Military Technology

Yes, that's right, it's just stingy.

In the eyes of outsiders, Wu Hao and the others are indeed very stingy, but for them, especially those engaged in technology, cost control is often one of the most important factors that determine the success of a project.

No matter what technology or product, it is inseparable from cost control. The key to deciding whether to continue to develop this technology is actually cost control, that is, capital investment. Whether the funds you have prepared can support the research and development of this technology? If too much money is invested, resulting in high costs, then it will be difficult for the products to be competitive in the market.

Therefore, cost control of related technology research and development projects has always been the focus of Wu Hao and others. This is especially true in the field of aerospace technology.

The aerospace field is a high-tech industry with high investment, high risks and high returns, and the initial investment is very huge. Therefore, we must be particularly strict in cost control. Otherwise, funds will not be fully utilized and no matter how much investment is made, it will be in vain.

Moreover, investment in this field generally lasts for many years, so that it will gradually bear fruit. Therefore, the early stage greatly tested the enterprise's affordability. This is a technology- and capital-intensive industry. The development of technology depends entirely on capital investment, and it is absolutely impossible without capital. Therefore, Wu Hao and the others were prepared for a protracted war from the beginning, and were naturally strict in terms of cost management.

In addition, for their commercial aerospace projects, the most important thing about commercial aerospace is cost control. If the research and development costs are too high, then the market competitiveness of their aerospace products will not be strong, and they will have no competitive advantage compared to the government and other companies.

In addition to strictly controlling R\u0026D investment costs, the cost of the product itself must also be controlled. This is why they are vigorously developing retractable aerospace products, such as retractable and reusable rockets, fairings, retractable and reusable spacecraft return capsules, etc.

Take this time the Walker manned spacecraft as an example. The Walker manned spacecraft is divided into two parts, namely the return module and the service module. The service module is not recyclable. It is mainly responsible for the power part and energy and resource supply part of the spacecraft. When the return capsule returns to Earth, the service module will detach from it, then slowly descend, and finally fall into the atmosphere and burn up.

The return capsule for astronauts can also be called the crew cabin and is reusable. This is available for most new spacecraft now. Through the modular design, the return capsule can land and undergo relevant maintenance before proceeding to the next mission.

The same is true for the return capsule of Wu Hao's Walker 2. Their outer surface uses a removable modular heat insulation layer, which is also sprayed with their new heat insulation material. Under normal circumstances, the second manned space mission can be repeated without inspection and only supervised maintenance.

After inspection and maintenance, it can be reused more than ten times. In this way, the spacecraft cost evenly distributed to a single mission will be greatly reduced. This is also a major competitive advantage of their spacecraft. Obtaining some space personnel and material transportation lists at low prices will also prepare for the next step of developing private space tourism projects.

Low-cost launch technology and low-cost space round-trip technology are the development trends in the field of aerospace technology in the future. Therefore, major aerospace technology companies in various countries are currently engaged in research in this area, and have already achieved very good results.

Who would have thought that the launch cost of a single satellite has dropped from tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands per kilogram to thousands of dollars per kilogram today, which was unimaginable in the past.

At present, some companies have said that they will work hard to reduce the transportation cost of rockets to less than one thousand US dollars. If this is realized, it will undoubtedly further reduce the cost of going to space. This will attract more countries and companies to join and share the dividends of space.

The reduction in rocket launch costs will also further promote the further reduction in the cost of manned spacecraft, unlike before. In addition to some official missions, commercial aerospace currently targets more markets among the private sector.

After all, there are only a few wealthy people among the private sector who spend huge amounts of money to achieve a space trip. Therefore, if commercial manned spaceflight wants to develop, it must further reduce costs, thereby reducing the cost of space travel. Only in this way will more tourists be attracted to experience tourism.

This is what Wu Hao and the others have to do. On the one hand, they are chasing those colleagues who have already run ahead of them, and on the other hand, they are also keeping pace with these colleagues.

Although everyone has been in space for a long and short time, this is not the focus of everyone's attention. What everyone is focused on is who can control costs first and seize this huge market with broad prospects.

It is precisely because of this consideration that, in addition to the conventional manned space projects of the major aerospace giants, some companies have taken a different approach and have not chosen to develop conventional manned space technology projects that are costly. Instead, they have developed technical difficulties and Lower-cost suborbital space tourism projects.

Suborbital generally refers to the airspace between 20 kilometers and 100 kilometers above the ground, between the highest flight altitude of existing aircraft and the lowest orbital altitude of satellites. It is also called near space or the air-space transition zone.

This height space mainly includes the stratosphere region, the mesosphere region and part of the ionosphere region. Find Bookstore www.zhaｏshuyuan.com Therefore, this area does not belong to the aviation or aerospace category.

Officially because of this, it has great development prospects for intelligence collection, reconnaissance and surveillance, communication support, air-to-ground operations, space tourism, etc.

Let’s not talk about the previous items, let’s talk about the space tourism project. This is one of the main development directions targeted by major aerospace technology companies. They will use rockets or airborne spacecraft to send tourists to an altitude of about 100 kilometers, continue flying for ten or dozens of minutes, and then return to Earth.

Why is it controlled at 100 kilometers? Because this height is exactly the von Karman line. The so-called von Karman line is currently recognized by most as the dividing line between outer space and the earth's atmosphere. At this height, people can basically be in a microgravity environment, which is what we call the feeling of weightlessness.

The main space tourism project promoted by these commercial airlines to tourists is to travel into space and experience weightlessness.

Compared with other feelings in space, weightlessness is obviously the most felt and one of the characteristics of space, so this has also become a marketing gimmick for these commercial suborbital tourism space companies.