Chapter 575 - 563 Vacation

The 404 injection’s effects are actually similar to those of anti-aging injections produced by a few cutting-edge biological labs nowadays, where injections worth hundreds of thousands or even millions can delay physical aging and improve body fitness.

However, these anti-aging injections have short-lived effects and require many supplementary measures; the 404 injection, once administered, can at least maintain its effect for 10 years without side effects, which is almost equivalent to extending life by another ten years.

But this alone wasn’t worth the more than 4 billion spent by the base; what’s most important is that through the research on the 404 injection, the biological lab figured out some of the action mechanisms of its predecessor, the 304 injection, which is far more valuable than the injection itself.

How the human body precisely controls the development of each organ has always been the ultimate unresolved problem in the medical field; the base became the world leader in this area overnight with the knowledge gained from the 404 project.

This greatly boosted Xie Miao’s confidence in developing subsequent sub-projects, as the base is counting on medicine as a cash cow.

"Old Luo, why haven’t the new batch of monkeys arrived yet? We’re down to two."

"They might be arriving soon, they still have to deal with the bodies... you should hurry up with the dissections."

Luo Han couldn’t help but mourn for these animal test subjects; "Sun," who had just replaced six teeth a few days ago, died from a severe oral infection leading to cranial infection, and yet Xie Miao insisted that the tooth replacement drug was nearing success and applied for more test subjects.

Unless non-human powers were used, the process of biological research is a history of the destruction of small animals...

...

"From now on, humanity’s space technology has reached its first conclusion."

Miklin was enjoying the sunshine in Qiongzhou, holding a bottle of alcohol and assessing the CZ-18 rocket, which had completed its arrow ship assembly.

As a relatively close partner and an important member of the Huayin Organization, RKA was able to observe closely from the foremost position on the coast, which pleased both Miklin and Borisov.

The current CZ-18 Yaoyi rocket is about to enter the pre-launch state; the assembly box enveloping it has already been connected to the cranes on the four surrounding work vessels with steel cables, lying in an unloaded state on the semi-submersible that supports it.

The semi-submersible is now taking on water to sink, and once it has sunk enough for the assembly box to float, divers will need to secure the steel cables between the two, a slow and heavy process that will take up the whole day today.

But after that, the work becomes much simpler. The fuel can be loaded tomorrow and the assembly box fixed onto the underwater cement base, followed by a full day of checks. The launch could take place as early as December 10th.

But upon learning this, the Russian technicians shook their heads in disbelief, as this meant that thousands of tons of liquid hydrogen would remain inside the rocket for a day; in their view, the most likely outcome would be the tank bursting due to the extreme pressure.

Although there had been news that Xinyuan Company had created a zero-evaporation liquid hydrogen tank, the spread of this message was limited and those who knew about it scoffed at the idea.

Miklin had been pondering since his arrival: if he were the chief designer of this rocket, he would need to solve various problems. But from the basic rocket body to the control system, he could not think of any reasonable methods to achieve what the CZ-18 exhibited.

Take this most basic colossal 18-meter diameter rocket body, for example; whether it’s cast in one piece or welded in sections, both are extremely difficult—if Russia were to manufacture such a thing, it would take an immense national effort to just barely manage it.

The RKA Director Borisov beside him couldn’t stop feeling envious. In his view, such a spectacle of mad creation was a huge waste of resources; with the same effort, it would have been possible to build ten "Hurricane" rockets, with a cost-effectiveness that was frightfully low.

But he had to admit that without such a super rocket, it would not have been possible to send Chapter 9 into space.

"They should have used liquid oxygen and kerosene, that way they could have saved so much on the size, 12 meters in diameter would have been enough."

This was the only thing he could pick out. Although liquid hydrogen had an extremely high specific impulse, its density was very low; one cubic meter of liquid hydrogen weighed only 70 kilograms, while the same volume of kerosene weighed a full 800 kilograms, ten times that of liquid hydrogen.

If they’d used kerosene as fuel, the overall development cost could have been cut by at least half.

"But then it wouldn’t be possible to achieve the 800-ton low Earth orbit capacity and 360-ton Moon orbit capacity."

Even though Miklin instinctively had an impulse to lower costs, it was the hydrogen-oxygen power that enabled the CZ-18 to achieve an astonishing payload ratio of 5.3%. With a kerosene engine, at most, it would have been 3.5%, which would mean nearly a two-hundred-ton difference in low Earth orbit payload capacity.

Pursuing top-level performance improvements at a great additional cost did not adhere to the principle of cost-effectiveness balance control, yet it was the very thing that left no regrets in the hearts of the technicians.

The more Miklin looked at this unprecedented super rocket, the more he felt RKA’s profound technical backwardness, and indeed, the aerospace technology of the whole world seemed to lag far behind it. It was almost like in 1969 when the Apollo program landed on the Moon, and NACA had a terrifyingly crushing lead over the rest of the world.

While he was in a melancholic mood, the sound of propellers came from afar. A de Havilland Beaver seaplane was flying low, circling around the rigging site.

This was a small plane that could only accommodate four people, but with excellent flying performance. Lin Ju was in the back row, carefully observing the work area below. It was only after flying for more than half an hour that he landed next to the dock and jumped out of the cabin onto the wooden pier.

Xie Liaofu, who also arrived at the launch site, was dressed in a floral shirt, shorts, and slippers, walking towards Lin Ju like an ordinary tourist. He took off his sunglasses and greeted,

"The tropical islands are the most addicting. I really want to move the company here; that way, we could eat the freshest fruits and enjoy the sunbaths all year round."

Lin Ju nodded vehemently. The climate in the Capital had been both dusty from sandstorms and cold from the southbound cold air recently, making the air turbid and dry, which was very uncomfortable for him as someone from the south. The clear skies and sunshine in Qiongzhou made him feel like he was back in the summer.

"Later, let’s go find a boat to fish, and grill them for dinner."

"You go ahead, boss. I’m still the Deputy Commander of the launch. I can only relax like this for a short while.

I have to keep an eye on these thousands of people; a moment of inattention could ruin this big fellow."

Only then did Lin Ju notice the dark circles under Xie Liaofu’s eyes, clearly the result of significant effort.

From the moment the rocket left factory, it required the cooperative work of multiple different units. Coordinating so many people was as difficult as directing a large-scale battle. During the launch phase, Xie Liaofu had to personally run around everywhere, whereas the top boss had nothing to do.

For Lin, to get involved was to fumble in the dark; all he could hope for was that after the Moon landing mission was complete, the rewards from the System would include an A+ class scientist with outstanding project control capabilities. Ye Changsi and Xie Liaofu both had to spend a lot of time on management, and an additional person would greatly ease the burden.