I ask you to build tractors, but you build rockets?

"Mark, Mark, take a look at this plan and analyze its feasibility."

"Oh shit! Although it looks a little weird, it seems really good. It's much simpler than the centrifugal space station."

When Claire submitted specaX's plan to others for evaluation, people's comments were that they first thought it was something weird, but after thinking about it carefully, it was quite reliable.

In Musk's plan, this gravity system based on ropes is called "Flexible gravity device", which is also the FGD system. Xinyuan's ring-type gravity device is called "Hard gravity device" (Rigid Gravity Device)”, HGD.

Compared with HGD, the biggest advantage of the flexible gravity device is that it does not require frequent launches and only requires two spacecraft to form gravity.

This is great news for the Aramco space industry, which lacks giant reusable rockets such as Xianyuan-2A and Xinyuan-3. They are also very flexible in use and can be separated at any time.

If two starships are really used to land on Mars, then the biggest problem in this plan is just to send the starships into space first, and the centrifugal part can be easily solved.

Although your intuition may make you worry about the cable breaking, this is actually the easiest, and now NACA engineers can come up with dozens of ways to ensure its reliability.

For HGD, the centrifugal cabin must be connected to the central axis through a channel, or the centrifugal cabins must be connected between each other. No matter which way, there will be a problem: in order to obtain greater gravity, the increased difficulty caused by the increase in radius It increases exponentially. A 1,500-ton space station with a radius of 120 meters is enough, and a space station with a diameter of 200 meters needs at least 4,000 tons.

FGD is different. For the artificial gravity device, the number of rotations per minute set for the normal life of personnel is not higher than 2, resulting in the iron law that 0.3G low gravity requires a radius of at least 60 meters. The quality problem of the space station has been solved. .

Even two 10-ton cabin sections can easily obtain 1G gravity.

However, FGD is not Musk’s original creation. In fact, the Mars Society proposed it when it was imagining the Mars Direct (Mars Direct | The Mars Society) plan a few years ago, but no one really wants to use it in reality.

Now it seems that it is a good way to overtake in corners.

NACA first shared this idea with Lockheed Martin, who was responsible for the return module of the Orion spacecraft, and the latter responded within a day.

Lockheed Martin said this technology is very simple. It can add a cable device between the docking parts of the Orion spacecraft's return module and service module. It can be released to 120 meters long and rotate around the center to generate 0.25G gravity.

If it progresses quickly enough, it might be used in the Artemis project to land on the moon.

As for Lao Ma's starship landing plan, Lockheed is a bit ambiguous. They believe that the starship is too heavy and unreliable, and it will be really troublesome if it is really thrown away. It is better to use a traditional spacecraft, with a side of 200 tons, to carry people. The power part is separated from the power part, and the weight of 400 tons is not too big or too small, just right.

Claire was confused for a while. Why didn't he know what Lockheed was thinking? Isn’t it just that you don’t want specaX’s starship to come to fruition?

NACA disagrees. Each of these established contractors is very open-minded. How can emerging companies like Blue Origin and specaX be so easy to handle?

You know, specaX and Blue Origin are both supported by NACA.

Back then, Xiaobu's "Constellation" project was huge, including the "Ares" series of rockets, the Orion spacecraft and other projects, which was even more ambitious than the Artemis project.

Later, the Constellation Project ended, and these projects were not moved at all.

The Orion spacecraft was completed at that time, with Lockheed Martin developing the return module and Europe (mainly Airbus) developing the service module.

The Orion spacecraft originally used the liquid oxygen methane engine researched by OPI Company in Huntsville, Alabama, which considered fuel production on Mars and the moon.

After the Constellation project ended, NACA could not stand the high quotes from these old contractors, so it gave the liquid oxygen methane engine technology to two companies: Blue Origin and specaX.

So why are the BE series and Raptor, the main engines of these two companies, both methane engines? This is traceable and has origins.

Among the "Ares" series of rockets, the Ares 1 rocket using a five-stage SRB solid rocket made its first flight. Its rocket body and solid rocket recovery technology were given to specaX. This is the Falcon 9 rocket's rocket body technology and partial recovery. source of technology.

And when it comes to vertical recovery of rockets, this was done by the alliance at the end of the period. You can imagine where the relevant personnel at that time went after the war.

SpecaX In addition to the original Falcon 1, the most important Falcon 9 rocket body and recovery technology are strongly supported by NACA, and they are also very effective. The entire Falcon 9 program costs less than the Ares 1 program for one month. There are many flowers...

The launch cost of Ares-1, which uses a space shuttle booster as the first-stage rocket, is as expensive as an SLS rocket. You can imagine how ruthless those contractors are.

NACA engineer Mike Hockachak also went to provide on-site guidance after the explosion of the specaX launch pad.

SpecaX has never encountered related problems since then.

But the starship is different. This is the plan that specaX wants to promote. For 9-meter rockets and spaceships, it is obviously not that easy. Musk may want to attract NACA's interest through the Mars plan to obtain something like the Falcon. 9 Such support.

Although the Artemis project has decided to use Blue Origin's "Blue Moon" lander, Lao Ma has been promoting his own starship, but NACA has been hesitant.

The first is the high-thrust methane machine. Blue Origin’s BE4 has not been successful. It is difficult to say how reliable the Raptor is.

To launch a starship into space, the super-heavy booster needs to be equipped with 29 Raptor-generation engines, using a three-circle 1+8+20 layout. With so many engines, NACA feels the same way about it as the Alliance people look at N1. Afraid.

The tragedy of N1 was still vivid in her mind, and Claire was hesitant to let NACA step into this pit.

Technically, he believes that half a century of human technological progress should have been able to solve the problems of control computers and excessive vibration, especially the Xinyuan-3 with 19 engines and the Long March 10 with 10 engines and 20 combustion chambers. After all successful launches.

But Starship... This is different from Falcon 9, which can appropriate some mature technologies. This requires considerable new development investment.

However, someone soon made the decision for him.

When the 220-ton Axis part of the Advance floated in low-Earth orbit, the first people to go crazy were the Congressmen. They were extremely frightened by the huge progress of the Advance and felt great pressure.

However, spacecrafts that are not for military purposes cannot be sanctioned for various reasons. Therefore, after a difficult struggle, although the expenditure in the aerospace field this year has exceeded 100 billion US dollars, Congress gritted its teeth and approved a new plan:

NACA needs to conduct artificial gravity spacecraft research.