Chapter 620 - 607: The Office

"This is what a spaceship should be like!"

Deng Lei, satisfied, caressed the control panel of Chapter 9, which truly resembled the future as depicted in science fiction. Sitting inside felt like stepping into a sci-fi movie, with a technological ambiance so rich it was suffocating.

The cockpit of Chapter 9 was completely different from traditional spacecraft and featured an innovative "floating" design.

Inside the cockpit, the seats were independent and could be pulled and moved around. The four main control panels relied on mechanical arms to follow the movement of the pilot and could adapt to the posture changes in coordination with the seats.

For instance, when Chapter 9 was shifting from vertical to horizontal orientation, their collaboration ensured that the pilot’s view remained constant, significantly easing the operation and the pilot’s view.

This setup was also adapted from the XN90, but the latter was designed more aggressively, with much higher integration and freedom. It even supported the complete abandonment of control panels in favor of floating displays, and the base had just produced a chip with enough computing power.

The other three astronauts were also very excited, especially after experiencing Dawn One. The difference in the feeling of being on board was even more apparent.

"This spaceship is great in every aspect, but it’s a little too noisy—it’s even louder than a nuclear engine."

The speaker was Liu Ming, who had participated in the Skylight No.1 mission around the Moon and remembered how slight the humming sound from the three nuclear engines was, easily overlooked. In contrast, the noise from Chapter 9’s two engines working at full capacity to decelerate was just a notch quieter than a rocket launch.

"That’s for sure. Chapter 9 doesn’t have such luxurious soundproofing. Right now, we’re working for the company. It’s more important to load up on more minerals."

"Hiss... United Mining isn’t a state-owned enterprise, is it? Wow, real heartless capitalists."

"..."

The atmosphere of the pre-mission for Skylight No.3 was as relaxed as taking a bus. Mainly because Deng and Li Wei had been to the Moon before, and Liu Ming had experience flying around it. Only the newcomer, Fu Xiangjie, couldn’t join in the idle chatter and kept looking around, afraid of missing any scenery.

However, chat time was limited to the first deceleration phase. When Chapter 9 switched orientation and began decelerating using the four engines on its underside, Deng focused his attention on the spacecraft.

At this point, he could only watch the lunar surface through external cameras, his hand on the joystick, ready to take over control at any moment.

The gray-white lunar surface seemed like a static image zooming in at a constant speed, until the engines’ airflow stirred up a large amount of dust, completely obscuring the camera. About seven or eight seconds later, Deng felt the acceleration from below suddenly disappear, the noisy hiss inside the cabin, which was similar to a working water pump, came to an abrupt halt, and through the front portholes, distant hills could be seen, immobile.

"We’re back again."

After whispering this to himself, Deng opened the satellite cloud map.

Last month, the Aerospace Development Committee launched dozens of small satellites averaging 50 kilograms each on a medium-sized commercial rocket. They were manufactured by private space companies and, together with several "Laurel" satellites, formed a barely adequate GPS navigation system for the Moon.

Thanks to the absence of an atmosphere on the Moon, those mini-satellites could orbit at heights as low as tens of kilometers, and with drastically reduced functionality, the whole system’s cost totaled just tens of millions of yuan. Even if they were destroyed by a nuclear explosion, there wouldn’t be much regret.

But this rudimentary GPS could provide accurate guidance and broad communication coverage for the early stages of spacecraft and astronaut activities—Deng, at least, found it very convenient.

According to the GPS, the automatic landing error of Chapter 9 this time was only ±2.5 meters, consistent with the positioning error range.

"Xiang Jie, how do you feel?"

"I’m fine, I feel like I could stand up and walk right now."

"Rest for 15 minutes first. Then we’ll have something to eat to prepare, and... we’ll exit the cabin at 10:30, any objections?"

Deng Lei quickly arranged the schedule for exiting the cabin, then began to report the situation to the command center. After finishing, he slowly stood up and carefully started to adapt to walking in a state with gravity.

The other three also began to make similar movements. After they had completely familiarized themselves with the environment, they ate a simple meal and rested for a while, then helped each other into their spacesuits and entered the cargo bay of the spacecraft.

Since they still had to move some items down, they decided not to exit from the front but to go out through the cargo bay door on the side.

The cargo they brought this time mainly consisted of heavily consumable items like foldable lunar rovers. The bulk of it had been brought over during the launch of Chapter 9 and stacked at the placement site, ready for them to organize.

Amongst the items was a three-segment connected living cabin "Cassia," capable of short-term accommodations for four to seven people. Their first task was to secure the Cassia Living Cabin, to be used as shelter for astronauts in case of emergencies with Chapter 9.

The Cassia Living Cabin in essence was modified from the command module of the "Full Moon" lander. The space agency crudely combined three such cabin segments, turning the outermost one into an airlock cabin, with the other two combined to provide 40 square meters of living space—which wasn’t small at all.

The cargo bay was depressurized, so Deng Lei directly deployed two lunar rovers inside. Four astronauts sat on them, watching the cargo bay door slowly open downward, revealing the desolate lunar surface.

What would this time be like?

A brief recollection of the instructions from his boss flashed through Deng Lei’s mind, and then he immediately entered working mode.

"Let’s go!"

He drove the Red Hare No.2 lunar rover straight out of the cargo bay and onto the lunar surface, taking the lead, with Red Hare No.3 following closely behind.

The No.14 robot, also dressed in a spacesuit, was already waiting there with the battered "De Lu" lunar rover, leading the human visitors to the supply placement site.

Deng Lei drove along the tracks compacted by the engineering vehicles from the last landing, which to him were no different from a dirt road.

Apart from the fourteen standardized engineering vehicles with different functions, the other supplies totaled more than thirty tons, scattered over a space more than a kilometer away from the landing site.

The engineering vehicle responsible for fuel production had already penetrated into the Kuom Impact Crater, leaving only one nuclear power vehicle to ensure a sufficient power supply.

The Cassia Living Cabin was placed right in the middle of the open space, and the ground around it was covered with various marks, indicating that the engineering vehicles and robots had already completed most of the work.

The human astronauts were mainly there to check the interior and bestow the Cassia Living Cabin with different meanings.

Deng Lei parked the lunar rover and picked up a package the size of a computer bag, then waved to Fu Xiangjie to take the toolkit from his own rover. He led the others to the front of the Cassia Living Cabin.

The transition cabin’s door was right in front, with the upper half featuring four catches.

Li Wei had already opened the package and took out a brass-colored metal plate, which he and Deng hung on it together.

Then Liu Ming took a hammer from the toolkit and gently tapped the corners several times, ensuring the metal plate was fully secured,

After that, he grabbed the protective cover attached to the surface of the metal plate and tore it off, revealing several lines of red characters engraved on the metal plate:

"Aerospace Development Committee Station at Yushu No.1 Base"

"Organization Office"