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

Washington.

"We need to carry out an intensive exploration plan in deep space beyond Mars, mainly including Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus or Neptune, including possible manned landing operations."

Robert's first words made Musk open his mouth in surprise and look at the others uncertainly.

Representatives of Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Grumman and other military-industrial complexes are all senior executives above the vice president level, and their expressions are equally wonderful.

They originally came here because NACA had released rumors about expanding the Mars project to bid for it, but they heard the explosive news just as they arrived.

They all looked at Robert directly in front of him, and found no joke.

When it comes to deep space exploration, NACA's position is still far ahead. This is the result of cutting off most of the exploration plans after the millennium.

The last nearly successful plan was the Jupiter exploration plan in 2005, which was proposed at the same time as the "Constellation" plan to return to the moon and even land on Mars, but it was also canceled in 2006.

From the Voyager Project to the Galileo Project to Cassini, all giant planets NACA in the solar system outside the asteroid belt have detected data to varying degrees, and it is not difficult to carry out follow-up plans.

But the manned landing is worth pondering. Landing on these extremely distant celestial bodies is much more difficult than landing on Mars. The cycle is long and the return is extremely low. There is no need at all.

But even if they didn't understand, no one asked why. After all, no matter whether it was successful or not, they still needed to carry out research with the huge budget of the federal government.

The silence of the crowd was completely within Robert's expectation. He quickly added as if not giving them a chance to refuse:

“The Chinese want to land on the moon, so we compete with them to land on the moon; the Chinese want to land on Mars, so we have Ares, the god of war.

This seriously goes against the pioneering and adventurous spirit of NACA. Even if we want to compete, we should compare who can do it better, rather than saying: We can do it too.

We must do what the Apollo program did to the Oriental program, to do great things that our predecessors have not had time to accomplish, a super plan that truly means conquering the universe.

The President has drafted a plan to carry out manned exploration of Europa and Titan, the other planets in the solar system that are very likely to have life. At the same time, he will launch a probe to Neptune, the farthest planet in the solar system, to study what may be captured from the Kuiper Belt. Satellite Triton.

The three plans are named after Europa, Titan, and Trident respectively, and are collectively referred to as the "Constellation" plan. The entire Constellation plan will use nuclear propulsion as the main power and complete three major sub-plans within ten years to complete the task of searching for life in the solar system. And enable humans to have complete solar system navigation capabilities! "

"..."

Musk looked left and right and saw that the others were still silent. After thinking for a while, he raised his hand and raised his question:

"With all due respect, if the president was going to announce the plan on television like Kennedy did, the budget for the Ten-Year Plan would have to be at least doubled."

It has been five months since the "Ten-Year Space System Construction Plan" was released at the end of July. According to the plan, the NACA budget for fiscal year 2018 (from October 2017 to October 2018 according to federal rules) is US$49.8 billion, and each year thereafter will be based on the previous year. increased by 2.5%.

So far, NACA has just spent its budget for the 2017 fiscal year. Although there are a lot of projects, they accounted for less than one-half in the 2018 fiscal year. After the SLS rocket, with such a large budget, I really feel like I have money but don’t know how to spend it.

Of course, this is mainly because many plans have just been launched, and the most cost-consuming middle and late stages have not yet arrived. The remaining money may even be tight in the next fiscal year.

The engineering difficulty of the two manned landing plans on Saturn and Jupiter is beyond imagination. At least all current technologies must be innovated before they can be carried out. Otherwise, astronauts will not even be able to fly there within 10 years.

Nuclear propulsion is just the basic requirement for the entire plan, which also means a terrible cost spike.

The value of a nuclear reactor that can propel a large spacecraft forward will not be lower than that of an aircraft carrier reactor, and the combined cost may be slightly more than that of a nuclear aircraft carrier.

In the past, the Aramco space industry was generally optimistic that the total budget of US$550 billion in the "Ten-Year Plan" was very sufficient, but if the Constellation plan was added, it might only be enough to get started.

Even Musk thinks that one trillion US dollars in ten years is a bit troublesome, and the difficulty is despairing to estimate.

However, it turned out that NACA's determination was stronger than imagined. Robert only gave a brief answer to his question:

"The Ten-Year Plan is about to lift budget restrictions. It will surpass the Apollo program and become the main work of the federal government in the next 10 years. If necessary, we will even reduce military spending to achieve this goal."

This is almost a clear statement to everyone that the federal government will fully support NACA. If you can say that even military spending will have to give way, either Robert is crazy or the government is really determined.

Even if the truth of this sentence is uncertain, Musk is moved by it. He already knows the reason why NACA increased the purchase of starship boosters to 15. It is not to prepare for landing on Mars as imagined, but for the Centaur project. .

The latter imitates the Gemini plan to carry out a lunar landing mission every two months. Currently, internal news is that it has been decided on 6 missions. From Centaur 1 to Centaur 6, at least 18 astronauts need to be sent to the moon. .

Originally he thought this was a shift in focus to the moon, but now it seems that it just represents NASA's crazier ambitions.

…

At the same time, John and his staff in the presidential palace are also paying attention to Robert's meetings with many aerospace companies.

“In ten years, through manned exploration of Jupiter and several further celestial bodies, we will gain experience in long-term survival and construction in deep space.

Through the technology accumulated in lunar construction, NACA will basically have the ability to build shelters in the Kuiper Belt by 2028. "

As Claire spoke, she was still drawing on the solar system star map hanging on the wall of John's office. The original world map had long been removed.

"At that time, we relied on the resources of the moon and Mars to build transit bases on Jupiter and Saturn, and built space ports based there. It would be best to use Triton as an outpost, and then go to Kuiper in 10 to 15 years. The total plan to build the shelter will take no more than 30 years.

This is an escape route that stretches from the Earth to Neptune, through the continuous relay of resources from six planets, to create an escape channel that can sustain the fire of civilization. "

John stared blankly at the white lines drawn by Claire that ran through almost half of the star map. He could already imagine how human beings must try their best to trek on this arduous journey across the galaxy.

He seemed to see ants coming out of the nest one after another, dying on the way to the end. As the ant closest to the queen, he could not even see the day of final success.

A signal requires humans to spend three generations of youth struggling to survive. So how powerful will its owner be?