Great Country Academician

On the other side, in Jinling, in Xinghai Research Institute.

After receiving the invitation letter sent to him from the Industry and Information Center, Xu Chuan turned his attention to the manufacturing of the space shuttle.

While established aerospace companies such as Aerospace Science and Technology did not cause trouble and supported relevant work, the team led by Academicians Weng Yunzong and Chang Huaxiang completed tasks and work one after another at a rapid pace.

The space shuttle, which was originally expected to take until around May to be completed, is now nearing completion, nearly two months ahead of schedule.

With sufficient financial support, both the design team and engineers are busy at their jobs like clockwork gears.

In order to speed up the production of some parts, Shenyang Machine Tool Group even specially deployed two cutting-edge machine tools that used "nuclear waste processing technology" in the past few years to trade technology from small island countries to coordinate the entire process.

Although the performance of the machine tools in the past two days is not as good as the most advanced CNC machine tools from Germany, there is no problem at all in solving the production of parts on the space shuttle.

Of course, the design and manufacture of a space shuttle is far from simple.

In particular, some core materials and components were almost all purchased at a high price.

The most typical ones are the deep space exploration equipment, star trackers and other core equipment purchased from the United States that are essential but not so critical on the space shuttle.

As for whether these things can be made domestically, they can definitely be made, but it will take a long time, basically on a yearly basis.

So in order to save time, these things are purchased from external sources.

Of course, some core control equipment inside the space shuttle, such as flight control systems, high-temperature surface insulation tiles, carbon fiber materials, etc., were designed in the first batch and then handed over to domestic manufacturers for strict production acceptance.

The Columbia space shuttle's foam insulation tiles separated from the external heater and hit the lower edge of the left wing, causing the entire aircraft to disintegrate. No one can forget the accident that killed all seven astronauts on board.

Neither Xu Chuan nor the higher-ups dared to relax in this kind of equipment related to the safety of astronauts.

On the one hand, it is necessary to be on guard against others. If NASA uses some underhanded methods, they will suffer heavy losses.

On the other hand, the restart of the space shuttle is also under heavy pressure in China. This route was personally vetoed by Mr. Qian in the early years.

If problems occur during the first test flight, it will have a major blow to China's development in the aerospace field. Even in the development of the entire world's aerospace field, the space shuttle will be completely pushed into the marginal corner.

After all, the United States stumbled on the space shuttle before, and if they do it again more than ten years later, the whole world will probably seriously think about whether the space shuttle is really feasible.

Two weeks was not long. In early March, Xu Chuan rushed from Jinling to the Magic City with the invitation letter sent to him from the Industrial and Information Center.

Although the name Jiangnan Shipyard sounds like "taking my sister-in-law on a run", it is actually the oldest military shipbuilding enterprise in China.

It was founded in 1865 (the fourth year of Tongzhi) and has gone through many changes such as Jiangnan Machinery Manufacturing Administration, Jiangnan Shipyard, Navy Jiangnan Shipyard, and Jiangnan Shipyard.

Over the past century and a half, this company has gone through many vicissitudes of history, endured, and created countless firsts.

The first furnace of steel, the first steel cannon, the first armored ship, the first 10,000-ton hydraulic press, the first submarine, the first frigate, and now the first aircraft carrier with controllable nuclear fusion power.

It can be said that this national enterprise not only made a huge contribution to the country's military development, but also epitomized the continuous development and growth of China's industry.

Of course, its real name is not Jiangnan Shipbuilding, that is just a common name. In fact, its full name is Jiangnan Shipbuilding (Group) Co., Ltd.

Taking the high-speed train to Shanghai, driven by Zheng Hai, the red flag car drove all the way to the entrance of the hotel prepared by Jiangnan Shipyard for the invited spectators.

After getting out of the car, when Xu Chuan appeared at the hotel door, the eyes of the two men walking side by side towards the door lit up and they hurried forward to greet him.

The leader of the group had a smile on his face and stretched out his right hand from a distance: "Academician Xu, long time no see."

Seeing the approaching figure, Xu Chuan smiled, held his hand, shook it, and said, "Director Gao, I didn't expect you to be here."

The person who came to greet him was Gao Hongming, who had been arranged by the science and technology group to assist him when he was studying controllable nuclear fusion technology.

After the later controllable nuclear fusion technology was completed, Director Gao from the Strategic Planning Department also left the Qixia Controlled Nuclear Fusion Project, and his replacement was now Wen Yuanhang.

After shaking hands, Gao Hongming let go of his hand and said with a smile: "After the position change, I need to have a more detailed understanding of strategic planning work, so I was invited to participate in this ceremony."

After a pause, he looked at the old man standing next to him who was much older than him, raised his right hand slightly and introduced:

"Academician Xu, please allow me to introduce you. This is the chief designer of Jiangnan Shipyard, Academician Zheng Yuanhang."

"Hello, Academician Zheng."

Hearing this, Xu Chuan smiled and stretched out his right hand to shake hands with the old man wearing gold-rimmed glasses.

"I've heard about Academician Xu for a long time, and I'm finally lucky enough to meet him today." He enthusiastically held Xu Chuan's extended right hand and shook it. Academician Zheng laughed and greeted him.

The three of them chatted for a while and then left the hotel lobby.

After all, tomorrow is the launching and naming ceremony of the Haixi aircraft carrier. Compared with Xu Chuan, a guest invited to watch the ceremony, both Gao Hongming and Zheng Yuanhang still have a lot of work to do.

