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

"Great, United Mining is the most amazing company I have ever seen!"

On July 14, the Artemis VI command module carrying three astronauts crashed into the sea near the west coast, and Roy and others saw a group of people led by Jim, deputy director of NACA, the next day.

The astronauts are now recuperating at the Astronaut Training Center in Houston, but their mental state is quite good, and it can even be said that they are the most energetic group Jim has ever seen after performing a lunar mission.

Roy, who was too excited, took the initiative to talk about everything he saw, and he couldn't stop talking: "... You will never imagine how extravagant the Chinese are... Jiuzhang is just a small mobile base. I can even say that its living conditions are better than the "Gateway", with complete facilities and ample space! Their supplies are also at all costs. It only takes four days for the supplies sent from the earth to reach the moon at the fastest. It takes less than 24 hours for fresh vegetables from the Tiangong Space Station to arrive! God, every meal I have eaten has exceeded all the space meal standards I have heard of before. Of course, I know you want to hear more about technology. We are equipped with two T7s and two T3s in total. The former is powered by a nuclear reactor and the latter is powered by isotope batteries. Pools, there is a constant supply of electricity!

You don’t know how smart their space suits are. Wearing them, you can jump to 10 meters high or the same depth...”

Roy’s narration was a bit messy because of his excitement, but the NACA experts did not interrupt him. Instead, they quickly wrote down the key points and quickly constructed the true situation of the Sky Curtain Project in their minds:

The Chinese have almost unlimited supplies of materials, most of their energy needs have achieved nuclear power, and robots are assisted in their work, which greatly reduces the intensity of astronauts’ work...

Jim looked at the written words and was more and more shocked. Matthew and others had a similar conversation some time ago. Jim could feel that the power of the Chinese on the moon has become stronger!

Compared with this, the "Columbus" camp seemed too slow. It was only a few missions, and even the foundation was not ready!

What Roy said was absolutely right. United Mining was creating miracles every moment, which really couldn’t be described!

After Roy, Jim asked Felix and his deputy commander separately. Although the caliber was not quite the same, they could hear their shock at the Chinese aerospace technology.

After leaving the training center, Jim immediately boarded a plane back to Washington and found Robert who was also busy.

…

"NOVA has not even had a successful engine test. Can you achieve the goal of this year's test launch!"

Just as he approached Robert's office door, Jim heard a roar from inside, and then rationally found a place to sit down first.

The content was about the Saturn VII rocket "NOVA". As far as he knew, this giant launch system was not progressing smoothly.

The fastest progress of Saturn VII was the first stage of the rocket body. Although the 14-meter diameter of the rocket body was unprecedented, Boeing made rapid progress with the support of NACA's huge funding. Three months ago, it successfully trial-produced the first 14-meter diameter ring, and the first stage of the prototype was about to be completed in intensive manufacturing.

The second stage of the recyclable spacecraft was handed over to Lockheed, and now it has just completed the verification test. They successfully carried out an atmospheric return test on a 1:3 scaled-down model, and this year at most they will produce a full-size static test sample.

If these two are slow but tolerable, Rocketdyne's F1R engine is too frightening.

The F1R design is a minimum throttling range of 10% and reuse, which doesn't sound too difficult, but you have to know that this is a 680-ton thrust liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen rocket engine!

The Long March 18 uses 39 hydrogen-oxygen engines with a thrust of 280 tons, which also has the factor of the difficulty of throttling the super-thrust rocket engine!

The reusable transformation and ignition test of F1R were quite smooth, but the throttling part was simply a disaster. There was a risk of flameout when throttling to 30%, and the thrust change caused by throttling was completely nonlinear, which made the designers of Rocketdyne pull out their hair.

Not to mention the first flight promised at the end of 2018, it seems that there is little hope in 2020.

The noise in Robert's office lasted for more than 10 minutes, and then the designer responsible for coordinating Saturn VII came out with an ugly face, and Jim waited for a few minutes before going in.

Seeing that it was his deputy, Robert tried to calm down as much as possible. He simply read the report brought by Jim and put it aside, and then began to complain about various projects:

"Saturn VII is backward and unreasonable. In fact, there is no need to support it, but I still have to try my best to save this shit! Endeavour is the one I am most satisfied with. It would be great if everyone was as efficient and responsible as JFT...

Oh, and SSTO, that monster that Hu Bing put together has already started to be manufactured, but the engineer I sent to keep an eye on it told me that the existing design will be overweight by more than 20%, and the aerospace plane can't fly at all!

Damn, why, why do Chinese people do everything so smoothly!"

Robert's visit to China was not only to discuss aliens. Although he didn't go to the Xinyuan Base, which he wanted to go to the most, he visited the Jingu Rocket Manufacturing Base.

Jingu Base began to learn from Xinyuan more than a year ago and began automation transformation. Even if it was not as exaggerated as OGAS, it has achieved remarkable production and quality improvement.

There, Robert saw the body of the Long March 5 rocket that is expected to make its first flight this year. The Chinese started construction on six rockets at the same time before the first flight of this rocket. It seemed that they were not worried about failure at all.

The only one in Ame that can compare with it is SpecaX, but SpecaX can only mass-produce the first-level starships. The second-level spacecraft are still being modified, and there is no mass manufacturing capability for more complex space station modules.

Thinking about these is not just to compare with the Chinese, but also an urgent need to deal with the alien crisis.

After going to China, he accepted the opinions put forward by the other party's experts. Whether he was escaping or fighting, he must first build huge space infrastructure and spaceships. NACA was also studying long-term plans.

If delays continue in the future, it may be difficult to complete the original 10-year plan.

Jim listened to his complaints silently, suddenly got up and locked the office door, sat down again and asked softly:

"Your Excellency Director, haven't you considered purchasing Chinese technology? At least now we should all be in the same boat."

Robert's face looked a little bad, but he was not angry, but explained in a low voice:

"We made a vague proposal, but they were very resolute and refused to share advanced technology. It may be related to the market opening next year. At least we don't want to inquire about these things until we make a serious profit here.

Damn it, I hope all our companies will not go bankrupt next year due to Chinese dumping. The president has really opened up all fields. "

Jim was immediately disappointed. He wanted to say something but held back, and finally uttered:

"The president is too weak and we shouldn't keep giving in like this."