Build a game empire from scratch

If you want to fly a spaceship in space, you need the help of a professional in spaceflight.

Xu Shenghan had no doubts about this.

Professionals, do professional things!

His pitiful spacecraft driving experience all came from driving the No. 2 escape capsule on the Tiangong space station.

But even so, he noticed a huge difference between "driving" in space and on the ground.

——There is no road here, and there is no fixed reference object. Whether it is the spacecraft under the buttocks or the target I plan to fly to, they are all in rapid motion.

What's more troublesome is that different spacecraft are not even relatively stationary—they also have quite different speeds of motion.

Driving only by sight and intuition, there will be almost 100% errors.

Unless the engine fuel is sufficient and the flight trajectory can be adjusted again and again midway, the possibility of yaw is almost 100%!

This makes every voyage a gamble on luck, and failure is death!

But here's the problem: all spacecraft have limited fuel, and must budget carefully to save every bit of fuel possible.

This requires the help of aerospace professionals to calculate the "highway in space"—that is, the "flight trajectory" invisible to the naked eye.

But... a big guy in mathematics?

Is there anything else going on here?

Xu Shenghan didn't quite understand.

But after clicking on the post, under the description of the post owner, he quickly understood the reason——

This group gathered 28 players who successfully rescued [Tiangong Space Station], and determined a common goal: to go to the mysterious space station farther away.

But the location of the space station is too far away, no matter how you look at it, it is not possible to fly there by intuition.

Ever since, one of them, a college student, found his high school classmate who was studying aerospace and asked for help.

After collecting some information, his classmates gave two possibilities:

First: This mysterious space station is only at a much higher orbital height than the Tiangong space station, but it is far from the moon.

Second: This space station is located at the L4 Lagrangian point of the Earth-Moon system, at a special gravitational point that can be self-stabilized.

If it is the former, then there is too little information, and it is impossible to calculate the orbit now.

Because the average distance between the earth and the moon is as high as 380,000 kilometers, and the orbit of this mysterious space station may be at any altitude.

There is no way to measure it!

But if it is the latter, although the L4 Lagrangian point is also a large area, at least the position is determined—that is, the orbit of the moon, but it forms a triangle with the earth and the moon in position.

If data such as the current orbital height, orbit, flight speed, engine fuel, etc. of the Tiangong space station can be collected, it should be possible to calculate the orbit.

At least be able to fly to the L4 point area.

—Can you stop there and say something else.

It's just that even the second possibility, which is relatively simpler, requires a considerable amount of calculation.

In particular, a lot of data needs to be measured from scratch - "Gravity" is so realistic. After a large number of low-earth orbit satellites are wiped out by fragments, many of them can be obtained by pressing a button The data is gone now, and we need to find a way to recalculate.

What's even worse is: after the players returned to Earth, the game ended directly!

Instead of going back to the Xiajing Orbital Control Center, it ends right on the beach!

This directly blocked the chance for players to cooperate across games and obtain key data in the ground track control center.

Without the convenience provided by the equipment, the big bosses majoring in mathematics have become just in demand—among this group of people, there are perverts who can use white paper to push formulas and calculate spacecraft orbits!

"Awesome!" Xu Shenghan was greatly shocked, and then silently saved this post.

——In this level of activities, he can only be a spectator standing on the sidelines and shouting "666", and he really doesn't have the ability to participate.

But it's all praise, Xu Shenghan is not very optimistic about whether he can find those big shots in this post.

Judging from the description of the post, what this group of people need is not just someone majoring in mathematics and aerospace, but they must also be top-notch in these two majors.

The problem is: in the eyes of Xu Shenghan, talents of that level may have a bright future in the whole country—especially in the context of the global space race.

Will such talents waste their precious time in the game?

While thinking, he returned to the front of the house.

Open the door and enter the house, take out the dishes, pack up the supper, and start eating with the phone.

In just a short while, after refreshing the page again, he found a bunch of "strange" posts popping up on the homepage:

[Conjecture on the orbit of the mysterious space station]

[Brief popularization of knowledge about Earth-Moon Lagrange points]

[Orbit, aircraft, cosmic velocity, gravity and gravitational slingshot]

[Three feasibility conjectures about the permanent self-circulating space station]

[Space elevator image enlargement, pixel restoration, and operation mode guessing]

[Feasibility analysis of changing the orbit of the space station and falling on the edge of the space elevator]

...

Hungry because he missed two meals, Xu Shenghan, who had already started to gorge on noodles, watched the outrageous headlines one after another, and the speed of eating became slower and slower unconsciously, until he was completely still.

He put down the chopsticks hanging in the air, his mind was a little dazed:

"WTF?"

"Isn't this a game forum? What are you talking about?"

"Are there so many bosses in this game?"

Xu Shenghan, who is a student of ships, suddenly felt that he was weak.

It's not just his thoughts either.

It has been 12 hours since the game was released, and many of the players who are progressing relatively fast and have enough enthusiasm, like Xu Shenghan, have been driven by various crises to complete the first week.

So now the game community is very active, and players from all walks of life come to read the posts, trying to get more valuable information.

Good news: They did get valuable information.

Bad news: there's just too much valuable information, and it's too high-end! They can't digest it...

When have you seen so many hard-core knowledge popularization in the player community?

Just click on a hot post, there are all kinds of unfamiliar letters and formulas in it, with pictures and texts, it can be said that it is very attentive.

But out of a thousand people who came in to read it, they couldn't find 10 who could understand it...

The comments with the most replies are all "unknown".

Moreover, this weird atmosphere quickly spread from the core player community, spread to the entire social network, and even brought about a strange trend——

A large number of popular science self-media have taken the initiative to stop. Taking advantage of this enthusiasm, they began to popularize various scientific knowledge such as astronomy, rockets, space stations, and astronauts.

Even because of the appearance of space elevators and unknown spacecraft, even the content related to "extraterrestrial life" and "science fiction" has been pulled out to popularize science for netizens.

This unprecedented upsurge in science popularization is sweeping the entire summer!

Even the global internet is making waves.

This craze has even affected areas that were previously out of reach with games——

Academician Yang Hong, chief designer of Tiangong Space Station, Xiajing Academy of Astronautics Family Academy, looked at the "finished product" on the phone that was more than 90% similar to the design drawing, and a question mark slowly popped up in his head:

"Did someone show him the complete blueprint?"

He couldn't figure it out.

The current Tiangong space station in space has only three cabins in total, and there is still a long way to go before it is perfected.

But according to the plan, the completed appearance is really similar to the height in "Gravity"!

"Coincidence?"

"I'll have to ask tomorrow."

*

In ESA and Roscosmos, the problem is reversed:

"Why is this [International Space Station] so different from our drawings?"

"It looks too old, doesn't it?"

Not only is it old, but the interior is filled with all kinds of messy cables and outdated equipment...

"Could it be because Yunmeng is Daxia's company, so Daxia's space station is beautiful, and our space station is sloppy?"

They don't understand.

Although... the specific space station drawings have not yet been finalized, and all parties are still in the stage of wrangling.

But they believe that their space station will also be beautiful!

It wouldn't be the stitch monster in the game!

*

Of course, the most incomprehensible thing is the American National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Their problems are the same as all American players:

"Even the European Union has a space station, why is America the only one that doesn't?"

"What's the meaning?"

"Do you look down on us?!"