Chapter 234 S2100
35 billion to 45 billion, this is the space agency's assessment of the R&D and manufacturing costs of the Fram space station.
For such a man-made product that can be used as both a super-large space station and a spacecraft, the space agency is very excited. The superiors are also very interested in such a huge man-made product, and have approved 20 billion yuan. If the Fram space station can be jointly operated, half of the funds can be directly provided.
Of course, this 20 billion is not direct money, but part of it is for funds, and part of it is for the space agency to participate in the manufacture of some of the cabins according to its own ideas.
Speaking of this, Lin Ju thinks it is not a big problem.
Xinyuan is strong in aerospace technology, but lacks high-precision scientific research equipment. It has always been bought, and it takes a lot of energy to develop it by itself.
Cooperating with the space agency will give more channels to obtain the most cutting-edge scientific research equipment.
Lin Ju: "Let's do this. All six crew cabins will be manufactured by Xinyuan, and half of the service cabin will be filled with your equipment and requirements. But I have a condition. The progress must be fast. The construction of the Fram should be completed around October next year."
"So fast?"
"You know, the most restrictive condition for aerospace is transportation capacity. We have already achieved most automation in the cabin, and the efficiency is very high."
Academician She sighed again. This is the benefit of treating aerospace as an ordinary industry. It can reduce costs. Both specaX and XAP are examples in this regard.
"That's about it for the cooperation on Qianjin. The Fifth Academy will have the energy to discuss the details with you by the end of the year. By the way, is your Xinyuan-4 still developing? Is the No. 3 enough? 247 tons of low-Earth orbit capacity is really unprecedented."
"No. 4? Maybe. The 800-ton low-Earth orbit capacity is really too exaggerated. It's all hard-topped with hydrogen-oxygen engines. The cost is too expensive."
...
"I never thought that one day we would be able to use such a large-thrust solid booster. It is simply a perfect match for hydrogen-oxygen engines."
At the desert base, a gray long building was built outside the launch tower in the Gobi Desert. A 47-meter-long white object with a diameter of 5 meters lay horizontally on a V-shaped cement fixing groove, and the whole body was firmly fixed by multiple strong giant expansion screws.
This is a solid rocket booster, which is intended for the Xinyuan-4 super-giant rocket.
As a violent product of the system, the SRB with a single-stage thrust of 700 tons, S700 is expensive, but it is really worth it.
This 47-meter booster is connected in series with three S700s, with a total thrust of an astonishing 2,100 tons!
If two of these are tied to a rocket, the thrust will increase by 4,200 tons!
If two of these are tied to the Xinyuan-3, the LEO capacity can be increased from 247 tons to 324 tons, a direct increase of 77 tons.
It is said that solid propellants are rocket artifacts. They can increase the capacity simply and violently. The classic way to use them is to use a large-thrust solid propulsion as a booster, and match it with a small-thrust high-specific impulse hydrogen-oxygen engine for the core stage.
The large-thrust solid propulsion finds a way to send the core stage out of the atmosphere, and then the high-specific impulse hydrogen-oxygen engine sends the rocket into orbit, without the need to develop a large-thrust liquid engine.
The only drawback is that it is too expensive. Although the shell can fall into the sea and be fished out for reuse, the valuable part of the solid rocket is not the shell.
However, the S2100 in the desert base is not used to build rockets, but is planned to be a launcher prepared for the unmanned version of H1, that is, the new Shenlong project.
SL-1A was deployed in space for three months and returned to the ground the day before yesterday for maintenance and fuselage inspection.
This hastily modified prototype has excellent performance, high power generation, strong maneuverability, and can be tested to operate continuously in space for about a year without any problems.
Moreover, the internal volume brought by the lifting body fuselage is also huge. After several months of preparation, the base is preparing to deeply transform SL-1A, fully load the equipment, and have practical combat capabilities.
The most important of these is an 80KW laser, which charges the capacitor through solar panels and then stores energy to launch an attack. Considering heat dissipation and charging, it can be activated once in as fast as 15 minutes.
This power laser can already cause significant damage to satellites. The base plans to take a "Fengyun" satellite that is about to be scrapped as an experiment when sending SL-1A up next time to see if it can be destroyed.
In addition, the manipulator did not fall down. If the Fengyun satellite is really destroyed, it can also change its orbit to grab it into the narrow cargo hold of the new Shenlong and bring it back to Earth to study the damage effect.
Although little is known about X37B, the Desert Base believes that H1 has surpassed the former in terms of combat effectiveness and can be deployed in actual combat.
Actual combat deployment means first building a small batch of about four, and then using solid rockets as strategic duty equipment, which can be launched quickly.
The 20-ton weight of H1 is too heavy, and it requires medium-sized or large liquid rockets to launch. Its preparation time and launch site requirements are far from meeting the combat readiness standards.
Although there is no possibility of using SL-1A in a major war now, it does not mean that such preparation is unnecessary. In a sense, the importance of SL-1A is on par with that of nuclear bombs.
Four SL-1A are enough to destroy most of the enemy's satellites before the fuel is exhausted. Missiles attacking satellites are far less efficient and much more expensive.
But the problem with the permanent deployment of SL-1A is that there is no available super-large solid rocket. In fact, if a pure solid rocket is used to put a 20-ton payload into low orbit, the requirements for the rocket's thrust and pull are much higher than those for liquid rockets.
At first, the Desert Base wanted to find the Fourth Academy to develop a single-rocket rocket, with three solid stages plus a liquid rocket, a total of four rockets to send SL-1A into space. The liquid fuel of the four-stage rocket was added before launch, which saved time.
But after hearing about it, Guo Shen directly took out the S700, a great artifact, and decided to do something with great force.
A three-stage solid rocket, three S700s in series, with a thrust of 2,100 tons and a self-weight of 1,000 tons. A small solid rocket engine was added to the second stage, and two stages were put into orbit.
There is no skill, pure great force to do something with great force, almost a single-stage orbital entry, using the powerful thrust of the S2100 to send the SL-1A weighing less than 25 tons into space. The solid thrust of the second-stage rocket only works for a short while and is thrown away after use, which is not too expensive.
Because of the large vibration, the S2100 was transported to the desert base in the cargo hold of the An 1250 for testing. At that time, the solid rocket experts of the Fourth Academy gasped when they saw this thing.
The Fourth Academy also has its own large-thrust solid rocket engine plan, with a diameter of 3.35 meters and a single-stage thrust of 500 tons (the original world line was successful in 2022), which is still in the early stages of the project.
The S700 has a diameter of 5.05 meters and a single-stage thrust of 700 tons, which is simply an unimaginable giant.
When the base ordered the ignition test, the S2100 started, and the internal star-shaped cavity charge column began to burn from the inside to the outside. The entire shell is the combustion chamber and engine of the solid rocket.
Even if they were hiding in the control room underground, the violent thrust of more than 2,000 tons when the S2100 was started almost tore the earth apart. People underground could clearly feel the ground shaking constantly. The smoke column of the S2100 was so large that it covered the entire test site in a few seconds, rolling up yellow sand all over the sky, which mixed with the gray-white smoke, making it extremely spectacular.