Compared with the 40 hours of the first moon landing, this moon landing took less time, although a huge Martian spacecraft was used.

Propelled by three main ion thrusters, the Mars spacecraft reached the predetermined deceleration zone in just twenty-one hours along a near-straight line. Therefore, the main ion thruster of the Martian spacecraft has not actually increased the speed of the Martian spacecraft to the maximum speed, so it has to slow down.

Ion thrusters and thrusters that use chemical fuels are not the same. Thrusters that use chemical fuels focus on an instantaneous thrust, while ion thrusters focus on a long stream of water.

The thrusters that use chemical fuels are like the 100-meter runners in the Olympics, emphasizing explosiveness, but not durability. Ion thrusters, on the other hand, are like marathon events in the Olympics, focusing on staying power.

Why is there a lot of research on ion thrusters now? Because this thruster is the future development direction of human space technology. Thrusters that use chemical fuels have very, very high thrust, but they require too much fuel. Think about it, a heavy launch vehicle with a payload of just over 100 tons needs thousands of tons of chemical fuel to fly out of the atmosphere, although there are reasons to overcome the earth's gravity, but the thruster using chemical fuel really can't afford it.

Not to mention anything else, the 370,000-kilometer journey from the geosynchronous transfer orbit to the lunar orbit requires at least more than 10 tons of chemical fuel if the propulsion is carried out by chemical fuel thrusters.

Although there is a huge difference in thrust between ion thrusters and thrusters using chemical fuels, from the Earth to the Moon, even if it pushes a Martian spacecraft with a dry weight of more than 800 tons, the fuel consumed is only a dozen kilograms

It's better to go to the moon, but if you want to go to a farther place, like Mars, if you want to use a spacecraft powered by thrusters that use chemical fuels, how much chemical fuel do you need? Although space travel relies more on the gravitational pull between planets, using the "gravitational slingshot" effect to accelerate the spacecraft, if you use the "gravitational slingshot" effect, your spacecraft will also have to accelerate, and you will have to slow down when you reach the ground, right? And the effect of the "gravitational slingshot" is not unlimited, if the gravitational pull of other planets is affected in the middle, you also have to adjust the attitude and direction of the spacecraft, which requires a lot of chemical fuel.

Although it is not possible to estimate how much chemical fuel would be needed to get from Earth to Mars if a spacecraft using chemical fuel as a thruster, this is definitely an unimaginably huge number, and with the current technology of mankind, it is simply impossible to fly a large spacecraft using chemical fuel as a thruster to Mars, and only a small probe using ion thrusters can be used to move towards Mars with the help of the "gravitational slingshot" effect.

From the "Spirit" Mars rover to the "Curiosity" Mars rover, the vehicles used by the probes are all ion thrusters. Only this kind of ion thruster, which consumes dozens of kilograms of fuel, can meet the hard needs of the probe to fly from Earth to Mars.

Similarly, Tang Feng's Martian spacecraft cannot avoid this hard demand. Although the Mars spacecraft is about the size of the International Space Station, even if the Martian spacecraft is full of chemical fuel, it is not enough fuel for a one-way flight from Earth to Mars.

It is precisely because of this that Tang Feng did not hesitate to spend billions of dollars to develop a new type of ion thruster. Now, if the ion thruster technology in Tang Feng's hands is the second in the world, then absolutely no one dares to claim to be the first. Even the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the United States cannot compete with Star Exploration in ion propulsion technology.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory is undoubtedly the most advanced space propulsion laboratory in the world, and the technology it has mastered is definitely the most advanced on Earth. But the Jet Propulsion Laboratory is only a profitable commercial organization, and no matter how rich it is, it can't compare with the star exploration company controlled by Tang. If the Jet Propulsion Laboratory does not have a national project, the annual R&D expenditure is only a billion US dollars. And how much does Star Discovery spend on R&D? There is no upper limit!

As long as you have ideas, then Tang Feng, as a big boss, dares to throw money into it, and it is a huge amount of money in billions of dollars.

For this alone, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory can't catch up with Dr. Schmitz's team even on a rocket.

You must know that in the past four years alone, Tang Feng has invested no less than 150 billion US dollars in the Star Exploration Company, which is enough to buy the huge amount of money of most of the world's large companies, in exchange for a Mars spacecraft worth 82.8 billion US dollars, two successful moon landing operations, the world's most advanced heavy-lift launch vehicle first-stage core rocket recovery technology, and large ion thruster technology

These technologies represent the future of human space technology, and they are also the fundamental confidence of Tang Feng to dare to launch a manned exploration program to Mars.

Because the Mars spacecraft uses the most advanced large-scale ion thruster technology, it only needs a dozen tons of fuel to travel back and forth from Earth to Mars, and any of the two special fuel storage compartments is enough to hold these fuels.

It is for this reason that the Martian spacecraft can save a lot of space, so that astronauts can live comfortably on the Martian spacecraft for long periods of time that can last for months or even a year.

According to Dr. Schmitz's calculations, if the Mars spacecraft uses the previous 900 mm caliber ion thruster, there is no need to take a curved route to fly from the Earth to Mars, relying on the 900 mm caliber ion thruster, it only takes about 105 days to go from the Earth to Mars, that is, three and a half months.

That's half the time it took to take the Spirit seven months, which is quite impressive.

You must know that space travel, especially long-distance manned space journey, requires the most biological, whether it is oxygen, water, food and other things, biosis most occupy the spacecraft's internal space. And if this manned journey can be cut in half, the benefits are self-evident.

Later, when this 1800 mm caliber ion thruster was successfully developed, Dr. Schmitz once estimated that if this large ion thruster was used as the main power, the one-way time of the Mars spacecraft from Earth to Mars could even be shortened to about 60 days.

Of course, these are all calculated on a computer through technology, and the effectiveness of this new ion thruster still needs to be really tested in space.

It's a pity that the distance from the earth to the moon is too short, and the efficacy of this new ion thruster has not really been revealed, and the moon is already close at hand. )