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

If one had to use a metaphor to describe the difference between riding on a spaceship and other spacecrafts, Lin Ju believed that the most similar experience would be on a roller coaster.

Unlike rockets and airplanes, the way Jiuzhang fights gravity is the four air tip engines at the bottom. The two engines at the tail mainly provide thrust for horizontal movement, but both can also be obtained at the same time through attitude conversion.

The thrust source of conventional space shuttles and rockets is roughly unchanged, and the movement trajectories also need to follow certain rules. Most of the time, Lin Ju can know how the attitude will change in the next second.

But the Jiuzhanghao is different. It is more similar to a four-axis rotor drone. The thrust vector adjustment range of the four air-tip engines is also very wide, and the attitude can be flexibly switched under the control of AI.

Although Jiuzhanghao is an aircraft that works in a vacuum environment, it inherits the design shape of the XN90. Even without wings, it has considerable aerodynamic performance. The fuselage and the propulsion modules on both sides just constitute the central lifting body layout. , the overall lift is considerable at a certain angle of attack and speed.

The XN90 was designed with sudden failure (non-human) factors in mind. As long as the initial altitude or speed is sufficient, it can even support an unpowered emergency landing, and its aerodynamic performance is evident.

When the Jiuzhang takes off to the Renshou supply point, it will maintain a flight altitude of more than 3,000 meters and fly at supersonic speeds at an angle of attack of more than 10 degrees. During the period, the maximum speed will exceed Mach 2.

Sitting in the cockpit of the spacecraft, Lin Ju could only see the sky rapidly retreating behind the porthole, and at the same time he could feel the alarming noise in the cabin.

One of the unavoidable problems with the polyhedral shape of supersonic speed is the strong vibration of the aircraft body. Because the cross-sectional area is larger, the movement and noise are much more terrifying than that of aircraft of the same level. Obviously the six engines combined have only 180 tons of thrust, but The intuitive feeling on the ground is equivalent to that of a kiloton heavy rocket.

At the Renshou supply point next to the Minjiang River, engineers at the base have been waiting here with their watches on since the Jiuzhang took off.

They temporarily borrowed an abandoned factory building by the river and cleared out a large area. The original floor was concrete and was covered with a layer of steel plates.

In fact, the thrust of a single engine of the Jiuzhang is only 25 to 30 tons, and the concrete ground can fully withstand it. However, aging factors need to be considered here to prevent the ground from being broken into pieces and flying up to hit the spacecraft.

Almost two minutes later, the supply point saw black irregular flying objects appearing on the horizon. The Jiuzhang was not small when viewed from the ground at an altitude of 3,000 meters.

Standing in the open space, Hu Dong held soundproof earmuffs in his hand, ready to put them on at any time, silently calculating the time for the supersonic shock wave to reach the ground.

However, what entered the ears earlier than the sonic boom were the voices, large and small, in the distance. They were all fishermen near the Minjiang River or locals walking. They also discovered UFOs that suddenly appeared in the sky, and they all raised their hands high. The phone tries to take a picture.

Hu Dong finally counted five silently and then immediately put on earmuffs. Within seconds, he felt the ground began to vibrate strongly, and the shock wave had reached the ground.

Citizens who did not wear earmuffs only felt a steady stream of thunderstorms in their ears, and the originally calm river surface was also broken. The curses of a group of fishermen immediately sounded, but they were all covered by the explosion in the air.

On the contrary, they have become somewhat accustomed to sonic booms. After all, Teng Yun's frequent flights often produce such noises, and they can hear them once every few days.

Of course, the most interesting thing is the UFO that does not look like an airplane in the sky. Just when people were recording the video despite the noise, they found that the UFO began to gradually reduce its altitude. It looked like it was about to make an emergency landing?

But the Jiuzhang's movements were faster than their thinking speed. After all, its fuel was only enough for 6 minutes at most. 150 kilometers was the maximum distance of a single jump in the atmosphere. Before people could fully understand it, it tilted The posture spins down in the air, with almost no hovering and continuously lowering the altitude. The high-temperature gas diffused by the tail flame disperses in all directions, forming a strong wind blowing by.

This spaceship, which looked like it had stepped out of a science fiction movie, landed in the center of an abandoned factory, wrapped in dust, as if it had just experienced a fierce battle.

The fire trucks that had been prepared in advance were quickly dispatched to spray water mist above the spacecraft to cool down. After the water vapor and dust mist covering the spacecraft dissipated, the door on the side of the cockpit opened downwards, and a figure wearing a spacesuit climbed down and opened the door. Breathing in fresh air through the mask.

Of course this is Lin Ju himself. Although he is also a skilled pilot, the overload direction of the Jiuzhang is not simply backward but occurs irregularly. It is still easy to make people feel dizzy when it is shaking around.

The five-minute flight was comparable to a roller coaster with a rotating mechanism. The acceleration and deceleration were too violent.

