Chapter 248: Bringing Goods

There were no reporters on Lao Ma's trip to Qiongzhou, so the atmosphere seemed quite relaxed.

The launch station of the Mengtian experimental module was right next to the Xinyuan launch site, so Lao Ma was not in a hurry to go there, but was taken by Lin Ju to visit the Xinyuan launch site first.

In the assembly building of Xinyuan's No. 2 station, he saw the first stage of the Xinyuan-3 rocket, which had just completed the launch mission of the axial module of the Fram space station and had just completed some maintenance work.

11 meters in diameter and 77 meters in height. Because the surface has not been covered with thermal insulation tiles, there are still strong traces of ablation.

A group of people stood under the rocket, flush with the 19 K380 engines suspended in the air. Lao Ma reached out and touched the nozzle emitting a metallic blue light, and went under to observe the structure at the bottom of the Xinyuan-3.

Unlike the Starship Super Heavy Booster with messy wiring harnesses under the first stage of the previous world line, the bottom of the Xinyuan-3 has been well processed. Except for the swing mechanism and the combustion chamber, the rest of the engine is covered by thermal insulation plates to prevent the backflow of tail flames from ablation.

Lao Ma looked at the engine for a long time, put his hands on his waist and said with emotion:

"(Translation) The combustion chamber of the Raptor engine is not much smaller than that of the K380, but the thrust is less than half. SpecaX has fallen far behind in terms of engines. Even the RD181 needs two such nozzles."

Lin Ju: "We have also carried out many iterations. In the early days, a batch of K380s used for verification will be manufactured for ultra-high intensity testing. In this way, many problems can be discovered and resources can be used to promote progress."

Due to the lack of understanding of Xinyuan's internal affairs, Lao Ma is very supportive of the rapid iteration method and keeps nodding:

"Yes, it should be like a car. The same can only be done through mass production and testing for rapid iteration, but Lin, why is XAP still using the traditional aluminum alloy rocket body? Although stainless steel is heavier, it is much cheaper, and the dry mass ratio is not so important for reusable rockets. "

Lin Ju: "I agree with the stainless steel technical solution, but compared to the actual low cost, the idea of ​​XAP is that the lower dry mass ratio brings higher transportation capacity, which will make the average cost per kilogram lower. "

"Hmm..."

Lao Ma obviously noticed the difference between the routes of XAP and SpecaX, but he didn't think it was too important. For such a giant rocket, the cost of the rocket body can't be much lower.

He thought of the starship he planned. The super-heavy booster B4 is still in the design stage, but it still can't catch up with the New Yuan III.

He tried his best to imagine the New Yuan III as a stainless steel metal surface, and it felt that the starship seemed to be standing beside him.

…

"One year after the Dawn Project, what achievements have been made in the moon landing operation?"

"Liu Minglu: Resolutely win the battle of 'YF77' and build an advanced and reliable high-thrust hydrogen-oxygen engine."

"The Wentian and Mengtian experimental modules were launched into orbit within two days and docked smoothly. The Tiangong space station has become the second largest spacecraft in orbit."

"The number of people entering space in my country has exceeded 100."

"Four astronauts will return to Earth in the near future."

"TikTok, record a beautiful life."

"The founder of ByteDance personally went to space to promote Lin Ju."

"Satellite network speed is much faster than 4G. Is 5G still necessary?"

"Elon Musk ends his visit to China."

In late September, a series of news broke.

First, it was YF77. The overwhelmed Sixth Academy received timely help: two senior engineers from the Xinyuan Aerospace Power Department guided the improvement of YF77.

The price was not money. Xinyuan exchanged some space instrument technology from the Space Administration, which was more precious than money.

For Xinyuan, the YF77 technology, which still uses the original gas generator cycle and has medium thrust, is very simple. The Sixth Academy is mainly lacking in experience. Just a little guidance on the design will be fine. There is no absolute difficulty in the materials.

Now the YF90 and YF79 are still under development. Even if there is no Xinyuan, the Space Administration will be able to solve these problems sooner or later. Just treat it as a favor.

Starting from YF79 and YF90, it can be said that the Space Administration's hydrogen-oxygen engine technology has officially entered the world's first-class level, at least on par with Aramco.

YF77, that is just the darkness before dawn.

The H240 and H80 they purchased before are most likely to be used in the construction of the lunar base after the manned lunar mission. Using these two engines as the upper stage power can increase the lunar transfer orbit capacity of the Long March 10 by about 10%, which is a lot of quality.

In addition, there are 6 astronauts who went up in March. One of the four people from the Space Administration stayed, and Xinyuan left the system engineer Ke Yun. The rest will return to the ground in October.

More than half a year, this is a new record of the continuous stay time of Chinese astronauts in space.

The four crew members who returned were to make room for the follow-up personnel. Their physical condition is actually very good, and the continuous zero-gravity life for half a year did not cause any trouble.

However, Deng Lei came back for something to do. H2M will have its first flight in two months. Such an expensive thing must find experienced astronauts to carry out multiple test flights.

You must know that H2 will still have to continue high-frequency space operations for almost a year, capturing satellites and transporting "sky survey" telescopes, and the tasks are much more complicated.

So Deng Lei himself has no reluctance to return to the ground. Now he is in the peak of his physical condition. Xinyuan is reluctant to leave the most senior astronaut on the ground, and will definitely arrange a lot of flight missions.

H2 requires a lot of manpower for each operation, and it is bound to be mixed with non-professional astronauts, and professional players are needed to help.

Although the number of people entering space has increased rapidly since July, the peak period of Xinyuan's space tourism service has been reached, but half of them are pure payloads, that is, tourists. It can only be said that the space tourism market has been fully tapped.

After the July mission of the Firm, two wealthy foreigners who had just completed a 7-day tour of the space station immediately spent money to jump the queue for the 24-hour tourist flight launched on the same day as the Mengtian laboratory module in September.

Due to sufficient training and self-provided space suits, this trip cost only a few million US dollars per person, and the average cost of the two trips immediately dropped, which made people call him a travel genius.

However, the most cost-effective person on this flight was Zhang Yingming. His physical condition was unexpectedly good. After a simple training, he took a set of one-size-fits-all space suits in stock and went on the day of the Douyin release.

Xinyuan's official Weibo account promoted the event in a joint manner, using the gimmick of the founder going to space to attract millions of downloads. Then everyone watched the launch of the Mengtian experimental cabin in the morning, and watched Zhang's Douyin live broadcast of the Jiande tourist flight in the cabin in the afternoon.

This move has proven to be extremely successful. Zhang has been rewarded with millions of gifts by users of his company's APP, which is comparable to popular anchors. In addition, many creators who have been contacted in advance have released exquisite short videos one after another. In the first 10 hours, he gained tens of millions of users and used the new model to make mobile users addicted.

When many people realized how much traffic short videos consume, Zhang Yingming released a video recorded in the corner of the Jiande cabin.

"Family members, who hasn't used the Jingwei satellite network? Gigabit broadband is portable and can be used wherever you go. The original price is 8999 per year. Now open the comment area and click on the web page to jump. Enter "Zhang 666" on the Xinyuan official website to receive a red envelope of up to 8888 yuan. Everyone has a share, first come first served..."