Chapter 755 - 728 Richard

"Tower, this is Enterprise, we have a situation."

Meng Senlin held the communicator and noticed Xie Liaofu had no reaction to his actions.

"Tower received, please go ahead."

"Uh... Mr. Xie is also on the spacecraft, he’s sitting in the flight engineer’s seat, over."

"...zzz...zzz"

The tower’s voice was interrupted, and Meng Senlin could faintly hear the sound of people talking. He was calling other crew members to prepare, while also trying to persuade Xie Liaofu:

"Chief Engineer, this is still a test model, it’s very dangerous."

Xie Liaofu: "This is already the umpteenth flight test, I’ve been on board before, I do very well in this position, I can pilot this shuttle by myself."

"..."

"Young Meng, do you know Richard Russell?"

"Sorry, Mr. Xie, I haven’t heard that name, is he also an aviation expert?"

"No, he was an ordinary person, a ground service worker at an airport in Seattle. Two weeks ago, he stole an empty passenger plane from the airport and flew it around for 75 minutes."

Meng Senlin: "Was he... a terrorist or avenging society?"

Xie Liaofu: "Neither. He had only learned to fly in flight simulation games before that, and he flew the commercial airliner to do a backflip in the sky, eventually crashing on an uninhabited island.

He didn’t take revenge on anyone, and his life was quite blissful. What drove him was just a desire to do it, and he told air traffic control that he would not land, nor did he intend to."

Meng Senlin: "..."

Xie Liaofu: "The reason might have been a gust of wind he caught when he was about to clock out, but he felt that 75 minutes were worth trading his life for.

Most of a person’s life is spent in mediocrity, but it’s those few moments of adventure that give life meaning. The career we pursue is full of such adventures, and without it, I would rather go to Siberia to dig potatoes."

"..."

Although Meng Senlin did not understand why Xie Liaofu suddenly became agitated, or why he brought up Siberia out of the blue, he was indeed persuaded. After all, with New Yuan’s strict engineering control system, major space vessels had almost never had an accident.

"Alright, Mr. Xie, then please perform the duties of a flight engineer."

...

"Wind speed 4.5 knots, humidity 34%, cleared for takeoff, cleared for takeoff!"

"Enterprise acknowledges."

Meng Senlin’s hands were pressed on either side of the flight control stick, setting the thrust to the first notch, and the four nozzles on either side of the Enterprise immediately began to work, hovering about 50cm above the ground by emitting a faint blue gas.

The XN90 had six reactors and six engines, but they were not independent; instead, they were connected through pipelines and could flexibly adjust the output flow of each nozzle.

For vertical takeoff, the four NPAEs could actually produce a maximum thrust of 270 tons (below 50,000 meters), and after taking off, they would utilize the two horizontal nozzles on the tail, which could produce up to 130 tons of thrust (below 50,000 meters).

The thrust data of 20 tons is under vacuum conditions; within the atmosphere, it’s quite different:

Using methane as fuel, the NPAE would heat it to extremely high temperatures in a nuclear reactor within an atmospheric environment, causing it to expand and eject at high speed through the pipes. This is the first source of thrust and the only source in a vacuum environment, with a thrust of 20 tons;

In an atmospheric environment, high-temperature gaseous methane would react with the oxygen in the atmosphere to become carbon dioxide and water vapor, continuing to expand, much like a traditional methane engine. Although the oxygen content in the atmosphere is less than that of liquid oxygen, at lower altitudes where the XN90 needs the most power, the higher air density can still provide around 40 tons of thrust;

The third source of thrust is the narrow, variable intakes on the sides of the Enterprise that come into play after the flight speed exceeds the speed of sound. By the principle of ramjet engines, air is compressed by the intakes, heated and expanded by the heat of the reactor, and then ejected through the de Laval nozzle, adding about 7.5 tons of thrust per engine.

The sum total of the three types of thrust, coupled with the advantage of the aerospike engine adapting to different altitude conditions, meant that the actual peak thrust of the NPAE within the atmosphere fluctuated between 50 and 68 tons.

Under supersonic conditions, the angular shape of the Enterprise would produce a strong shockwave at the front, enveloping the airframe and significantly reducing the overall drag, by roughly one-third.

The VX-70 Valkyrie also used a similar principle, effectively gaining more than 30% thrust aerodynamically; within a certain range, the faster it flies, the more fuel-efficient it is.

The main factor limiting the payload capacity of the Enterprise was the segment between 50 and 100 kilometers, where the thin atmosphere caused a sharp decline in thrust, forcing the upward payload to be limited to 20 tons.

However, this allowed the Enterprise’s downward payload capacity to be considerable, safely reaching up to 100 tons, about five times that of the upward payload.

The sharply differing operating conditions rendered the Enterprise’s automation system extremely complex, and manual control was entirely out of the question. Only the SC09’s sophisticated computational model and extensive data support prevented potential destruction and loss of life.

Including the Aero-Space Plane and traditional manned spacecraft, in fact, these high-tech equipment are always more reliable and safer when operated by computers than by humans.

The conditions for the Enterprise’s takeoff were not stringent. As a general-purpose shuttle designed for takeoff and landing on Mars and even Titan, the Enterprise was capable of taking off and landing on most terrestrial lands and non-corrosive active liquids. The current takeoff field was nothing more than a reinforced concrete surface.

Seated almost in a lying position, Xie Liaofu quickly felt the acceleration from below, then saw the control tower through the side window disappear rapidly, leaving only the light blue sky outside.

"Faster, I can feel that the aerospike engine is not putting out much!"

Meng Senlin heard his impatient urging. Although he did not respond, he slightly increased the pull on the stick.

As speed increased, the Enterprise gradually pitched back, aligning the nose cone with the direction of travel. The vibration from slicing through the air became more and more intense and then suddenly stabilized. The shuttle began to ride the shockwave.

In tests a few days earlier, the Enterprise should have already surpassed an altitude of 4000 meters by this point, but it continued to maintain a climbing motion, increasing its angle and accelerating along the Earth’s tangential direction of rotation.

Most of the thrust from the six engines began to concentrate on the two nozzles at the tail, to maintain the direction of the resultant force.

When the color of the sky outside the porthole deepened from light blue to dark blue and finally into a discernible black, Meng Senlin knew he had crossed the Kármán line.

The first stage of acceleration ended there, the roaring engines ceased output, the vibration of the craft completely vanished, and the force that had kept him bound to the seat was gone.

The next acceleration would be in 40 minutes. At that time, after accelerating toward the tangent of the target orbit for a while, the Enterprise would enter orbit.