Chapter 636 - 620: The Fourth Cycle_2

By the time the news reached home, it was already noon on December 31st.

At that moment, Lin Ju was at the Capital’s ground control center, where the first group of three expert members was checking supplies on the U-Tu space station in preparation for landing on the Moon.

He was trying to convince Academician She of the significance of deep-space exploration, but then he saw a Twitter notification. Numerous Twitter users were mentioning him, hoping he could comment on Starship’s fourth launch.

Both of their attentions shifted to the Starship, quickly reading the reports following the SS-4 launch.

"The first stage separated successfully, but the second stage exploded during the second ignition... huh, at least this time it flew past the Kármán line, so it made it into space.

Their old problem still hasn’t been resolved. The fuel slosh causing local pressure changes remains too troubling."

Academician She easily pinpointed the reason for the failure—malfunctions of the upper stages of the previous two Starship launches were caused by the rapid increase in pressure and center of mass due to the sloshing of the low-temperature fuel during attitude changes, a problem that seems almost insoluble.

The rocket’s first stage can still rely on gravity and its own acceleration to firmly press the fuel downward, but it’s far more troublesome for the upper stages to achieve this.

New Yuan would also face the same difficulty, for instance, the Jiuzhang Spaceship, but they solved it with zero-boil-off tanks.

The internal pressure of a zero-boil-off fuel tank can be very high. Its working pressure is much higher than the normal pressure of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, allowing it to store more fuel in a smaller space at over-limit capacity, and it can also fully withstand the sudden change in pressure caused by fuel consumption.

Without this technology, Starship would have a much harder time dealing with this problem and would have to pay the price in performance.

"Starship is successful enough as it is, just taking it to assemble the SL-X is good news for NACA. One SLS could be exchanged for at least seven or eight SL-X. This... is impressive.

Once Musk achieves a launch a month, they’ll basically be on par with us in conventional rocket technology."

Lin Ju’s attitude was quite forgiving—he knew how backward NACA had been in the previous timeline. In this timeline, NACA and the Federation government of America had been acting as though they were injected with adrenaline, earning his admiration.

"That’s true, they earn US Dollars, and that’s not the same as us..."

The Federal Reserve’s harvester brand is still effective; despite the continuous devaluation of the US Dollar, it keeps plundering wealth from around the world.

For NACA, the purchase of a 250 million US Dollar booster is so cheap it seems like the price of cabbages. Converted to the exchange rate, that’s nearly 1.7 billion RMB. The value is completely different between the space agencies on the two sides of the Pacific Ocean.

"By the way, take back that 504 injection quickly. It’s best if no one knows about it."

Academician She changed the topic to the two kinds of injections from the day before, his expression becoming extremely serious.

This was the umpteenth time Lin Ju had been criticized. The day he presented the two injections, he did not achieve the expected outcome and instead encountered strong resistance from both Academician She and He Tang.

It wasn’t that they didn’t trust the effectiveness of the injections; they trusted it too much.

They were very aware that the intended audience for this thing could never be the general populace; 99.99% of people would not enjoy the benefits this technology could provide.

Although current billionaires could still spend a fortune to extend their lives, injecting those expensive medicines worth millions per dose or constantly replacing organs, all of those methods come with risks and are quite cumbersome, with many limitations.

The 504 injection, even if the effectiveness was drastically reduced to a one in a hundred chance of working, still inherited the good adaptability of the 404 injection. It has a very strong universal effect and almost no side effects, making it convenient and safe.

It could allow those who should have retired from the mainstream world order to live healthily for another ten years, investing more energy in developing better medicines. And Academician She had reason to believe that after the 504 injection, even stronger 604 and 704 injections would be introduced.

Although he was also one of the main beneficiaries of this technology and belonged to that tiny group who could meet the usage threshold, he remained firmly opposed to putting it into practical use, as did the younger He Tang.

He also did not want to see chairmen in their 90s still controlling power as is the case in the Island Country, and thus strongly discouraged the 504 injection from entering the market.

Lin Ju had anticipated some of these issues beforehand but had not expected them to be so serious, so he had to temporarily postpone the market launch process for his most confident product, the 504 injection.

