Chapter 634 - 619: Constellation

Washington.

"We need to initiate an intensive exploration program in deep space beyond Mars, mainly including Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, or Neptune, which might involve potential manned landing missions."

Robert’s first sentence made Musk open his mouth in surprise, looking uncertainly towards the others.

Representatives from military-industrial consortia such as Boeing, Rom, and Grumman, who were all executives of at least vice-president level, had equally expressive reactions.

They had come here originally because NACA had released news of expanding the Mars program for tenders, but as soon as people had gathered, they heard this explosive piece of news.

They all looked towards Robert at the front, finding no hint of jest in his manner.

In terms of deep space exploration, NACA’s position is still far ahead, even after cutting most of its exploration plans after the millennium.

The last nearly successful plan was the Jupiter exploration program proposed in 2005, which was launched parallel to the "Constellation" program for returning to the Moon and landing on Mars, but was also canceled in 2006.

From the Traveler program to the Galileo project, and then to Cassini, NACA has gathered varying degrees of exploration data on all the giant planets beyond the asteroid belt, making subsequent plans not too difficult to conduct.

But the idea of manned landings is worthy of deeper thought, for landing on these extremely remote celestial bodies is much more difficult than landing on Mars, with long cycles and low returns, and it’s not clear why it’s necessary at all.

However, even if they do not understand, no one raises the question why, because no matter whether it ultimately succeeds or not, they need to undertake research with the huge budget from the Federal Government.

The complete silence of the crowd was entirely within Robert’s expectations, and he quickly added, as if giving them no chance to refuse:

"The Chinese People are going to land on the Moon, so we compete with them in the lunar race; the Chinese People are preparing to land on Mars, so we have the God of War Ares.

This severely violates the pioneering and adventurous spirit of NACA, we should compete by outperforming others, not just by saying: we can do it too.

We need to embark on great endeavors that predecessors have not yet achieved, like the Apollo program did to the Eastern program, a super plan that truly signifies conquering the universe.

The President has already drafted a bill, preparing to carry out manned exploration missions to Jupiter II and Titan, which are among the other planets in the Solar System where life is most likely to exist, and to launch probes to the furthest planet Neptune, to study the possibility of a moon captured from the Kuiper Belt, Triton."

The three plans are named Europa, Titan, and Trident respectively, collectively called the ’Constellation’ plan. The entire Constellation plan will use nuclear propulsion as its main power, and within ten years, complete the three main sub-projects, accomplish the mission of searching for life in the Solar System and equip humanity with complete Solar System navigation capabilities!"

"..."

Musk, looking left and right and seeing that the others were still silent, thought for a moment, raised his hand, and expressed his doubts:

"If you’ll pardon my frankness, if the President plans to announce this plan on television like Kennedy did, then the budget for the Ten Years Plan will have to at least double."

The "Ten Years Space System Development Plan" has been out for 5 months since its release at the end of July. According to the plan for the fiscal year 2018 (according to Federal rules, from October 2017 to October 2018), the NACA budget is 49.8 billion US Dollars, increasing by 2.5% each year on top of the previous year’s.

So far, NACA has just finished spending the budget for the fiscal year 2017, and although there are a lot of projects, only less than half of them are taken for the fiscal year 2018, and after excluding the frustratingly expensive old SLS rocket, which costs over 5 billion US Dollars per launch, there’s indeed a feeling of having so much money that they don’t know how to spend it.

Of course, this was mainly because numerous programs had just started, and the most expensive middle and late phases hadn’t arrived yet, meaning that the remaining budget might even be tight in the next fiscal year or the year after.

The engineering challenges of the manned landing missions to Saturn and Jupiter were beyond imagination; all current technologies had to be re-innovated before they could proceed, otherwise, astronauts wouldn’t even reach those destinations within ten years.

Nuclear propulsion was just a basic requirement of the entire plan, which also meant a terrifying cost escalation.

A nuclear reactor powerful enough to propel a large spacecraft wouldn’t be cheaper than one used on an aircraft carrier; when combined, the total cost might even slightly exceed that of a nuclear aircraft carrier.

Previously, America’s aerospace community was generally optimistic, believing the "Ten Year Plan’s" total budget of 550 billion US dollars was very sufficient, but it might only be enough to start if the Constellation Program were included.

Even Musk thought that one trillion dollars in ten years would be somewhat problematic, and the difficulty estimated was enough to make one despair.

However, the reality proved that NACA’s determination was unimaginably firm. In response to his questioning, Robert simply answered with one sentence:

"The ’Ten Year Plan’ is about to remove budget restrictions. It will surpass the Apollo Program and become the main focus of the Federal Government over the next ten years. If necessary, we might even cut military spending to achieve this goal."

This was almost an outright declaration to everyone that the Federal Government would fully support NACA, and saying that they would even defer military spending indicated that Robert wasn’t crazy; the government had indeed made a great determination.

Even if the truth of his words were uncertain, they were worth Musk’s profound appreciation. He now understood why NACA had increased its order for Starship Boosters to fifteen units—it wasn’t for Mars landings as imagined, but for the Centaurus Program.

Mimicking the Gemini Program, the latter aimed to execute a moon landing mission every two months; the internal news was that there were already six missions determined, from Centaurus I to Centaurus VI, needing to send at least 18 astronauts to step on the Moon.

Originally, he thought this indicated shifting focus to the Moon, but now it seemed to represent an even more insane ambition of the space agency.

...

Meanwhile, within the Presidential Palace, John and his staff were also paying attention to Robert’s meeting with various space enterprises.

"In ten years, by conducting manned exploration of Jupiter and even more distant celestial bodies, we will gain experience in long-term survival and construction in deep space.

Then, using the technology accumulated through construction on the Moon, by 2028, NACA will essentially be capable of building a refuge in the Kuiper Belt."

While Claire was speaking, she gestured across the Solar System Star Map hanging on the wall of John’s office, where a world map had long been taken down.

"By that time, relying on the resources of the Moon and Mars to jointly supply the construction of transfer stations on Jupiter and Saturn, and using them as a base to build spaceports, and further using Europa as an outpost, we will move to building a refuge in the Kuiper Belt within the next 10 to 15 years, planning not to exceed 30 years in total.

This would be a route extending from Earth all the way to Neptune, through continuous relay of resources from six planets, creating a survival escape route for the seeds of civilization."

John stared blankly at the white line Claire drew, traversing almost half the star map, and he could already imagine how humanity had to strive with all its might to trudge along this interstellar path.

He seemed to see ants continuously leaving the anthill, marching to their deaths on the road to the endpoint, and as the ant closest to the queen, he couldn’t even see the day of ultimate success.

A single signal would require three generations of human youth to struggle for survival; how powerful would its senders have to be?