’s immediately prepare the launch procedures. If the Chinese keep launching bigger rockets and we don’t have a single successful launch in six months, I’m afraid it will be you replacing me here next year."

Robert thought of Claire being impeached in Congress and felt a headache coming on; he certainly didn’t want to go through that himself.

"Also, think of something, let’s try for the moon again this year."