At the same time, he was privately relieved that the much stronger 404 injection was still limited to "our own people," otherwise the trouble it would have caused would be even greater.

So he did not grow tired of Academician She’s continuous reminders and nodded earnestly in agreement.

This reaction gave Academician She some relief, and after some thought, he mentioned the deep-space exploration plan:

"I’ve asked around for you at the International Astronomical Union, and they can contribute up to 300 million US Dollars at most in the near future, with the mid-term research fee of 400 million US Dollars due at the beginning of 2019 and the final payment of 300 million US Dollars plus launch costs to be paid before September 2020.

They are fundraising worldwide, and this is pretty much the limit they can offer. There shouldn’t be any problem with the payments arriving on time.

But what are you in such a hurry for, trying to rush off to Jupiter and Saturn expeditions, and insisting on launching probes in May next year? It would be better to wait until 2019, when the Aerospace Development Committee will likely have made arrangements."

Lin Ju could only wryly smile inwardly. Just by waiting, a year and a half would pass, and one-fifth of the mission’s time would be gone—eight years is not a long time in the cosmos.

All he could think of now was to temporarily suspend other plans’ investments, as the base had already started working overtime to build the Saturn probe.

However, on the surface, he still acted as if he took the advice seriously and vaguely agreed a few times.

...

Moon, Aitken Basin.

The Jiuzhang Spaceship once again stood silently on the Skylight No. 2 landing field, with its side hatch open and the gangway extending all the way to the ground.

Standing on the last step, Yang Xinjun imitated Armstrong over the radio:

"I come on behalf of United Mining. This is a small step for me, but a giant leap for the mine owners."

But at that moment, there were no hundreds of millions of viewers to applaud him; instead, Deng Lei, who had descended earlier, gently pulled him, causing the latter to almost jump onto the lunar surface simultaneously, leaving a messy trace.

"Come down, Foreman Yang. Once your concrete is prepared, there won’t be so much dust on our spacesuits."

"Hey, hey, hey... let me say a little more."

"Yang, you’ll need to let me out too."

UK’s nuclear expert Jamie, the penultimate to leave the spacecraft, grumbled discontentedly and then also stood in the place Yang Xinjun had just been. He took a deep breath and solemnly stated:

"I come in peace to the Moon on behalf of Her Majesty the Queen of Northern Ireland and the Great Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Bahamas... Grenadines, Solomon Islands, for the common scientific endeavors of mankind... whew, I came for the shared science of humanity."

Jamie said the names of 16 countries in one breath, which almost made him gasp for air. Before setting off, he had spent a considerable amount of effort to find the optimal sequence to save energy, but he still couldn’t help pausing for a moment.

The other four couldn’t help the twitching of their faces, while they also wondered why he didn’t just say ’Commonwealth’ directly.

"Alright Stevenson, it’s my turn to come down now."

Li Wei confirmed that everything was in order inside the transition chamber and, after Jamie, quickly descended to the surface. He then used the smart terminal on the arm of his spacesuit to gently close the hatch, which also doubled as the gangway.

With that, the first official outing of the Skylight No. 3 exploration mission began. The five astronauts had all rested adequately before exiting, and soon after getting used to the Moon gravity, they were to immediately start their exploration tasks.

Having been hopping and jumping inside the spaceship for half an hour, Yang Xinjun, after several backflops, managed to get a rough grasp on the scale of his movements. He first picked up a handful of dust from the ground and observed it in the palm of his hand.

Under the sunlight, most of the moon dust was glittering, with a greater metal content than the samples taken from the surface.

However, this was good news for Yang Xinjun, as the richness in metal content could provide a nice boost to the hardness and protective properties of space concrete. On the other hand, 3D printing technology required a rough selection of the lunar soil components.

Meanwhile, Jamie was intending to do the same thing, but he was currently busy setting up the flagpole.

Due to the special nature of the lunar explosive devices, there would be a separate ground chamber to store the explosives, and this chamber would be jointly owned by the five companies - planting a flag was also a matter of course.

The Commonwealth was about to become the third... fourth entity to plant a flag, and Jamie had particularly valued this task after being received by the Queen before the departure.

Once the five flags were in place, another United Nations flag would be planted, and then they could hold sub-sessions on the Moon...