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

The fuel tank currently used by the base to transport fuel to the Wutu Space Station is actually no different from the rocket body, and even looks exactly the same.

It was launched using Xinyuan-3 and was designed with a diameter of 7 meters. Compared with ordinary rockets, it only has a few more small engines for attitude adjustment in the second stage.

However, its cost is indeed not low. The liquid hydrogen container is inherently expensive and can transport nearly 120 tons of fuel. Together with the rocket launch cost, it costs about 500 million yuan to replenish one time, of which more than 300 million yuan is the rocket launch cost, but it is also There is no room for further compression.

The purchase price of United Mining was quoted at 1.2 billion yuan. On the surface, only 10 launches would cost 12 billion. United Mining could not help but spend its money like this.

The fuel tank of Wutu Space Station can store 240 tons of fuel, which is 2.4 billion yuan to refill. Jiuzhang requires about 90 tons for one refueling, and the average fuel cost for each refueling is 960 million yuan. .

A fully fueled Jiuzhang can carry 160 tons of payload down and back to the space station. If it only carries a load of less than 40 tons at a time, it can be refueled once every three missions.

This cost of use is quite affordable for United Mining, which has sufficient financial strength. Compared with traditional aerospace landing, it saves maybe 90% of the funds, but considering the number of frequent missions, it still takes up a lot of money. cost.

Lin Ju naturally thought of the idea of ​​reusing the fuel tank, but this would require it to be larger. It must be able to push himself to the moon to transfer fuel and then fly back to the earth. The final total mass can be controlled to 1,000 tons. Extremely excellent.

It can re-enter the atmosphere and refuel. Isn’t this a starship?

So the fuel delivery task should be outsourced to SpecaX... of course not possible.

Not to mention that they don’t know when they will succeed and the two sides are on opposite sides. Even if they are outsourced, Lin Ju doesn’t believe it can be lower than 500 million yuan, which is only 143 million US dollars. Even if Starship succeeds, it will never be possible. It's lower than that.

"What are you thinking about?"

Academician She's voice interrupted his thinking, and Lin Ju realized that more than ten minutes had passed and the Nine Chapters had entered the second stage of descent.

"Nothing, just..."

He asked the question he had just thought about. Academician She frowned and thought for a while and said:

"Then just like Dawn 1, we also add a nuclear engine to it to travel between low-Earth orbit and lunar orbit. We just launch the fuel into low-Earth orbit, so that the cost of the rocket comes down, not counting R\u0026D, design and The cost itself is discounted, and it’s about the same within 500 million.”

"This... is a solution, but nuclear engines are still expensive... The manufacturing and launch of a nuclear engine costs two to three billion, and the cost still cannot be amortized. It's not feasible."

"..."

Academician She can't think of a better idea for the time being. After all, it is necessary to send more than a hundred tons of stuff from the earth to the moon. No matter how it is changed, it is still not a trivial matter, and the cost will not be lower no matter how low it is.

Both of them were stumped for a while, but finally Academician She said:

"Actually, 1.2 billion is pretty good. We can reduce costs to this extent, which is beyond the reach of NACA. They do the same thing. Even with the new stainless steel SL-X, it costs more than 1 billion US dollars. We must learn Contentment.”

"What is contentment?"

The two turned around and saw Zhong Cheng walking over, and Shen Zuozhou took over his coordination and command.

Academician She told him the question just now, and then Zhong Cheng also joined in the thinking.

After about a minute, he raised his head and began to analyze:

"1.2 billion is already very low. The Xinyuan-3 rocket can be reused. Now the cost of launch has been compressed to the extreme and cannot be reduced. So the biggest problem is that we must not use it for launch, otherwise the cost will definitely not go down. It must be controlled within 300 million.”

"It will be launched using a rocket with Xinyuan-2 level capacity."

Lin Ju revealed his hidden meaning. The lowest internal price quoted by the Xinyuan 2 Aviation Development Committee was 350 million.

Zhong Cheng: "Yes, that's it, but its recovery capacity is only 45 tons, and the maximum fuel it can send up is 40 tons."

"But this makes no sense. Using it to launch 120 tons of fuel into low-Earth orbit is 1 billion, and it also has to be sent to the moon. This is not as good as Xinyuan-3."

Academician She immediately expressed his rebuttal. The Xinyuan-3 rocket may actually be the most cost-effective rocket in China. Although the single cost is high, it cannot support large quantities. The more payloads, the more cost-effective.

The topic fell silent again, as if it had reached a dead end.

It is really expensive to launch things from the earth into space. The capacity of rockets has been squeezed to the limit, and it is difficult to make any major breakthroughs.

Lin Ju shook his head. He felt that he was still too greedy. The current results were already very good, so there was no need to force it.

But just then Zhong Cheng spoke again:

"Then we should use Xinyuan-3. The payload of 120 tons is too small. We will use its low-Earth orbit transport capacity of 270 tons. Assuming that 255 tons of fuel can be sent to space, the unit price of fuel will be reduced by 50% immediately."

"What about the middle section? A100 is not cheap, and it takes time, so the cost cannot be amortized.

If you still use a hydrogen-oxygen machine to push it by yourself, too much fuel will be consumed. "

"Of course we still have to use nuclear engines, that's the only way to do it."

Zhong Cheng looked at Lin Ju and then put forward his own idea:

"But instead of making new ones, we use existing nuclear engines to propel it."

"current……"

Academician She suddenly thought of the Liming-1 ferry that was launched just last month, and immediately reacted.

"Use Dawn 1 to push the fuel tank. It can push it, but... the speed is at most comparable to the Apollo spacecraft. It takes three days to fly, and a round trip takes almost 10 days including the fuel transfer time."

"That's true, but we don't use Dawn 1, we use Dawn 2."

Zhong Cheng: "Lingming 2 is a cargo spacecraft. It can transport at least 12 tons of cargo at a time, right? It performs dual supply tasks of fuel and materials at the same time in a cycle of 10 days. This is almost the normal frequency and does not count as a cost. Anyway, we have will build it.

In this way, we will only spend... 700 million yuan to transport 120 tons of fuel. It doesn't matter if we use disposable fuel cans. Even if we recycle them, we won't save much. "

"But the most important thing is that we don't need to invest in research and development costs anymore. Everything is ready-made. We just need to speed up the construction of Dawn 2 a little bit."

Lin Ju's thoughts suddenly opened up. He also thought about the Storm. The nuclear-powered space shuttle would also play such a role in the future, but it was dedicated to transporting large cargo. It could take off from the earth and receive material transfers in orbit.

If there are no accidents, the Storm will probably not need to carry out the mission of returning to Earth.