Super technology leader

Inside the conference room of Pathfinder Aerospace, Tang Chuan was explaining the manned lunar landing and subsequent lunar base plans to the Lunar Landing Committee.

"As you've all seen, because many devices are installed on the exterior of the 'Chasing the Moon' spacecraft, it can't directly land on Earth like the Starship lunar lander. But that's okay, it can dock at the space station, whether it's Tiangong or the Starry Sky Inn, either can accommodate it."

"Reaching this point is equivalent to returning to Earth. Our orbital shuttle can take off at any time. Although its payload isn't great, the spacecraft returning from the Moon won't be carrying much either. It's mainly astronauts returning to Earth and some lunar samples. The orbital shuttle's capacity is sufficient."

"Moreover, compared to a crash-landing return to Earth, the shuttle's return process is much more comfortable."

"The space station and orbital shuttle are already in Earth orbit. Only a fool wouldn't use them."

Hearing Tang Chuan's statement, everyone in the conference room burst into laughter.

Indeed, compared to directly plunging back into the atmosphere, docking at the space station and then transferring, although it adds two steps, it's the most suitable in every aspect.

Adding two steps simplifies the spacecraft's design significantly.

Omitting these two steps would require the spacecraft to consider many more factors.

More considerations not only increase the complexity of the spacecraft but also increase manufacturing difficulty.

At the same time, better versatility means specialization in nothing.

The Earth environment, the space environment, and the lunar surface environment are three completely different environments.

Extending this, the three different major environments are countless different minor environments.

The 'Chasing the Moon' only considers the space environment and the lunar surface environment, and they at least have one thing in common: vacuum.

Moreover, the Moon's gravity isn't significant, belonging to low gravity, with a relatively small difference compared to the microgravity illusion before the Earth-Moon channel.

This is in contrast to Earth's gravity and space microgravity.

However, this time, the return to Earth from the Moon landing won't use the orbital shuttle but the national team's new manned spacecraft.

One of the design purposes of this spacecraft model was for manned lunar landing missions, but with the rapid development of the times, it hasn't even been used and has already been replaced by other solutions.

But since it's already built, rather than directly archiving it, it's better to use it in the first manned lunar landing mission.

At least, before entering the museum, it can increase its legendary status, showing that it wasn't a waste of money to create an exhibit.

Cough, cough, although the designers and manufacturers are reluctant, that's just how it is. So, the current focus is on the 'Chasing the Moon' spacecraft.

The space station and orbital shuttle are readily available, and they are doubly readily available from both the national team and Pathfinder Aerospace. So, the most important 'Chasing the Moon' spacecraft, can it obtain fuel replenishment on the Moon?

"Of course, it can."

Tang Chuan answered affirmatively.

As he spoke, he opened a picture transmitted from the Moon, one of Pathfinder Aerospace's top secrets.

"Hiss——"

"Ah, this..."

"Could it be..."

"No way?"

"Multiple finds, I'm directly finding multiple!"

As soon as the picture appeared, the conference room was immediately filled with shocked voices.

The picture was mostly pitch black, with only the middle part illuminated, and because the photo was black and white, the bright parts only had different depths of gray and white.

The illuminated part looked very ordinary, like some kind of place full of soil. The soil particles were very fine, the stones were ordinary, and the most eye-catching thing was the 'glittering' part in the picture.

That was a piece of exposed ice!

If it were an ordinary person, they might not see anything special or even be interested in looking, but the people in the conference room were different.

Since it was the Manned Lunar Landing Committee, they naturally understood the Moon very well. Not only did the dedicated scientists need to understand, but even the administrative staff needed to know a little bit.

Otherwise, if you don't know anything, how can you command?

"Little Tang, this is?"

Old Mr. Long was sitting next to Tang Chuan. He turned his head and asked, and Tang Chuan knew from his expression that he had guessed it.

"Yes, you guessed right. It's lunar water ice, the foundation of all human activities on the Moon."

Although they had guessed it, the people present were still shocked when Tang Chuan stated this fact.

This was water! Not after analysis, then 'suspecting,' 'possibly,' 'probably' there was water somewhere, nor detection of water molecules by probes, but completely and utterly seeing a large block of ice!

