Galaxy Technology Empire

December 3, 9:20 am.

Kaohsiung City, East Island, in Kaohsiung Space City.

Preparations are being made here for the improvement of the operating orbit of the new Kaohsiung Space Station.

Wang Tu, who has been promoted to the director of Dongdao Space Administration, is in the main control room hall. Next to him is Zeng Baojiang, the person in charge of the Kaohsiung base.

"How are the preparations for the situation of Xinjiang security and orbit raising?"

"It's ready. We can start the orbit raising work at ten o'clock." Zeng Baojiang replied quickly.

"For some emergencies, more emergency plans should be made to avoid being in a hurry." Wang Tu reminded.

"Wang Ju is right to remind you."

Suddenly a staff member ran to Wang Tu and whispered in his ear: "Wang Bureau, this is a document just sent by NASA, saying that an asteroid is approaching Blue Star."

As soon as he heard the word asteroid, Wang Tu suddenly became nervous and quickly took the files over and started browsing them.

According to NASA, an asteroid is approaching the Blue Star at an extremely fast speed. NASA's asteroid tracker discovered the asteroid at about three o'clock this morning and named it 2019XW.

The asteroid was discovered heading toward Blue Star on a "close" orbit on December 3, 2019, and NASA now predicts that Asteroid XW will pass by it on the afternoon of December 10.

They estimated the rock's diameter to be between 144 feet and 324 feet (44 meters and 99 meters).

According to the upper limit of NASA's estimate, this asteroid is taller than the Big Ben clock tower in the Palace of Westminster in London, and may even be taller than the Statue of Liberty in New York, and is as long as a football field.

According to NASA's lower estimate, the asteroid's height is comparable to the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, Gaul.

According to further indications from orbital observations, this rock will pass by Blue Star on the afternoon of December 10, 2019.

Asteroid XW will reach an incredible speed of about 15.59 kilometers per second (56,124 kilometers per hour). At this speed, the asteroid will travel twice as fast as the NASA space shuttle.

However, although the asteroid WX will have a "close encounter" with the Blue Star, after NASA's assessment, it is believed that the asteroid WX will not hit the Blue Star.

After all, when near-Earth objects orbit the sun, they sometimes approach the blue star. When they are closest to the blue star, the distance between the asteroid WX and the blue star is 0.02764 astronomical units. One astronomical unit describes the distance between the blue star and the sun. The distance is approximately 149.6 million kilometers.

In other words, this space rock will pass by the Blue Star about 4.1 million kilometers away, which is almost 11 times the distance of the moon. After this flyby, the asteroid will approach Venus again in August 2021.

It turned out to be a false alarm, and Wang Tu breathed a sigh of relief.

"What happened to Wang Ju, were you so nervous just now?" Zeng Baojiang asked, looking at Wang Tu whose expression turned from gloomy to clear.

"It's nothing. NASA informed us that an asteroid is approaching Blue Star." After Wang Tu finished speaking, he turned to the staff member who had just handed over the document and ordered:

"Let our space monitoring department pay attention to this asteroid."

"OK."

Zeng Baojiang flipped through the documents and discovered that the WX asteroid passed by Blue Star at a distance of 4.1 million kilometers.

"It turned out to be a false alarm. Asteroids approaching Blue Star happen every year, but most of them are like this WX asteroid, and they mostly pass by Blue Star."

"I have already asked people to keep an eye on this WX asteroid, and we will continue to prepare for the orbit increase." Wang Tu also put this matter aside.

December 3, 10:00 am.

"Prepare to change track." Zeng Baojiang gave the order, and the entire staff in the control room hall immediately became busy.

Invisible radio waves continuously go from the ground base station to the specially-made high-altitude (60 kilometers above sea level) 6G airship, and then the signal is amplified.

Since the density of the atmosphere in outer space is very thin, probably less than one billionth of the density of the tropospheric atmosphere, the air has very little impact on the path loss of terahertz communications.

The effective communication distance of 6G terahertz waves in outer space is about 1,600 to 1,700 kilometers.

The specially-made 6G airship can be connected to the Nandou satellite system. With the cooperation of the 6G airship and the Nandou satellite system.

Radio waves quickly arrived at the New Kaohsiung City Space Station, and after receiving ground instructions.

The No. 3 and No. 4 cabins of the new Kaohsiung Space Station are the installation compartments for the two main engines. The two main engines are ignited and started immediately.

Light blue tail flames are spurting out from the nozzle of the main engine. The new Kaohsiung Space Station rapidly changes its orbit under the action of the engine's reverse thrust.

In order to save some fuel, the new Kaohsiung Space Station chose to make multiple orbit changes to reach the designated low-Earth orbit of 450 kilometers.

During this period, the main engine needs to be ignited and started at least three times, and the rest of the work is completed by the auxiliary engine to adjust the track.

In fact, even if the new Kaohsiung Space Station uses brute force and directly increases the engine thrust, it can directly reach 450 kilometers from 160 kilometers of low-Earth orbit.

The problem is that this consumes a lot of fuel, probably about three times as much fuel.

Although a mass projector is used to launch materials into outer space, the single-time cost of the Xuanwu-class is about 340,000 Chinese yuan. This cost is mainly the electricity bill and the depreciation of the spacecraft.

Including the cost of the mass projector system, the cost of one launch is about 1 to 2 million yuan. The more launches are performed, the less the cost will be.

However, even 2 million Chinese dollars is a very good deal. 2 million Chinese dollars to send 60 tons of materials to low-Earth orbit is equivalent to 34,000 Chinese dollars for 1 ton of materials and 34 Chinese dollars for 1 kilogram of materials.

However, the current actual shipping cost is still a bit high, about 40 to 50 Chinese yuan per kilogram, but as time goes by, the cost will become lower and lower.

This is the advantage of the mass projector. It makes a huge one-time investment and then uses the cheap launch cost to transport a large amount of materials to outer space. In this way, the construction cost of the mass projector is evenly amortized.

The Space Development Committee estimates that the service life of the two mass projectors in Kaohsiung and Bazhong is 20 to 30 years. If there is a technological breakthrough in the future, the service life may be extended by upgrading.

A service life of 20 to 30 years is enough for the Space Development Council to recover its construction costs.

His eyes returned to the main control room of Kaohsiung Aerospace City.

"Report, the current orbit height of the space station is 330 kilometers in low-Earth orbit, and the orbiting speed..."

"Main engine ready for third ignition."

"The ignition started successfully and it is expected to reach the designated orbit in 50 minutes."

…

Wang Tu has been staring at the holographic simulation real-time monitoring model in the middle of the hall.

I saw a regular hexagonal red model on the Blue Star's low-Earth orbit, which was constantly orbiting the Blue Star's low-Earth orbit, but this orbit was rapidly increasing.

At this moment, not only the Dongdao Space Administration and the Space Development Committee are closely monitoring the new Kaohsiung Space Station.

The powerful space agencies around the world are also paying close attention to this behemoth that is constantly changing its orbit.

Although Wang Tu was very calm on the surface, if anyone noticed his forehead at this time, they would know that Wang Tu was extremely nervous inside, and his palms were almost sweating.

After the main engine was ignited for the third time, the orbit of the New Kaohsiung Space Station became larger and larger, and the distance from the Blue Star ground became larger and larger.

Today’s extra update! mwah!