Chapter 559 - 547 Sonic Speed_1

"Nine top scientists entered space, with the oldest over 95 years old."

"Frank Yang became the oldest astronaut, and his wife expressed support for his decision."

"Foreign media sharp review: This is the flight mission with the most severe consequences in history."

"The chief designer of the Aerospace First Institute, Academician She Xingjie, boarded the Aero-Space Plane to enter space, stating in a live broadcast that the popularization of space for civilians is expected around 2020."

"Hawking ’stood up’ in space."

"The Royal Physical Society congratulated many physicists on entering space and hoped to strengthen cooperation."

"Former NACA director: The Artemis III mission may be executed soon."

"..."

"I am She Xingjie, Chief Designer of rocket transport for China’s National Space Administration’s First Institute. I greet all the space industry workers around the world from space!"

Robert, looking at Academician She with his face full of smiling wrinkles on the TikTok live broadcast, furrowed his eyebrows tightly together.

Behind the camera, there were a few passengers floating around; they were all renowned physicists with high prestige on Earth, now busy experiencing space and having no intention of crowding over for the live broadcast.

With the help of others, Hawking, who had great difficulty altering his position on Earth, "stood" up successfully and deliberately wore a crisp suit. Accustomed to seeing him seated in a wheelchair, he surprisingly appeared quite slender.

The number of people in the live broadcast room was only a series of nines strung together for Robert, marking the first time people saw the interior structure of the Aero-Space Plane.

It seemed not much different from an ordinary passenger plane; only there were fewer seats and more space, visually "more approachable," as if within an affordable range.

Robert thought about the recently passed SSTO plan; the scheme was just determined and had entered the stage of aircraft design. Lockheed’s Skunk Factory was rummaging through liquid hydrogen storage technology from the ’50s, while Pratt & Whitney was figuring out how to restore production of the J58 engines—an improved version, obviously, as it’s been so many years that they certainly can’t still be producing a product from half a century ago.

This great disparity made everyone at NACA feel somewhat unacceptable, not to mention the March, which was completed just a week before. It has turned into the object that aerospace enthusiasts pursue at night, and social network sites often featured pictures taken from the ground of the ring-shaped space station.

That was an entire 1600-plus tons of construction; the total mass of other spacecraft in orbit might not even reach that much.

For the past two months, NACA’s employees had been working frantically under this indescribable pressure, which had yielded very good results.

The first SL-X rocket had been assembled and tested in Florida, finishing even eight days ahead of schedule—an astonishing feat for NACA, which was accustomed to constant delays.

The last SLS rocket was the same. Perhaps to make way for the development of Saturn VII that could compete with the Starship, Boeing also kept increasing its workforce for SLS, promising to launch the third Orion spacecraft before Thanksgiving and guaranteeing reliability.

Although next year’s Mars mission is also important, all of NACA’s energy is now focused on how to carry out a successful manned lunar landing before the end of 2017, otherwise, it would be quite embarrassing during the congressional review at the start of the new year.

Besides, there was the Gravity Dragon spacecraft. Since it needed to work with the service module, the return to Earth of Gravity Dragon’s command module was not highly significant, so NACA decided to just leave it there.

The second Dragon Spaceship was also about to enter a launch-ready state, this time planning to take two crew members and begin human experiments, also in a rush to finish before the arrival of 2018.

However, this was mainly to claim the title of the first operational artificial gravity device before the March could do it; the latter would definitely need more time.

Robert wrote down every launch mission crammed into the last forty-odd days of the year in his notebook, considering how to adjust the scheduling of each plan, when Deputy Director Jim walked in with a sigh.

"What happened, Jim?"

"It’s as bad as it gets."

Jim spread his hands to him:

"You must know that Cloud Ascend just carried out another flight mission."

"Of course."

Robert pointed to his phone, still showing the TikTok live broadcast.

"At the time, the Pacific Fleet’s radar station in Luzon first detected a signal of more than ten Machs, and after more than an hour, they detected it again, both times high hypersonic aircraft traveling over ten Machs.

The second one was Cloud Ascend, but the first one had only acoustic and optical characteristics and was almost invisible to radar; the Pentagon believes that it was ’Thunderstorm,’ which reappeared in August.

This time they flew a whole circle around the Island Country and then crossed most of the Pacific Ocean, approaching Luzon and Annan before returning; the military is going crazy.

They’re pushing for SR91 again and have raised the speed requirement, at least not less than eight Machs, and the range has to be no less than 20,000 kilometers."

Robert was dismayed, since NACA was in charge of both aviation and space, whether it was SSTO or the SR91 project competiting with Xuehu, but the two had significant relevance.

The SR91 had much more urgent demands than the SSTO; such a substantial military threat would drive Congress mad, and they would not be as slightly tolerant and encouraging as with space projects.

"But we lack scramjet technology... Damn, we still have to push Pratt & Whitney and General Electric."

Jim nodded, but he suddenly seemed to remember something when he heard General Electric:

"Yes, there’s a Chinese airline that approached Boeing and General Electric, hoping to reinvigorate supersonic passenger aircraft and establish transoceanic supersonic flight routes."

Robert: "Boeing won’t agree to that. It’s not a technical issue."

Boeing had a supersonic passenger jet program in the late ’60s, called Boeing 2707, which could cruise at 2.7 Machs and received strong support from the US Congress, proclaiming, "Each of us donate one dollar to make this plan a reality."

However, a large number of people strongly protested against the sonic boom of supersonic flights, and the opposition promoted reallocating the budget from supersonic aviation to improving public welfare, leading Congress to reject the continuation of the supersonic passenger jet project with a vote of 215 against 204 in favor, resulting in the cancellation of the 2707 plane; Boeing had to lay off 60,000 employees.

Therefore, in Robert’s view, the current situation was even more favorable to the opposition than back then; Boeing definitely would not make the same mistake.

Yet Jim shook his head slightly, uttering something that surprised him:

"But Boeing seems to be taking them very seriously; that airline is said to be a wholly-owned subsidiary of XAP, they’ve spun off their aviation business.

I’ve heard some rumors that if the airline could establish Pacific and Atlantic routes, their domestic airlines would be willing to order at least 200 airplanes, and the profits from each flight could be over 300% higher than now, which is very tempting for the current commercial aviation."