Xu Chuan didn't care. After showing the invitation letter with the barcode to the hotel staff, he took his belongings and entered the room.

The next day, the launching and naming ceremony of the "Haixi" aircraft carrier was officially held at the Jiangnan Shipyard of China Shipbuilding Group Co., Ltd.

In the early morning, Xu Chuan woke up very early. Before seven o'clock, he washed and dressed himself, then followed the elevator and pressed the button for the third floor, heading towards the restaurant.

Although the launching and naming ceremony of the Haixi will not officially begin until 11 o'clock in the morning, he is quite interested in this shipbuilding company with a long history.

Especially in 2019, China Unicom and Jiangnan Shipbuilding integrated the industrial chain, and jointly promoted the 5G private network + collaborative manufacturing intelligent transformation project, which were some of the key points he had learned about before coming.

Industrial production is moving towards intelligence, which is the development trend of the times and something that we will inevitably come into contact with.

Xinghai Research Institute is now also uniting with some companies to build an intelligent platform of its own, so learning from other companies that already have mature systems will undoubtedly save it a lot of time and energy.

In the restaurant, Xu Chuan picked some breakfast on a plate.

I have to say that the breakfast at this hotel is quite rich, ranging from steamed buns, fried dough sticks to noodles, steamed dumplings with rice noodles and so on.

Of course, it is also possible that it was specially prepared to host the launching and naming ceremony of the Haixi.

I picked something to eat and was just about to find an open space to sit down when a familiar voice came to my ears.

"Academician Xu got up so early? Why didn't you take more rest?"

A kind and smiling voice sounded in his ears. Xu Chuan looked along the voice and saw that the person greeting him was the person he often exchanged letters with in the past.

"Good leadership."

Xu Chuan quickly said hello.

The other party smiled and waved his hand and said: "Why are you so polite? We are not outsiders. Sit down. Let's have breakfast together."

The other party smiled, holding the dinner plate, and found a quieter corner to sit down. Xu Chuan followed him with breakfast, and the two started chatting.

"Speaking of which, I really didn't expect you to be interested in a ceremony like the launching of an aircraft carrier."

The old man tore off a bit of the white flour steamed bun, soaked it in beef soup, put it in his mouth and said with a smile.

Xu Chuan smiled and said: "You must be interested. After all, this is an aircraft carrier. When I read the news in the past, I always wanted to go up and see what the aircraft carrier looks like. Maybe I will have the opportunity to see it today."

The old man laughed loudly and said: "Just say this kind of wish, let alone go to the aircraft carrier to have a look, it's okay if you just want to fly it."

Hearing this, Xu Chuan quickly waved his hands and said, "Just go up and have a look. I'm afraid I won't even be able to recognize the instrument panel when flying an aircraft carrier or something."

The old man smiled and said, "Thanks to Youyou for this."

After a slight pause, he said with some nostalgia: "In the past, we always thought about when we would have a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier of our own. Someone had previously proposed to build the Haixi into a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier."

"We discussed it for a long time, but finally decided on the conventional power due to various reasons such as immature technology."

"I didn't expect it, I didn't expect it."

As he spoke, the old man looked at Xu Chuan with a smile, and continued: "Now our Haixi is not only nuclear-powered, but also nuclear-fusion powered. Who would have dared to think about this before? No one would have dared to think about it. All this is thanks to you."

As for controllable nuclear fusion technology, although the fusion reactor is not in line with people's vision of this 'sci-fi' technology, it sounds a bit low. After all, the fusion reactor has been released, and the space carrier , air and space fighters are more in line with science fiction imagination.

But no matter what, the deterrent effect it brings is real.

The old man is very clear about the changes that miniaturized nuclear fusion technology has brought to the Haixi aircraft carrier. Compared with its original conventional power, no, even compared with the nuclear fission reactor-powered aircraft carrier, the compactness of the fusion reactor itself is enough to bring Great changes.

It is smaller than a fission reactor and does not need to carry a large amount of fuel, so its internal space is more spacious and can carry more carrier-based aircraft, weapons and ammunition.

And more importantly, the endless energy that fusion reactors can provide.

It can not only provide great convenience for the aircraft carrier itself and the electromagnetic acceleration orbit, but can even provide a steady supply of electromagnetic weapons, laser weapons and other equipment.

Not to mention the former, both the endurance and the electromagnetic acceleration orbit are of great importance to the aircraft carrier.

The latter, whether electromagnetic weapons or laser weapons, have the advantages of lower cost, higher safety, smaller size and weight than traditional artillery and missiles.

But the disadvantage is that the technology is difficult to manufacture, and both are large energy consumers.

We must know that for things like ship-borne high-energy electromagnetic weapons and laser weapons, even if it is an aircraft carrier that uses a nuclear fission reactor function, it is difficult to provide a continuous and sufficient supply of high-power power for electromagnetic/laser weapons.

A large electromagnetic gun with full power can easily swallow up all the power generated by a small power station.

Not to mention laser weapons, which are pure energy in themselves.

To supply these two weapons, the requirements for the energy supply system are extremely demanding.

But the fusion reactor is completely different. Even if you cover the hull of the ship with the latter two, it can still bear the corresponding power supply load.

Equipping these two weapons on an aircraft carrier can greatly improve the combat capability and survivability of the aircraft carrier itself. It is not an exaggeration to say that it is an unsinkable fortress.