Chapter 311 Dawn

The crowd warmly welcomed the landing of the world's largest space shuttle Pioneer, and witnessed five experienced astronauts walk down to the ground with their heads held high and received the flowers.

But they did not leave, because opposite the airport, the general assembly building at the No. 2 station of the Qiongzhou launch site was brightly lit.

The Long March 10 Yao 2 rocket has completed the general assembly and will be launched in the next three days.

According to the disclosed information, this flight mission will carry a complete new generation manned spacecraft and four dummies (gender unknown) to the lunar orbit for an unmanned circumlunar flight mission.

The lunar orbit carrying capacity of the Long March 10 is 45 tons, and the new generation of manned spacecraft is only about 22 tons, and the remaining 23 tons are not wasted.

The complete lander has not been finished and is still under testing, but the space agency has made a semi-finished "model" that can be used, and it is still installed in front of the spacecraft.

The code name of this semi-finished "model" is "Full Moon". The landing part is exactly the same as the official version, except for the ascender.

The lander is equipped with a manned lunar rover, some simple probes, etc., and provides power and communication; the manned part is designed as an integral part of the ascender, and is a space for astronauts to travel between the lunar surface and the lunar orbit and live.

The manned part has not yet been fully finalized, but this semi-finished lander will still play a role.

They will make an unmanned landing in the Kum crater, and send two lunar rovers and some detection instruments and tools there. If nothing unexpected happens, it will also be a landing point for manned landing in the future.

Then the four nearest explorer robots will put the collected 55 kilograms of ice, lunar soil, and lunar rock samples into the refrigeration equipment in the ascender, and take them to meet with the new generation of manned spacecraft flying around the moon.

When the spacecraft returns to Earth, it will also bring back these 55 kilograms of samples for analysis on Earth.

In this way, the Long March 10 Yao 2 mission can not only verify the rocket and spacecraft, but also carry out an unmanned return mission with a sampling volume of 55 kilograms, killing two birds with one stone.

This is also thanks to the fact that the rover is Explorer II, which can climb the stairs for personnel to go up and down, so that the samples can be sent back.

The space agency has always been upset that the original Chang'e 5 sampling and return mission was replaced by Explorer II. This time, it plans to bring back more than 50 kilograms of samples in one go, enough for hundreds of scientific research institutes to share a portion and study hard, and let the superiors inadvertently send 1 gram of lunar soil samples when they visit, just to show off.

Moreover, by analyzing the data of different sample collection points, it is also convenient for scientists to understand the more detailed resource distribution around the Kum crater, so as to seize the opportunity in time.

"Why not catch Yutu-2? What's the point of catching that thing?"

At the launch center, Academician She was a little confused about Lin Ju's idea. Although the ascender has enough fuel to bring back a few more robots, this is not a scientific research sample. Should it be brought back and placed in a museum for primary and secondary school students to visit?

Lin Ju: "Mr. She, but Yutu-2 is broken, and its functions are not as good as Yutu-3. It's better to bring it back as a souvenir..."

Academician She: "That won't work either. Yutu-2 also has scientific instruments in cooperation with Germany. We can't just withdraw it now."

"..."

Compared with the sturdy and reliable Yutu-1, Yutu-2's luck is actually not very good. I don't know if it's because the landing site has sufficient magnetic force, and the solar panels are always covered with dust, affecting efficiency.

Even more unfortunate is that when Explorer-1 went over to wipe the dust, it jumped onto a fragile lunar rock, and the splashing fragments made a dent on a power generation panel, causing its effective working time to be reduced again.

Explorer-1 is not optimistic either. In order to carry more batteries, the eight active spider legs accounted for a higher proportion of the weight, which caused severe wear and tear on the joints. After high-intensity work, the gaps were filled with charged lunar dust, and its body gradually became less flexible than before.

Combined with the impact of jumping around, the ground estimates that Explorer 1 can still work like this for about four months under the current situation, and will have to limit its movement due to severe joint wear and enter a "retirement" state until it is scrapped.

So the total life of Explorer 1 is about one year. Although it is short, think about its huge workload, it is completely worth the cost of just over 10 million.

However, compared with the lunar exploration, Lin Ju actually wants to complain more about the crazy speed of the space agency after the effort.

Although the Long March 10 is destined to be a disposable product with backward concepts, it can be developed and manufactured in such a short time. It can only be said that the pressure was too small and there was no motivation. Everyone was busy evaluating their titles and ignored the world competition. Now it is much better.

When will the next SLS rocket be launched? Anyway, it will be much later than the Long March 10.

Thinking of the moon exploration, Lin Ju asked Academician She the question in his mind:

"Mr. She, the Apollo program did a full-state circumlunar flight of the spacecraft because it was not enough for technical reasons. Why did the Dawn program also do it? In fact, I think the landing mission can be directly implemented on the third rocket."

Academician She: "The Apollo program did have technical factors. During the first moon landing, the lander's automatic computer crashed due to insufficient memory, so people had to be more cautious; Chang X... It was mainly because the YF77 had some problems the first time, otherwise we could have manned the moon this time and landed directly on the moon next time.

Although the next Long March 10 lunar landing is theoretically feasible, I still decided to be cautious. It concerns human lives, so it is not excessive to be extremely careful. Besides, the progress is already very fast. "

As the chief designer of the Shuguang Project, what Academician She said at this time will naturally affect the progress of the plan, which is basically the truth.

Lin Ju: "What about the astronauts who will land on the moon? Have they been confirmed now?"

Academician She: "Both crews have been confirmed. In fact, they were basically confirmed half a year ago. I can't tell you who they are."

Although he said he would keep it confidential, Lin Ju actually knew almost everything. The astronauts of Xinyuan and the space agency were trained together. As long as he paid a little attention, he would know the general situation, but it was tacitly understood.

"What about you? H2 should be almost there, right? ”

The H2 that Academician She mentioned is the initial version of the H2 space shuttle equipped with A100.

The rumors that the space agency bought the third H2M are half true and half false. The space agency did buy one, but it was for Project 909, and the progress is only a little bit.

Xinyuan’s own construction plan was originally the first two H2s and two H2Ms. Among the first three completed bodies, the conventional power version of the construction mission of the Fram was built first. The third one is waiting for the official mass production of A100 for installation testing.

The fourth The first and fifth H2s have also been built. One is purchased by the military for Project 909 (commissioned by the Fourth Academy). After the fuselage is built, it will be pulled to the secret base of the Fourth Academy for weapon installation.

The name of the third H2 has not been decided yet. As the first large manned nuclear-powered spacecraft, it still needs a meaningful name.

Lin Ju: "The ground test of A100 has been completed, and the results are quite ideal. We do not plan to do more tests. Next time, we will directly install the mass-produced A100. It is expected to take its first manned flight in May or June. ”

H2 was originally conceived to use the A100 engine with methane fuel, but after entering actual research, it was found that the molecular weight of methane was too large to achieve the required specific impulse, so it was changed back to liquid hydrogen fuel when the system was sold, which fully achieved the design goal.

The mass of hydrogen atoms is only 1/16 of that of methane molecules, which is the best choice for improving specific impulse. It is just a bit more expensive and difficult to store, but it is not a big problem for A100.

Although Academician She also has some understanding of A100, he is still shocked that this epoch-making engine has achieved the design indicators as scheduled.

If it really follows the envisioned technical parameters, H2 can take 5 astronauts and a landing capsule from low-Earth orbit, reach the moon in 10 to 20 hours, and then return to Earth within 7 to 8 hours, consuming no more than 10 tons of fuel in total.

This chapter is not finished yet, it is too busy...