Ten months ago, Pathfinder Aerospace took the opportunity of the Long March 9 test flight to launch Lunar Palace 2, then released eight lunar rovers and conspicuously searched for lunar water resources.

At that time, people paid attention for a while, and Pathfinder would release the day's exploration videos every day, but after a long time, with no news of water, fewer and fewer people paid attention.

However, although netizens didn't pay attention, professional lunar scientists had to pay attention.

There was even a news story about a lunar rover that went deep into a permanently shadowed area running out of power due to calculation errors, permanently staying there, and some people felt sorry for it.

After that, there were several months of nothing gained.

Now, even some professional lunar scientists no longer pay attention to this aspect but treat the daily updated video analysis tasks as homework for their doctoral and graduate students.

Now, Tang Chuan suddenly presented the discovered lunar water ice, and the degree of shock can be imagined.

"Everyone should know about the lunar rover getting lost in the permanently shadowed area a few months ago, right? This is the picture taken by that rover," Tang Chuan said, pointing to the picture.

Old Long asked curiously, "So, the lunar rover malfunction was fake, and the discovery of lunar water ice is real?"

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"Uh... you can't say that."

Tang Chuan was stunned for a moment. "It's true that the lunar rover ran out of power in the permanently shadowed area. It was because the probe detected a large number of water molecules that it ventured deep."

"Okay," Old Long was also stunned for a moment. "Anyway, finding real water ice is worth it."

Tang Chuan admitted that he was indeed greedy at the time, but not early on, but later on.

Lunar Palace 2 didn't stay on the Moon for so long for nothing. It did a lot of tests and measured many of the Earthlings' incorrect guesses on Earth.

Because of the harshness of the lunar environment, although these technologies came from Canstar, Tang Chuan and the company's scientists prepared a lot of things for Lunar Palace 2 just in case.

Later, after field tests, it was found that some things were indeed unnecessary.

Some of the equipment required power, even requiring the design of a separate power supply device. Now that they are not needed, the batteries can be given to the lunar rover to solve the problem of the lunar rover not being able to run far.

The batteries are transferred from the maintenance module by the robotic arm, and then installed by the robotic arms on other lunar rovers, which can extend the battery life of the lunar rovers and allow them to go deeper into the dark areas.

However, these batteries are not original, so the ground control center set a safety value. When a large number of water molecules were found, it was already close to the safety value, and when the water molecules became more and more abundant, but no obvious ice blocks were seen, it had reached the safety value.

However, various data showed that there must be water here, maybe not far away, and I would not be willing to give up without seeing it.

So, the power safety value was broken through, and it was driven to the limit.

Facts have proved that the adventure was right, and water ice appeared in the lens.

At this point, you can actually go back, but since you are here, and the power has not reached the limit, wouldn't it be better to take a sample back?

With this in mind, the lunar rover started the mining mode.

The process of taking ice was also very smooth, the power consumption was within the calculation, and even putting the ice on the car was no problem, but when the lunar rover turned back, the car stopped.

The command center was silent at that time.

The final inspection result was that there was a problem with the additional battery pack.

And... the safety value design is reasonable.

Fortunately, water was really discovered, and it was not far from the Lunar Palace 2 landing site.

Because of the appearance of water, the design of the Chasing the Moon was established.

It cannot land on Earth, so it does not need to carry an extra part of the fuel to resist Earth's gravity and land steadily.

A part of the weight of the fuel is saved, so what else is in the 40-ton hull?

Naturally, it is a fuel production device!

With water, there is hydrogen and oxygen fuel.

Although direct electrolysis of water to obtain hydrogen and oxygen is very inefficient, has certain risks, and is extremely power-consuming, as long as solar panels are deployed on the lunar surface, the power problem is not a problem.

As for the fact that the purity of electrolyzed hydrogen and oxygen is not high, and it is more dangerous after mixing, new technologies can be used to solve it.

Canstar has it.

After all, space and alien planets are not like Earth. Earth has several methods for large-scale industrial production of hydrogen and oxygen, while on alien planets, only water ice is available in large quantities, and upgrading the electrolysis method is the most useful.

As a race that has entered the space age, the Canstar little green men must have some skills in this area.