Chapter 743 - 716 Plan

After the dinner, Lin Ju and Zhong Chengcai reconnected after spending the evening apart.

"Has the news been leaked?"

"Nearly. Constructing the spaceport is too troublesome. To control the investment, it’s necessary to expand the supply chain as much as possible. If the timeline could be relaxed a bit, the spaceport should be delayed until after 2030, instead of before."

Lin Ju furrowed his brows as he spoke. The idea for the spaceport - or rather, the Space City, Space Dock - wasn’t originally New Yuan’s proposition, but one that the military had first demanded.

The same old refrain, to manufacture large space vessels there must be a space dock. Taking a leap directly carries too great a risk, so there must be the establishment of a transitional, experimental spaceport.

This experimental spaceport would need about a decade to transition to a formal giant spaceport, not only to provide time for identifying issues but also to accumulate experience.

If taking the most conservative and cost-effective approach, it should start with constructing a small space elevator; stabilize its operations and then commence building the experimental spaceport followed by the giant spaceport.

In doing so, the timeline should be around 2030, 2035, 2045, essentially starting from the mid-21st century to possess the capacity to manufacture combat space vessels.

But those above couldn’t wait that long. They set a safety limit of just 10 years, hoping to begin constructing space vessels by 2030, which is at most 12 years from now.

The space elevator requires extensive fundamental breakthroughs. Reaching completion by 2030 is already at its fastest, so speed must be found elsewhere — building the spaceport without relying on the space elevator.

This schedule is indeed pressing. By 2025, the experimental nature of the spaceport needs to be finished, leaving at least 5 years to familiarize operations before starting the construction of the formal giant spaceport in 2030.

The spaceport will prioritize constructing the dock part; once the dock’s functions are initially viable, build and ship simultaneously. This could advance the timeline to 2035, saving over a decade’s time.

To achieve this progress, the spaceport must commence construction by 2021 at the latest, leaving the Aerospace Development Committee two years to complete the master design.

Even for an experimental spaceport, which has to integrate functions like research, production, agriculture, life support, and electricity, the complexity is akin to a small city. If a comparison must be made, it’s quite like an aircraft carrier — the design work is tremendously challenging, involving over a hundred industries; it is not a task a single genius designer can handle.

Design teams must rationally divide functional areas, maximize the efficiency of every part, accommodate as many people as possible, and reduce the overall mass as much as possible. What’s required is the refinement that comes with time.

Both the Aerospace Agency and New Yuan have run their calculations and found that for a standard design accommodating 1000 people, the overall weight should be no less than 40,000 tons.

As for the future construction of a space vessel in the giant spaceport, depending on specialized directions, its total mass should range between 150,000 to 400,000 tons to build vessels over 10,000 tons.

The giant spaceport undoubtedly could only rely on the space elevator, while the experimental "small" spaceport is just on the edge of the traditional aerospace technology’s limits.

Based on the New Yuan No. 4/Long March No. 18’s cargo capacity of 500 tons per launch, that’s a total of 80 launches. Even with 20 launches a year, it would take four years, so the choice won’t be to launch entirely from Earth.

At least a quarter of the spaceport’s mass, which includes the support framework, will in the future be produced by a steel consortium on the Moon. Transporting it from the Moon would be much easier.

However, these are still the roughest of concepts. The Aerospace Development Committee has set up a design preparation committee to build this spaceport, and this temporary committee will organize a huge design team. Only after this will design work begin and task assignments can be made.

Nevertheless, design teams still can’t cover everything. There will be countless sub-projects packaged into categories, and the responsible designers will choose contracting units/companies to perform detailed design work.

Zhong Cheng has long been overwhelmed. In his words, he’s "so busy that my feet don’t touch the ground."

The Aerospace Development Committee, as the institution coordinating all national aerospace forces, is facing unprecedented pressure along with the immense power it has received.

"That’s good... they say two years, but just the preparations will take three months at least, leaving us only about 18 months. Eighteen months to design a space city - in the past, that was the time to design a destroyer.

If any error occurs, it would cause grievous loss to the nation!"

"But it’s unavoidable."

Lin Ju could only sigh. Rushing into this project would certainly encounter many problems, but humanity doesn’t have much time left. They could only start running and then see.

After commiserating for a moment, he eventually couldn’t suppress the curiosity in his heart and asked Zhong Cheng:

"Is there any hope with America? After all, it is experimental in nature, and Starship has succeeded. If we could get them on board..."

"Hard to say, but there’s not a complete lack of hope. The key is how much sincerity America can offer."

As soon as the spaceport plan was proposed, it had been suggested as an international project to share the burden. And the only "international cooperation partner" that could attract interest domestically was NACA.

But there remained skepticism about NACA’s capabilities. Lin Ju was also unsure now; after all, NACA in this timeline is much different, not only pioneering nuclear engines but also achieving the launch of a giant rocket every two months.

The SL-X has already been dubbed by American media as the "Monthly Rocket," and indeed, with a concerted effort, SpaceX and other military-industrial complexes could possibly manage one launch a month.

This force could at least take on one-third of the spaceport’s workload, greatly alleviating the domestic pressure.

Zhong Cheng hesitated for a moment and continued:

"If we’re serious about this, I might need to lead a team to America to scout out their situation, to deeply assess the state of their rocket and spacecraft factories."

Lin Ju nodded. While "Mountain and Sea" could also do this, a more reliable assessment is for people to go in person. Sometimes what’s important isn’t just technology and equipment; the human element is a key factor.

"New Yuan could also send a few people, under the guise of discussing cooperation on the Skylight project. There’ll be many more missions to come."

It’s been eight or nine hours since the second nuclear explosion. If all goes well, Li Wei and Liu Ming should have reached the explosion area by now, collecting data and uploading it.

This explosion caused an entire hour of radio chaos, with the whole Moon enveloped in wild electromagnetic pulses. To this moment, some satellites are still out of contact, and the U-Tu Space Station’s communication system has been damaged.

But the results are compelling. According to rough estimates by the space station, the diameter of the explosion crater exceeded 4400 meters, with an initial depth estimation of around 500 meters.

This depth has completely reached the mineral layer above the rare earth stratum, which is predominantly iron ore. The space station can now see the exposed ore deposits through reflection spectrums!