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

The day before Artemis 4 flew to the moon, the last space shuttle Storm on the Progress space station detached and returned to Earth with the last seven astronauts including Li Sheng.

After the Pioneer space shuttle separated, there was only one space shuttle left on the Advance. In order to send all 26 astronauts down, the H1 Steadfast space shuttle was used in advance and the 19 astronauts were sent down in two times.

It was not until the early morning of February 24 that the last seven astronauts left on the space shuttle after a thorough inspection, which was four days later than expected.

After rounds of rigorous alternating inspections by humans and robots, the Forward has completely reached the rotation conditions.

Except for its initial configuration, all other docked spacecraft have been separated. Counting various experimental equipment and a large amount of materials that it has brought up since then, the current mass of the Forward is almost 1,695 tons.

It has been 113 days since its completion. The ground has spent nearly four months inspecting this unprecedented artificial celestial body and allowing astronauts to adapt to life.

Now it is about to be put into operation for the first time after a long period of testing.

In the ground command center in Beijing, Ye Changsi is commanding engineers from both the space agency and Xinyuan Base as the commander-in-chief.

The initial design of the Advance space station was completed by Androv, and after the formal construction stage, Serev took over, and finally Ye Changsi was deeply involved.

It stands to reason that it would be more appropriate for Serev to come now, but he is still eating sand in the northwest Gobi Desert. For the time being, Ye Changsi will direct the trial operation.

In addition to him, Xie Lev, He Yun, and Shen Zuozhou jointly serve as deputy commanders. Now only Shen Zuozhou and Shen Zuozhou are working hard to cooperate with him.

Shen Zuozhou has not had much contact with the Qianjin project. This was supposed to be the job of Academician She, but the latter has officially decided to leave front-line work after March and enter a substantial semi-retirement state.

The Advance is unprecedented in terms of operational quality, technical level, configuration and other aspects. Even though the space agency participated in the manufacture of six important service modules, its mastery of it is not profound.

When the construction of the Forward officially started, the space agency showed unanimous disapproval and resistance because its design time was too short, and Xinyuan had no experience in the design and operation of a large space station.

Building a space station is not only a technical issue, but also a matter of experience accumulation, which is very similar to warship design.

The tonnage of a destroyer is only a few thousand tons, while an ocean-going cargo ship is easily tens of thousands of tons, but in terms of design difficulty, the former is definitely higher.

The design of warship hulls must consider many aspects such as protection, water ingress prevention, redundant power, balance between speed and endurance, and maneuverability. This is far more complex than the design complexity of civilian ships.

What's more important is the various radar electronic equipment, weapon systems, etc. required by modern warships. It takes a year to test the electromagnetic compatibility of various equipment on modern warships.

The same goes for the space station. The technical difficulty of a large cabin for space tourism mainly lies in materials and processes. But for a behemoth like the Advance, every detail must be taken into consideration for the entire operating space station.

This is definitely a super project that is too complex to measure and requires a wealth of experience and sufficient preliminary verification tests. The risk of starting the Qianjin directly is so high that it makes one’s scalp numb.

The reason why the space agency invested huge sums of money in this project is largely because it hopes to "save" this huge investment super project from causing the largest space accident in history due to low-level errors.

But as the space agency became more involved, things started to get weird.

In the construction drawings handed over by Xin Yuanjiao, there were actually a lot of designs that they couldn't understand. They either didn't know what the function was, or they knew the function but didn't understand why such a design plan was adopted.

Then the engineers sent by Xinyuan would explain the reasons, and the space agency was surprised to find that the original design of the Advance was not only not rough, but was overly refined, with almost every detail taken into consideration.

Shen Zuozhou had participated in the manufacturing of the noise reduction part of the service module and the gravity/weightlessness adaptive ergonomic equipment in the cabin, and then he was shocked to find that the noise reduction design and gravity-related optimization of the Qianjin's main cabin were much better than those of the Tiangong Space Station.

After the main body of the Advance was completely constructed, he always had a strong illusion:

It is impossible for the Qianjin to be designed by one person or a dozen people in a short time. It feels more like getting ready-made drawings and following them, so that there will be almost no major defects after completion.

From design to construction, it was completely seamless and incredibly smooth.

Although there have been "rumors" that behind Xinyuan is a group of overseas Chinese concentrated in the high-tech field, it is impossible to find such a level of drawings even if the NACA database is emptied.

In the end, he could only think that the researchers' abilities were too abnormal, and the leading ones were geniuses in science and engineering, so they could accomplish such a miracle in a short period of time.

The space agency has been involved for so long, but no one can guarantee that they fully understand the space station. So much so that Shen Zuozhou, deputy commander-in-chief, is actually still trying his best to learn about the space station from Ye Changsi.

As for He Yuan, who had just entered the capital to work later, he was in the stage of looking around.

Now Ye Changsi is paying attention to the core rotation control module that is transmitted remotely from the base.

The same information is also displayed simultaneously on the console of the Forward's pilot cabin, which further illustrates its high independent capability.

What Shen Zuozhou saw was a three-dimensional view of the frame of the Forward. Each part was filled with varying degrees of blue. There was a flashing red dot in the center of the front view, overlapping with a slightly larger green dot.

“Green is the geometric center of the Advance, based on factory data from each cabin and frame structure.

We measured their mass, size and center of gravity distribution in advance, and then wrote it into the computer. As long as the completely unloaded Forward is installed in place, the deviation between its center of gravity and the center of rotation will not exceed one thousandth.

And you know that all the supplies we provide to the Advance need to be packaged strictly in a specific way, so their data can be regarded as almost standard, and the current center of gravity can be corrected after being input into the computer.

Of course, these are all loose theoretical references and are only used as a basis for adjustment after rotation. The actual situation is far from that simple. "

Ye Changsi was not only telling Shen Zuozhou and He Ruo, but also indirectly imparting experience to Li Sheng, the captain of the Advance.

The latter still needs time to adapt just after coming down, but it has not stopped moving forward like a qualified spaceship captain.