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

"I want you to be cautious, this is going to be the most expensive single spacecraft ever built."

In the Houston launch command center, Robert asked the launch pad to check the status of the rocket again for the third time.

This "Artemis" artificial sun launched by SL-X is worth more than the same weight of gold, equivalent to nearly 150 tons of gold. If it falls, it will definitely be an unprecedented huge loss. Maybe the astronaut director will be raped for it. Lose your job.

Under his order, the staff at the Kennedy Space Center stood on the gondola and carefully inspected every detail of the rocket, even the screws, paying more attention than the moon landing mission.

But in a sense, the importance of the moon landing mission is actually far less than before.

Although the "Centaur" plan, which was originally planned to carry out a lunar landing mission every two months, was not implemented in place, this was due to the adjustment of the mission schedule of the lunar landing work. The required material preparations such as rockets and spacecraft were not even Exceeded expectations.

On September 26, a week ago, the Artemis 7 and 8 spacecraft were launched from the Kennedy Space Center and the Boca Chica Starship respectively.

Six astronauts and an inflatable module manufactured by Bigelow landed on the lunar surface on September 31 and are actively carrying out their mission.

The two spacecraft launched at the same time have also made progress. Their command modules were used in the Artemis 5 and 6 missions respectively. They were renovated and reused, significantly reducing the cost.

The spacecraft and rocket for Mission 9 are basically ready, and Mission 10 is also progressing rapidly. NACA has indeed fulfilled its original promise.

After several successful landings in a row, NACA quickly became familiar with the moon landing process. Everyone in the United States believed that this was a sign of NACA's revival. At the same time, they began to praise John's three major bills and believed that they had a role that cannot be ignored.

From "Gemini" to "Centaur" in the 1960s, no one will say that NACA has made no progress.

However, in Robert's mind, the Centaur program has reached a point where it needs to be changed. At least if it reaches aerospace cooperation with the Chinese next year, such efficiency will not be able to play a significant role.

"One hour to prepare!"

It has reached the final moment of the Artemis launch, and all launch-related personnel have evacuated. Robert's heart tightened little by little, and he waited with bated breath for the moment of ignition.

…

"Long live!"

"Ahhhhh..."

"we did it!, we made it!"

Over the junction of the African and European continents, an unprecedentedly heavy man-made celestial body is orbiting at an altitude of 390 kilometers.

Artemis is still in a contracted state, but after entering space, it first conducted several rounds of self-checks on electrical equipment, and no problems were found.

The personnel in the ground command center cheered in unison, celebrating their victory.

Artemis is the largest (area) man-made object in the world today and may be in the future, only slightly worse than the Chengdian-1 space power station.

In terms of weight alone, Artemis is not as heavy as the launch mass of the Chengdian-1 primary solar cell module.

At the end of July and September, the two Xinyuan-3s launched a total of more than 510 tons of solar panels. Now, the operating mass of Chengdian-1, which is only halfway through the process, has reached 660 tons, which is the largest besides Qianjin. Man-made spacecraft.

The only good thing is that the completion of Chengdian-1 will be delayed until 2019, and it will still be several months before it is actually put into operation. Generally speaking, it will be less than half a year later than Artemis. During this period, it will be the home field of the artificial sun.

In terms of technical content alone, the two are actually at the same level, and even artificial sun is higher in some aspects (referring to maintenance expenses).

"All employees have done a great job. All the coffee expenses for this month have been borne by NACA!"

Robert was equally happy, but he also forgot to tell the Artemis operation team:

"It must be carefully and thoroughly tested before it flies to geostationary orbit, otherwise we will not be able to hold on to the string of this kite."

…

CBS: "The Arab-US Congress passed a motion formally identifying the Wolf Clause as discriminatory and unequal, and will repeal it with immediate effect."

Bloomberg: "Former NASA Administrator Claire Borden: China-US friendship is reaching new heights and we will move forward together in the future."

ABC: "Gisinger is about to start a visit to discuss together."

The Times: “A vast conspiracy is taking shape around the Pacific, and the world needs to be more vigilant.”

TASS News Agency: "The traditional friendship between the two countries has a long history. The relationship between Lu and China is unbreakable and the love is stronger than gold."

Agence France-Presse: "The regular meeting of the Huayin Organization has achieved phased results, and the Dawn-6 mission is under active planning."