Engineers gathered around to inspect the spacecraft and add fuel, but Lin Ju suddenly heard his cell phone vibrating.

"Hello?"

"Where are you now? Are you on the spaceship?"

"Ah? Mr. She, I'm shopping in the city."

"Fart! You were captured on TikTok!"

Only then did Lin Ju see that many citizens and vehicles had gathered outside the abandoned factory. He kept raising his mobile phone to take pictures. From this distance, they could already see the gray "XAP" logo on the side of the spacecraft.

Many people even recognized Lin Ju's figure. He turned around and waved as a greeting, then stood farther away from the spacecraft.

"Don't worry, Mr. She. Next time I'll ask you to sit on the one that goes straight to space, even to the moon.

Not to mention, the phone is out of liquid hydrogen. "

After hanging up the phone, Lin Ju also turned on the front camera, took a selfie of himself and Jiuzhanghao, and posted a copy on Weibo and Twitter.

…

507.

For the joint mining exploration operation at the end of the year, the five astronauts and payload experts selected by the leadership arrived here for adaptive training.

This includes Rolls-Royce nuclear expert Jamie Stevenson and aerospace expert Anthony Hopkins who came to participate in the early negotiations. The two received a period of theoretical training at ESA and then transferred here. .

In fact, they are only required to master the most basic space knowledge. The main thing is to get to know the crew members of their mission and get to know each other to facilitate communication.

They cannot master Chinese in such a short period of time, but Jingwei Xintong provides a synchronous translator that is not available on the market. It can also collect personal sounds, and the results are very good when used.

Now Stevenson is exchanging information on the structure and composition of the lunar geological layer with Academician Zhou, who also plans to go to the moon. This is an important basis for making early plans.

The two were having a heated exchange, and then they approached Hopkins and walked over quickly, holding up his coffee and cheering.

"Jamie, we're going on a real spaceship!"

"Hiss~"

Both Stevenson and Academician Zhou watched the short video shot by Renshou citizens with their eyes wide open, especially the scene where the Jiuzhang aircraft fell from the sky and then Lin Ju jumped off the spacecraft.

Anyone who has watched science fiction movies can almost imagine a scene like this: a future human spacecraft arrives at a new planet, and then drives an advanced landing spacecraft to land on the ground to begin investigation.

This kind of thing actually happened in reality, and more than an hour later, the Jiuzhang took off again and flew towards the dock in Yizhou. It was even more shocking than the landing. It was hard to believe that what happened before our eyes was a fact.

Stevenson and others can naturally recognize that this is the landing craft that will be used by United Mining. The 507 Institute has built a wooden model based on its structure for drills, and everyone is familiar with it.

But looking at pictures is one thing, and the flight of the real thing is a completely different feeling. The impact of the Jiuzhanghao is even stronger than that of a 10,000-ton super rocket.

If experts didn't know very well that the technology used by Jiuzhang was not too advanced, they would even be tempted to suspect that it was a UFO.

"Damn, I actually doubted its authenticity."

Hopkins had even publicly criticized the Jiuzhang before, because according to traditional aerospace science, its ideal design method should be a cylinder like a rocket, with a simple structure and high mass utilization, and the empty weight would only be that of the Jiuzhang. Less than half.

But after seeing this non-"scientific" creation with his own eyes, he immediately rejected his previous idea. Just based on its appearance and landing posture, he has become a loyal supporter of the spaceship party.

Stevenson: "It seems that the CZ-18 will be launched in half a month. We should rent a helicopter and see what it will be like with the super rocket sending the spacecraft into space."

Hopkins: "But I feel like the rocket's wake could overturn the helicopter or even cause a tsunami."

"You worry too much about Anthony."

Although Stevenson does not understand aerospace, he is very aware of the power of underwater nuclear bomb explosions. At least the impact generated by the rocket will not be stronger than that of a nuclear bomb.

A lot of the nuclear information I brought was shared with Aramco, so I have quite a lot of experience.

Hopkins: "Okay...but we should go to Qiongzhou tomorrow. There is a new spacecraft about to be launched there, and I want to take a look.

It seems to be a passenger spacecraft used between Tiangong Space Station and Wutu Space Station, called...um..."

"Dawn One."

Academician Zhou added a name for him. "Dawn" is the name of the Shuguang spacecraft that is powered by the A100 nuclear engine. Its name comes from Shuguang. The overall appearance is longer than the Shuguang spacecraft, but its mass is much larger, close to 30 Ton.

The Dawn spacecraft will be launched unmanned by Xinyuan-2 in Qiongzhou on November 19, and will conduct its first manned round-trip test after receiving the Tiangong Space Station, sending 1.5 tons of supplies and three astronauts to the lunar orbit. Go up to the space station.

Hopkins: "Yeah, Dawn One, I thought I could get on the Storm."

Stevenson: "I'd rather go on the Advance. It's much cooler than the space shuttle."

I haven’t asked for a monthly ticket for a long time~(●''●)