The three of them chatted until 4 a.m., and the experiment at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Ka started at 10 a.m.

At seven o'clock in the morning, after having breakfast with Benjamin and Dr. Schmitz, Tang Feng met up with Sam, Andrew, and Chris, who had come over on purpose, and then the six of them, under the protection of a group of bodyguards, drove to Kajiao, which was sixty kilometers away.

Since Tang Feng was attacked in Zambia, Andrew, Chris and Benjamin have all strengthened their own security guards, and now as soon as the three of them go out, they will definitely have more than four bodyguards around to protect them. As for Tang Feng, it was even more terrible, Hansen arranged a team of twenty-four bodyguards for Tang Feng, divided into two shifts and twenty-four hours a day to protect Tang Feng.

Tang Feng also had nothing to say about Hansen's arrangement, so he could only passively accept Hansen's kindness.

Now Sam also has three or four bodyguards by his side, and when this group of people travels, the pomp and circumstance is almost in time for Obama to travel.

Cape Canaveral is the abbreviation of Cape Canaveral. Cape Canaveral is the world's most famous space coast because of two famous cosmodromes, the Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Air Force Base.

However, the two space centers are not located in the same location, and Cape Canaveral Air Force Base is located on Merritt Island between the Atlantic Ocean and the Banana River, and is part of the U.S. Air Force's Eastern Test Range. The Kennedy Space Center is northwest of Cape Canaveral, across the Banana River from Air Force Base.

The experiment, which will be held today, was conducted at launch pad B at launch site 39 at the Kennedy Space Center.

The Kennedy Space Center was founded in 1962 as the Launch Control Center. Kennedy, renamed the Kennedy Space Center in 1963.

It is a huge field with a length of 56 kilometers and a width of more than 10 kilometers. The site is divided into two parts: the technical position and the launch position. There are rocket and satellite, spacecraft assembly and testing workshops in the technical position. One of the most striking is the 160-meter-high one. The assembly building with a volume of 3.6 million cubic meters has been completed. In this huge cuboid building, there are a variety of advanced testing instruments and display and recording equipment. The launch site is built with a launch control center and a launch pad, and there are 23 launch positions in the entire space center.

In total, about 17,000 people worked in this huge field, and today Star Exploration is carrying out a launch recovery experiment on its heavy-lift launch vehicle. It was held at launch pad B at the famous launch site 39. The famous launch site 39 has two launch pads, A and B, which are located on the shore of the Atlantic Ocean, with launch pad A on the south side and launch pad B on the north side. The two launch pads were built specifically for the launch of heavy launch vehicles, from which many large spacecraft flew off Earth, including those five famous space shuttles.

Musk's Falcon 9 was launched from Launch Pad 40, about two kilometers south of Launch Pad 39. Compared with the height of the No. 39 launch pad, the No. 40 launch pad is much worse in terms of area and facilities.

The reason why the No. 39 launch pad was used for the test this time was mainly because of the "Starry Sky No. 1" rocket for this experiment. It is a heavy launch vehicle in the pure sense of the word.

The Falcon 9 has a total launch weight of 505 tons, while the Star 1 has a total launch weight of 2,300 tons.

Falcon 9 is 68.4 meters tall but only 3.8 meters in diameter. Although the height of Starry Sky 1 is only 70.8 meters, the diameter is 7.8 meters, which is twice that of Falcon 9, and Starry Sky 1 also has two boosters with a height of 33 meters and a diameter of 3.6 meters!

The Falcon 9 uses one main and eight auxiliary nine Merlin engines with a total thrust of 5,000 kN, while the first stage of the Starry One's core rocket uses four Russian-made RD-0120 engines. The thrust of the core-stage rocket alone is up to 6500 kN, as for those two boosters. Four Russian-made RD-170 engines were used with a total thrust of up to 29,000 kN!

Of course, because this time Star-1 is only carrying out recovery experiments, no other loads are added, and if Star-1 is launched at full capacity, this kind of heavy-duty launch vehicle with two boosters is bundled. The maximum launch weight can be up to 2800 tons!

The Falcon 9's LEO capacity, which is the Earth's low Earth orbit, can be as high as 131 tons, but its GTO capacity, which is the capacity of the geosynchronous transfer orbit, is only 4.8 tons. If launched at full capacity, Star-1 can send 130 tons of items to low-earth orbit. But it is also possible to send 21 tons of goods into the synchronous transfer orbit.

Although in terms of LEO capacity, Falcon 9 and Star 1 are not very different, but in terms of GTO capacity, Star 1 can throw out Falcon 9 eight streets.

It doesn't matter how big the LEO capacity is, whether your rocket is strong or not, the key depends on the GTO capacity, because only if the GTO capacity is strong enough, you can build a large spacecraft in space.

It is precisely because of the huge difference between Starry Sky One and Falcon 9 that the launch pads of the two will be different.

Heavy rockets such as Starry Sky 1, which theoretically have a carrying capacity second only to the former Soviet Union's Energia launch vehicle and the American Saturn V launch vehicle, are fully qualified to be launched on the famous launch pad 39.

Since the United States stopped the space shuttle program, the reusable spacecraft has become a pain in the hearts of everyone in the world, although Blue Origin and the Star Exploration Program have each successfully completed a recovery of a first-stage core rocket within a month, but the rocket of Blue Origin is only the lightest launch vehicle, the thrust of that rocket is only 500 kN, which is not representative at all.

Although Falcon 9 has the ability to launch large launch mass in Earth's low earth orbit, it is still far behind in terms of vital GTO capacity, so Falcon 9 is not a reusable spacecraft in the true sense.

And only today's experiment of Xingkong-1 can really be regarded as a reusable spacecraft with real significance, because once Xingkong-1 can be successfully experimented, then it is no longer a dream for humans to land on the moon or even to Mars. Because only with the ability to send large masses of materials to geosynchronous transfer orbit, this kind of launch vehicle can be regarded as truly useful!

And today, it is time to verify the true capabilities of this heavy launch vehicle, which cost nearly $800 million to develop! (To be continued.) )