"..."

Throughout mid-to-late September, the huge progress made silently in space did not occupy the first hot search, but affairs on earth still firmly attracted everyone's attention.

The first Aramco trade delegation left in early October. Although no transaction details were disclosed to the outside world, according to "sources", the total transaction volume reached by the two parties exceeded 9 billion US dollars and involved a number of sensitive technologies.

This has undoubtedly further aggravated the panic of the outside world. Other countries throughout Europe and Asia have frequently sent visiting teams to inquire about the news, but so far it seems to have had no effect.

…

"Hello, Director Truk."

"Nice to meet you, young Lin."

Truk and Lin Ju held hands, leaving a picture in the flash.

The two people shaking hands had their own thoughts in mind:

Truk looked hard at this legendary figure. Space Director Zhong Cheng was so busy that he hurriedly attended the welcome ceremony and disappeared. It was said that he was going to inspect an engine base somewhere, and told him that Vice Chairman Lin could make the final decision temporarily.

This arrangement is very interesting. Truk is keenly aware that the young man in front of him is not simple at all.

From his understanding in the past few days, he also learned that Lin Ju even had the largest office and the largest group of secretaries, and he immediately regarded this as a possible breakthrough.

Lin Ju, on the other hand, was racking his brains to think about how to escape. He was caught on the spot just as he was about to return to the base. Zhong Cheng and several deputy chiefs had important matters missing, and he turned out to be the person who could make the most decisions now.

Lin Ju had no similar experience at all, so he simply left everything to the secretary of the Aviation Development Committee to arrange everything. He made up his mind to listen but not do anything, read back without reading back, and try to miss every word except understanding the greetings.

After the public meeting, Lin Ju followed the arrangements left by Zhong Cheng to discuss cooperation issues with Truk and took him directly to the United Mining headquarters to visit and waste time.

Truk accepted the offer gladly, without showing any reluctance, and just followed him around.

…

"Now, United Mining is fully prepared for lunar infrastructure!"

Lin Ju casually took a wooden model from the booth and showed it to Truk carefully:

"This machine is a highly integrated road construction machine that applies space cement technology. With it, we can carry out such a huge infrastructure operation with just a few dozen people.

In addition to this main machine, only a minimum of four supporting auxiliary operating vehicles and 7 personnel are needed to work at the designed efficiency. "

Truk carefully observed the model in Lin Ju's hand. From a subjective impression, it was more like a combine harvester, and it might be larger in proportion.

"How big and heavy is it?"

"The first prototype should be about 45 tons when assembled, with a maximum length of 11 meters. As you can see, this part is a heat dissipation fin that can be deployed. It also uses nuclear power. It is not an isotope battery, but a thermionic power generation reactor. The power is very high. High, it can also provide power to other machinery.

According to our design expectations, this machine can build at least 350 meters per day. "

With Lin Ju's reminder, Truk could probably recognize the modular reactor module. Its size was not large, indicating that the technology was quite mature.

Xinyuan's nuclear technology, which is unique in the world, is indeed enviable, and it has truly realized ubiquitous nuclear power.

The outside world has been able to analyze that Xinyuan's spacecraft has begun to be nuclear-powered in batches, because the amount of yellow cake imported by China has been steadily increasing, and it can almost be guessed.

"350 meters? That sounds a little low."

Lin Ju: "So there will be a total of at least six such road construction machines starting to work at the same time. The first prototype sent now is mainly to collect data, and the construction period will be controlled within 6 to 8 months.

During this period, United Mining will develop the mine to a usable state and try to put our steel smelter into production. "

"This is amazing. In Belt, we couldn't even build a 300-meter municipal road in six months, but you decided to build a steel complex on the moon."

Truk couldn't help but think of Dai Ying's current aerospace situation. It couldn't be said to be making great progress, but it could also be considered a mess.

The country can still barely keep up with the mainstream through the European Space Agency, but it costs nothing to bring it. The technology has been half a century old, and the rocket technology reserves may not be as good as those of island countries.

By selling nuclear bombs, the few astronauts sent up and the data collected by the way have far exceeded the sum of all past aerospace achievements, but that's all, and can no longer participate in more operations. The Royal Army even decided to send all tanks to Retire from active service to save money...

