Chapter 236 Launch
"Centrifugal, centrifugal space station..."
Claire flipped through the introduction information of the Progress space station on the official website of Xinyuan Aerospace Power, and also wrote and drew on paper.
Every astronaut is familiar with the centrifugal space station, but it is too troublesome to build. Apart from other things, just to launch hundreds of tons of mass into low-Earth orbit for assembly, two conditions must be met:
Heavy rockets and space shuttles.
The former launches the cabin, and the latter installs the truss.
The rotation of such a heavy space station is a severe challenge for the docking port. Even if it is a completely closed-loop connection like Xinyuan, it must be attached with a steel structure truss before it can be used safely.
Space shuttle? The three remaining STSs have been restarted. Although they are in poor condition, they can be used anyway. The huge amount of money spent on manufacturing them was not in vain. If it were not too expensive, the space shuttle could really fly 100 times. The impact of putting it aside for a few years is not too great.
What about heavy rockets? In order to save costs and speed up, it is best to reuse them. There are also ready-made ones, such as specaX's heavy Falcon.
It can carry more than 40 tons of payload in the case of reuse. The 3.4-meter-diameter rocket body can also hit the 5-meter-diameter compartment, so the transportation capacity is sufficient and can be launched frequently.
Two heavy Falcons can be rotated and launched once a month. The transportation capacity is not an obstacle.
There is no need to have as many centrifuge cabins as the Fram. A central compartment, four to six centrifuge cabins are enough, and they do not need to be connected to each other. The mass of about 250 to 350 tons is enough, and it will not exceed 400 tons with the truss.
That is the weight of an ISS, but it can also accommodate about 8 astronauts to perform missions.
What mission? Of course, landing on Mars!
Although Lin Ju claimed that the Fram space station was just a simple space station, serving as a permanent test site for personnel in low-Earth orbit, it would be fooled if you really believed it.
Spending huge efforts, including at least 20 giant rocket launch missions installed by the space shuttle, just for this? Ghosts believe it!
It must be the government's instruction. They would be willing to invest such a large amount of resources if they want to land on Mars or even other planets. Absolutely!
Then NACA will undoubtedly follow up, and the Fram space station will definitely be put into use in 2018 or earlier, which means that after China's announcement of manned lunar landing, it will take at most two years to prepare, and manned landing on Mars will definitely be planned from 2020!
Think about it, if they really launch an unmanned probe to Mars in 2018 and launch the preliminary preparation materials for manned landing in 2020 at the fastest speed, they can implement the manned landing mission on Mars in 2022.
By that time, the Fram space station has been in practical use for four years, and there is enough time for testing and improvement. As long as the propulsion module is added, it will be a qualified spacecraft!
In other words, NACA will start the manned landing mission on Mars immediately when it expects SLS to perform the first manned lunar landing mission? !
bullshit!
So if NACA wants to build its own centrifugal space station, it must be completed before 2020, and it is almost necessary to start planning now.
Claire casually estimated that it would cost another $10 billion.
Although she complained about the lack of funding every day, Claire also knew that Congress could not invest money in space endlessly, and she still had to try her best to reduce spending.
Then, we have to see if private aerospace companies have any solutions.
NACA immediately issued an internal notice to solicit space station designs that can provide gravity from major giant companies.
…
"Is the kerosene here made in China?"
"Yes, the thousands of tons of fuel used to refuel Xinyuan 3 are all refined and produced by Karamay Petrochemical, which is the only aerospace kerosene manufacturer in our country."
With the development of the YF100 project, China began to study high-purity aerospace kerosene. Although there is no low-sulfur oil field directly discovered by the alliance, due to the advancement of refining technology, it is still easy to handle high-purity aerospace kerosene technology.
This was originally intended for the Long March 5, but in fact the first rocket to fly into space was Xinyuan 1. Karamay Petrochemical is also an old partner of Xinyuan, and it has obtained a lot of aviation fuel and gasoline from them at a low price.
Listening to the staff's answer, Shelev seemed to be able to smell the smell of kerosene through the rocket body.
Liquid oxygen methane, liquid oxygen liquid hydrogen, liquid oxygen kerosene, the three main engines are so clean, why should we stick to those toxic, heavily polluting and expensive fuels?
Shelev remembered that he competed with Chelomei for the moon landing plan in his previous life. He gave the design of N1, and Chelomei took out the giant UR700 rocket.
UR700 is called "Chelomei's big baby". It is a super toxic rocket. Its first-stage engine is 9 magical RD270 engines.
The main fuel and oxidizer of RD270 are unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine and dinitrogen tetroxide. The specific impulse is 301 seconds, the thrust is 640 tons, and it is a single combustion chamber with full flow staged combustion, which is much ahead of Musk's later Raptor engine.
It is even expected to be used when landing on Venus and started in the nightmare atmosphere of Venus where sulfuric acid rain falls all year round.
The near-Earth orbit capacity of UR700 exceeds 150 tons, and the take-off mass is more than 4,900 tons. It is a giant rocket, but Shelev and Korolev hate it very much.
In addition to personal grudges, the RD270 combustion chamber also produces cyanide! That is really toxic, and releasing this thing in the atmosphere is really crazy.
But at that time, due to the fact that there was only the NK33 engine of the OKB-276 Design Bureau, the N1, a violent rocket using 30 150-ton kerosene engines, eventually failed.
However, the Xinyuan No. 3, which uses 19 400-ton liquid oxygen-kerosene engines, made up for his shortcomings. This rocket with a takeoff mass of 5,900 tons was regarded by him as the spiritual inheritance of N1. It is environmentally friendly and reliable. How great.
As for the Xinyuan No. 4, it is a typical American thinking. The core stage hydrogen-oxygen engine plus solid booster is too expensive, and Shelev doesn't like it very much.
Standing in a separately designated priority viewing area with thousands of students, the young Shelev did not attract attention. No one noticed that the second-in-command of Xinyuan was standing here, just looking forward to the ethereal Xinyuan No. 3.
To be precise, the two rockets this time should be called Xinyuan No. 3A, because they are both two-stage configurations, that is, the three stages are simply and roughly removed, anyway, the transportation capacity is sufficient.
Today, the launch was of the pilot module and the node module. The two modules plus the fairing made the height of the Xinyuan-3 exceed 160 meters, nearly 170 meters high.
In addition, the module diameter of 14 meters is larger than the 11-meter diameter of the rocket body, which looks extremely tall and sturdy. If converted into a skyscraper, it is 50 stories high based on the 3.2-meter floor height!
At this time, the actual weight of the Xinyuan-3 with the payload has exceeded 6,000 tons, breaking the new record of human rockets every minute and every second.
When the 19 engines ignited in turn, the flames gathered by 7,700 tons of thrust instantly filled the guide groove, and then sprayed out from the oblique upward channel, covering an area of nearly one kilometer around the launch station.
Hundreds of freshmen who entered the school truly felt the power they would have in the future.