Die on Mars

Tang Yue was stunned for a few seconds, and his nose couldn't help but feel a little sore.

This is the last Eagle Lander. The earth has disappeared. Every part on the spacecraft will become an orphan in the universe, a relic of human civilization. The sentence "Welcome to Eagle Lander" on the screen is the one that disappeared. With the blessings and greetings from old friends and friends, Tang Yue never thought that the farewell at that time might become an eternal farewell.

Tang Yue sat down on the commanding officer's chair. He had always wanted to sit in this chair, but the captain Wang would not allow it every time. The talkative king valued his broken chair very seriously.

Now Tang Yue can sit wherever he wants, and no one will stop him anymore. The entire Orion 1 spacecraft and the scientific expedition team have disappeared.

The indicator lights on the main console in front of me are flashing, and dense codes are rolling across the screen. The computer of the Eagle spacecraft is powering on and self-checking. The computer on the Eagle spacecraft is a very powerful thing. Lao Wang said that it can even be used to type computers. Red Alert and Warcraft, it is really not easy for an aerospace engineering application-level computer to do this. The computer on the Apollo spacecraft had a main frequency of only 2M Hz, plus a 2KB RAM and a 36KB ROM. No songs can be saved.

The lander's takeoff, landing, and rendezvous and docking can all be completed automatically. Engineers on Earth have already set a route for it. These tens of thousands of codes are stored in the computer of the Eagle spacecraft. The crew As long as they move their fingers, press a few buttons, and shout "Let's go-", the Eagle spacecraft can take them away from Mars.

But just in case, the designers still left a backup manual control system for the lander. If Tang Yue and the others were so unlucky that they farted on their heels and the automatic docking system unfortunately failed, then the commander would Step forward and show off your abilities and skills as an elite astronaut, manually controlling the lander to dock with the joint space station.

In the past hundreds of years, the space pioneers in human history have done this. When the power of computers was not enough to control everything and grasp the overall situation, the astronauts of the American emperor and Mao Zi used their own eyes and fingers to With excellent psychological quality and technology, he dances on the tightrope and the tip of the knife.

But Tang Yue didn't know how to use this system. There were only two people in the expedition team who could use the manual docking system.

One is the command elder king.

Lao Wang was a test pilot of the Chinese Air Force with the rank of senior colonel. He flew fighters for thousands of hours and was then selected to join the astronaut center. As the commander of this Mars mission, he is the most senior and experienced astronaut in the team. Member, awesome.

The other one is Laotang.

Lao Tang is an American, his full name is Howard Thompson.

Lao Tang is the second professional astronaut in the team. He has spent more than 320 days on the International Space Station. He is often responsible for taking care of the docking tasks of the Soyuz and Progress spacecraft. He will also use this manual docking system.

Not so much for the others. They are all payload experts and none of them are professional astronauts. Tang Yue is a mechanical and electrical engineer and is responsible for the maintenance of the Kunlun Station and the Mars rover. Maidong is a botanist. , came with a lot of scientific research tasks, and they had never touched the control stick of an airplane in their lives.

The screen on the main console slowly dimmed, then lit up again after a few seconds.

The NASA logo flashed out, a bit like the Windows startup screen.

Self-check completed.

Tang Yue took out a maintenance manual as thick as an Oxford dictionary from his bag. Inspecting the Eagle spacecraft was indeed a troublesome task. There were more than 13,000 items checked from beginning to end.

"Old cat, do you need to read all the rules and regulations here?" Tang Yue lowered his head and shouted towards the hatch under his feet.

"That's right!" Old Cat's voice came from below, "Everything needs to be checked!"

"Do you have any idea how much content there is?"

"Six major parts, eighteen minor parts, a total of 13,416 articles, and eleven appendices." The old cat replied, "Today is already the third day, we have to get the eagle as soon as possible. The spacecraft is launched, you better hurry up!"

"You want me to get all of this done?" Tang Yue glared.

