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

"I guarantee you, John... the artificial sun must be put into operation much earlier than Chengdian-1. We only need one launch and a few days of debugging to be ready."

In John's office, Robert was sworn to the president:

"The artificial sun has entered the manufacturing stage, and two of them will be manufactured at one time. It is very safe. It will definitely shine on Ami before October."

John raised his eyebrows: "Really? Chengdian No. 1, which is heavier and more complicated than yours, has already started construction. I hope you won't delay this time."

"Of course, artificial sun technology is destined to be very reliable and will never go wrong."

Robert is very confident that in order to meet the deadline and reduce the difficulty, the artificial sun project is really simple in structure.

A mirror with a diameter of 1,100 meters and an expanded area of ​​more than 1 million square meters may sound exaggerated, but its main body is rolled from ultra-thin aluminum foil with an average thickness of 0.0045 mm. The total weight of such a large area is only 130 tons. When folded, it is a 50 A large cylinder one meter high.

Pieces of oversized aluminum foil are installed on the folding frame made of memory alloy, so there is no need to worry about reliability issues caused by repeated folding.

As long as the sun shines on it, the main body of the aluminum foil will heat up quickly, causing the memory alloy to stretch outwards. It does not require an extremely complicated mechanical expansion structure. Small parts of the deformation can be repaired by the space shuttle, which is not too difficult in theory.

The rocket that launched it is the SLX Block2 rocket using the Centaur IV upper stage, with a transport capacity of up to 180 tons. The total weight of the artificial sun is only 160 tons. As long as it is sent to low-Earth orbit, it can slowly use its fuel to raise the orbit to synchronization. track.

Aluminum foil and RCS, these two systems almost constitute the entire artificial sun.

Compared with the assumptions of the last century, advances in electronic technology have easily solved the difficulty of real-time adjustment of orbits, but the fuel consumption is high and needs to be replenished regularly.

But this was insignificant in the face of the goal of applying it earlier than Chengdu No. 1, and both John and Robert readily accepted this problem.

After all, the artificial sun project itself does not cost much. Compared with the huge social effects it produces, it is even more cost-effective.

John finally experienced the legendary "remote speed". It only took a few months from the actual preparation to launch of the artificial sun project, which was definitely highly efficient.

"Thank you, Robert, this is the good news I was most looking forward to."

Robert was about to speak, but was interrupted by a knock on the door. It turned out to be the intern delivering daily news summaries.

It's still only around 6 to 7 o'clock in the morning. Of course it's not this early in normal times. Today, John needs to attend a speaking event early, so he went to work early to arrange some important matters.

The young intern is a girl who has just graduated. In addition to delivering documents, her job is to deal with the media at inconvenient times. Whenever the officials do not want to answer certain questions and have to answer them, they will ask the intern who knows nothing to come forward. Fooling around has become an old rule of the presidential palace.

The intern looked happy and waved the information in his hand.

"Mr. President, I saw one more message before I came in here."

"Oh, what is that, looks good to you?"

"Of course! Just a few minutes ago, China's missile launch failed and the wreckage fell into the South China Sea!"

"What?"

Both John and Robert were a little surprised. The Chinese missile test failed. This is really rare news.

"let me see."

Robert took the intern's cell phone and quickly found the source of the message. It was actually sent by CGTN itself.

"...At 18:39 on June 8, Beijing time, a DF15B ballistic missile lost its terminal signal during a test launch at sea. The wreckage fell into the South China Sea area. There are now ships carrying out salvage procedures. The relevant waters will be affected for the next three days. Control will be implemented during the day, ships please avoid..."

Robert was still reading, but John suddenly remembered something:

"I remember, the day before yesterday, or yesterday? McMaster told me that the Chinese were preparing to conduct a missile test in the South China Sea. He also sent two warships to monitor it. They had not conducted a similar shooting test for a long time.

Haha, this is the second good news. Is this a new missile? What does the failure mean? "

John asked with great interest, but Robert scratched his head and thought about something. After a while, he answered:

"If I remember correctly, the DF15B is an old model from the last century, and it is a medium-range missile. Its technology should be very mature. Even if there is a problem, it is impossible... Look at what is said in the news, the terminal lost control and crashed? This The mistake is too serious, they should not make such a mistake, it is very wrong.”

But obviously John didn’t think much about it, and even joked with a smile:

"Isn't it normal for old things from the last century to malfunction? Our Chinese friends have always been too smooth, and now they can finally calm down a little, haha, I want to send a tweet, this is so interesting!"

John picked up the phone and started editing. After confirming with satisfaction that the undertone of ridicule in it was over, he was about to send it out, but was interrupted again.

McMaster, whose clothes were somewhat disheveled, appeared at the door out of breath. His bald head was covered with beads of sweat. He was no longer the same as before. He was breathing heavily, with a pair of frightened eyes on his restless face.

"Herbert, what happened to make you so panicked!"

Even during the M incident, John had never seen McMaster so panicked. Suddenly seeing him like this, he even doubted whether the third season was about to start.

McMaster looked like a drowning man who had just climbed ashore, his body pretending to be calm and trembling slightly, obviously his emotions were suppressed to the extreme.

"Test... intercept... test..."

…

Half an hour ago, South China Sea.

The missile will not be launched for a while. Around the designated square warhead landing area, two Y-9 modified electronic intelligence aircraft are constantly hovering, and from time to time they deliberately get close to the anti-submarine helicopters that are driving the Aramco destroyers to take off, but they are just pretending.

Both electronic warfare aircraft had been temporarily modified, and the pilots also knew what their real mission was, so they deliberately let Ami's helicopter get very close without driving it away, just to let them see it.

Although the colleagues on the helicopter were surprised that the resistance they encountered today was extremely small, they were still approaching the bottom line.

This time it was a test launch into the sea, flying 1,000 kilometers from the inland to attack a target at sea. This kind of experience was too rare. The helicopter pilot couldn't wait to collect information. Of course, it would be better if he could salvage the experimental warhead first.

China’s last sea test launch was in the 1980s. The reason why there were so few sea launches was because sea launches required organizing a fleet to salvage the warhead and collect data. However, if the landing point is outside the target area or there is no strong fleet protection, it may be Others rushed to grab it but failed.

For the test launch in the 1980s, the military prepared for 10 years, building a cutting-edge warship capable of taking off helicopters, a first-type survey ship, training salvage technology, building supply ships needed for ocean navigation, etc.

It’s just that the pilot on the anti-submarine helicopter didn’t know that the warhead this time was a counterweight, not a buoy, and the purpose of the test was not the nearby landing zone.