But seeing that the space craze set off by the global village is getting higher and higher, Truk can't help but say:

"Mr. Lin, I think building such a consortium in space is a difficult technical issue involving a full range of industries. We still have extensive technology accumulation and are willing to provide services to the United Mining Industry.

We can provide many new types of space plants, as well as very good life-support equipment, which are used on the International Space Station and the quality is quite reliable. "

"..."

Lin Ju originally wanted to say a few polite words, but when he heard these two things, he was suddenly stuck.

According to the results of the latest bilateral secret talks, NACA will set off on October 18, which is within a week of the Tianwen-1, the fastest to reach Mars, entering orbit, and send a delegation to China for academic and experience exchanges.

In response, the Aviation Development Commission will also organize a team to go to Aramco around November 25.

The construction issue of the space port was also formally notified to NACA in private contacts. Robert immediately stated that NACA was willing to participate in all aspects of bidding in the joint mining lunar development and the space port, and to conduct "all possible cooperation."

To show sincerity, NACA provided a copy of their test data and results on artificial ecosystems from earlier years.

In an era when NACA's space program had not been drastically cut down and its status had been reduced, NACA ambitiously envisioned how to establish long-term colonies on Mars and the moon, and therefore funded a series of artificial closed ecosystem projects.

The most famous of them is the largest "Biosphere 2" closed ecosystem, which also recruited volunteers to live for half a year. Although the Biosphere 2 environment eventually collapsed and the experiment failed, it provided a wealth of data and reference experience.

Later, the design of the NACA spacecraft and the space station were more or less referenced. In the moon and future Mars plans, these data are quite useful and indeed very advantageous.

NACA hopes to participate in the life support and environmental system design of the space port or the United Mining Yushu Base. It has even pointed out that the environmental system design efficiency of several residential modules in the Yushu Base is very low.

Xinyuan basically confirmed that NACA's strength in this aspect is the best in the world, so when Truk talked about this aspect, Lin Ju's expression was very strange, and he didn't answer for a while.

Although he quickly returned to normal and agreed casually, it did not escape Truk's eyes, and he immediately felt a bad premonition.

There aren't many that Dai Ying can offer, and he did some homework before coming here. China should be in great need of this kind of field that requires long-term data support.

We were deeply involved in the biosphere experiments and space plant belts at the time, and we did have a lot of first-hand data. It was impossible not to be tempting.

who is it? Lucia? If the Alliance does not have these, and the European Space Agency does not have this, then...

Truk's expression remained normal on the surface, and he suppressed his speculations forcefully.

It was not until the visit to United Mining was almost over that he asked:

"There are widespread rumors that the Aerospace Development Commission is about to build a super spaceport plan with tens of thousands of tons. Will this also be a part of United Mining's future work?"

"This...I can't give you a definite answer, but the Aerospace Development Commission does intend to further expand the scale of human beings in space and make breakthrough changes."

After hearing such an answer, Truk already knew what was going on and said smoothly:

"Such an ambitious plan requires an extremely huge investment of resources. Do you have any plans to invite foreign space agencies to join and participate in extensive peaceful cooperation like the International Space Station?"

International Space Station? Excluded "extensive cooperation" with one's own company?

Lin Ju expressed his doubts with his eyes before responding to Truk's question:

"Of course, the Aerospace Development Commission welcomes all friendly cooperation. Globalization of aerospace strategy is also an important part. If you are willing to join, you can pay more attention to the latest news from the Aerospace Development Commission."

Dai Ying seems to be able to join, then forces outside the Huayin Organization can also participate, so... Musk is not bragging, his interviews are all telling the truth, and Lin Ju is really likely to invite him to take a space plane.

Truk has sorted out a lot of information in a short period of time, and has completed most of his mission.

Damn it, the Yankees really betrayed the free world!

Now that NACA has released Musk's exclusive interview, it is building momentum. The top and largest aerospace forces on the earth are going to be merged together!

Thinking again of what the Arab and American representatives proposed at the UN General Assembly, the so-called unified order in space may actually mean that the two parties directly rule space, and everyone else must follow their rules when conducting space exploration.

There is also the Space Force, which is being established on both sides and is booming, and I am afraid it is also inseparable from this matter!

Truk had no intention of staying here any longer. He wanted to leave immediately and return to his hometown. He only wanted to tell one thing:

The Yalta system established after World War II is about to be destroyed by a joint effort!