"Who thought five days was too long at that time?" Old Cat snorted, "If you can't handle it, then I don't have a problem with it, but the little girl on the space station will die."

"You..." Tang Yue choked, "Okay, I'll count on you."

The old cat stood in the cargo hold, holding an ultrasonic flaw detector in his paws.

Ultrasonic flaw detector is a very commonly used testing equipment in engineering. Ultrasonic waves can penetrate deep into the workpiece to detect cracks, looseness, and pores that are invisible to the naked eye. Once the ultrasonic waves contact the damaged section, they will be reflected back and displayed on the oscilloscope. Displays abnormal waveforms.

The old cat held the display terminal in one hand and held the probe in the other. It pressed the probe against the inner wall of the spacecraft and stared at the display on the terminal. The waveform folded regularly, like someone's heartbeat.

The cargo hold of the Eagle spacecraft is a cylinder, more than one meter high, made of a large and complete rolled aluminum alloy sheet, and can carry up to three tons of cargo.

It stands to reason that there should be no problems with the main structure of the lander. Even before the launch, people on the earth had carried out a very thorough inspection of it to ensure that it was flawless. However, Lao Mao was still worried, even if the lander was on the earth. I checked, and it was more than a year ago. The environmental conditions in space and Mars are harsh, and the temperature difference between day and night is large. When re-entering the atmosphere, it went through high-temperature baking and large overload. These extreme environments are harmful to any material. A great test.

There is no guarantee that metal fatigue will occur somewhere, or an O-ring rubber seal will freeze and crack. These scars, which are almost invisible to the naked eye, will develop and spread rapidly under conditions of high acceleration and overload, and eventually cause fatal injuries. structural damage.

The Eagle spacecraft will most likely make the same mistake as the Challenger space shuttle and turn into a super-sized flying monkey, allowing all the supplies and Tang Yue's hopes to turn into a rocket over Mars with a loud bang. Ash.

The cargo compartment is lined with a layer of smooth and hard polyimide material, and the white inner wall is printed with Boeing's blue LOGO.

The cargo bay of the Eagle spacecraft is manufactured by the Boeing Group, while the control system of the lander is a product of its old rival Lockheed Martin. Different parts of this spacecraft come from different companies and manufacturers. If you look carefully, Then you can find many famous LOGOs inside the Eagle spacecraft:

Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, NASA, CNSA, China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation, Apple, SAMSUNG, Central Fluid Research Institute, ESA, Rolls-Royce Group, JPL, etc., these World-renowned institutions and companies are usually rivals, but on the Eagle spacecraft, their logos coexist side by side.

The Mars landing plan is the largest aerospace project in human history. Its scale far exceeds the Apollo moon landing of that year. Old aerospace powers such as China, the United States, Russia, Britain, France, Japan, and Germany are working together, because its difficulty and cost are no longer the same as any one alone. The country can afford it, but even the US imperialists with their wealth and wealth cannot afford it.

Representative from China: Whoever has money should invest more. Is that okay with you?

Representative of Russia: Agree! Let me start by saying that my family is poor and only contributes skills, not money! (Picks up the AK47 under the table and looks around) Anyone who has any opinions can put it forward.

British representative: I will vote as much as France will vote.

French representative: I will vote as much as Germany votes.

German representative: I will vote as much as the UK votes.

Representative from Japan: Then...the money is not enough.

Representative from China: Whose family is the richest? First of all, I solemnly declare that our country is a developing country and is in the primary stage of socialism and will be in it for a long time...

European representatives from Britain, France and Germany: (whispering) American imperialism.

Russian representative (loudly bb): American imperialism!

The U.S. imperial representative slammed the table in anger: Are you still asking me to invest money? Can I rely on my aircraft carrier to build it?

From the Orion spacecraft to the lander to the Kunlun Station, every step is the product of the cooperation of all mankind and the crystallization of true human wisdom.

Humanity around the world has taken this step together, leaving only a shallow footprint on this planet that is more than 60 million kilometers away.