Zhang Xiaogang and Luo Jinyong arrived at the US military combat command center five minutes ahead of schedule.

The two of them smelled of alcohol, causing the other commissioners and chief scientific advisors to frown. It's just that neither of them cares, who can control them?

Because Operation Courage was a defensive project, the entire project was handed over to the military after the meeting of the chiefs of general staff decided on the interception plan, and the Scientific Advisory Board was no longer involved in providing technical assistance, and the Security Affairs Liaison Office was only responsible for secrecy.

Now, Zhang Xiaogang and Luo Jinyong are just spectators.

According to the arrangement, 1,128 super-nuclear warheads are controlled separately by the five nuclear powers, each of which has a launch control command center, and Diego Garcia is only a joint command center, responsible for summarizing the interception situation of the five nuclear powers and coordinating the interception operations.

After a while, the lighting system in the command center was turned off, and the light suddenly dimmed.

Because there are hundreds of computer monitors, and there are several large monitors on the wall facing the gate, the command center is not a black place.

Zhang Xiaogang and Luo Jinyong stayed in the corner on the left, and there were several commissioners and chief scientific advisers nearby.

At this time, a close-up of the International Space Station appeared on the big screen, then the Tiangong space station, and twelve unmanned space stations.

In the past, for secrecy, these large unmanned space stations were in sun-synchronous orbit.

Twelve hours ago, twelve unmanned space stations began to maneuver in orbit change. At this time, six unmanned space stations are clustered near the ISS, and the other six are near the Tiangong space station. In low earth orbit, two space station groups are formed with the International Space Station and the Tiangong Space Station as the core.

The current International Space Station is no longer what it used to be.

After the establishment of the Planetary Defense Council, a coalition of Western countries led by the United States immediately began to expand the International Space Station, intending to make it the base camp of human defense capabilities in low-earth orbit. Soon after, the International Space Station, which was being expanded, played its vital role. That is, as the assembly platform of the Hubble-2 space telescope in low-earth orbit, the difficulty of space launch is greatly reduced.

It can be said that without the ISS, there would be no Hubble-2 space telescope.

This super telescope, which can see an object the size of a basketball from a billion kilometers away, with a total mass of nearly 500 tons, cannot be launched in a single flight. Even with the most powerful launch vehicle, the Ariane 5 launch vehicle, it will take ten times to launch all components into low-earth orbit. Hubble-2 was launched in 14 sorties, eight by the Ariane 5 launch vehicle, the remaining six by Russia, China and the United States, and seven with the launch of orbital vehicle components. The components of the space telescope and orbiter are connected to the International Space Station, and after the assembly is completed, the orbiter will transport the space telescope to the synchronous orbit facing the 2014X1 asteroid. In the following year, five refueling of the orbital vehicle was carried out via the International Space Station.

The construction of the Hubble-2 space telescope is just a test in the expansion of the International Space Station.

The ISS would have to be scrapped in 2018 for its design life, and the United States authorities envisaged building a new one in 2013. It was only after the creation of the Planetary Defense Council that the United States no longer considered building a new space station, but set about strengthening the ISS.

The first part of the expansion was to strengthen the structure of the ISS.

Although the orbital velocity of an orbiter is determined by the orbital altitude of its center of mass, the center of mass is only a point, while an orbiter cannot be a point. The larger the size of the orbiter, the greater the difference in orbital velocity between the various parts, and the higher the structural strength is required.

Once this step is completed, the expansion of the ISS officially begins.

Because the ISS has an open architecture and uses nodes to increase the number of functional modules, the main means of expansion is to increase the number of nodes.

After two years of construction, the ISS became a rectangular structure with a double-layer frame structure similar to a pipe organ.

The relative thickness of this cuboid is very small, less than 30 meters, the width reaches 150 meters, and the length is up to 24 kilometers. The frame structure not only does not reduce the strength of the structure, but also minimizes the number of space launches.

For the past two years, the International Space Station has been facing the ground on its smallest side.

In order to reduce the probability of being observed by amateur astronomers, the outer surface of the ISS has been specially treated with a reflectivity of only 1 in 10,000.

More than 10 hours ago, the International Space Station (ISS) began to adjust its attitude after completing the recalibic maneuver.

Strictly speaking, the ISS resembles a harmonica with its panels removed and more than 600 holes.

Every hole is a launch vehicle silo. After the launch vehicle for delivering the super-nuclear warhead is assembled on the International Space Station, it is transported into these holes by a small orbital maneuvering spacecraft and fastened to it. The installation of super-nuclear warheads on these launch vehicles began just over two months ago.

At this time, out of a total of 338 holes, 338 launch vehicles were ready.

Each launch vehicle has a mass of more than 500 tons and is capable of accelerating a super-nuclear warhead with a total mass of 100 kilograms, including the warhead attitude control thruster, to more than 500 kilometers per second before the fuel runs out. Because the speed of the asteroid fragment is only 350 kilometers per second, in order to extend the time window for interception, the launch vehicle will only accelerate the super-nuclear warhead to 350 kilometers per second.

About 5,000 kilometers west of the ISS is the Tiangong space station.

The Tiangong space station was originally a space project carried out by China alone, but after the United States decided to expand the International Space Station and was unwilling to involve Russia in a high degree, Russia turned to cooperation with China to help China build the Tiangong space station into another space base.

Structurally, the Tiangong space station is similar to the International Space Station, but on a smaller scale.

The Tiangong space station has only 226 silos, and only 225 silos have launch vehicles in them, and the last silo is empty.

In accordance with the decision made by the Council of Chiefs of the General Staff, China will control one hundred and sixty-nine of them, and another fifty-six will be controlled by Russia.

Like the International Space Station, the Tiangong space station has also completed the variable maneuver and attitude adjustment.

At this time, the Tiangong space station is just above the Lop Nur nuclear test base in northwest China, with an orbital altitude of 387 kilometers.

In the vicinity of the two space stations, twelve unmanned space stations have adopted a more efficient structure, a double-layer honeycomb frame structure.

Each of the 11 fully completed space stations had 50 launch vehicles, while the unfinished station had only 14 launch vehicles. All launch vehicles are housed in tightly spaced hexagonal silos and launched remotely from ground control centers.

Of course, the launch vehicles on the International Space Station and the Tiangong space station are also remotely launched from ground control centers.

As early as more than 10 hours ago, astronauts on the International Space Station and Tiangong space station boarded the orbiting spacecraft and withdrew hundreds of kilometers away. After all the launch vehicles are launched, the space station is separated from the frame structure where the launch vehicle is placed, and then the brake propulsion rocket on the frame mechanism is activated, so that the frame structure slows down and crashes into the atmosphere on its own and burns up. After that, the astronauts returned to the space station.

Although there was a proposal to reuse the framework structure, it was rejected by the Council of Chiefs of General Staff.

If the massive frame structure is hit by debris from an asteroid, it will become space junk and cause complete paralysis in low-Earth orbit.

To this end, all twelve unmanned space stations will crash into the atmosphere and burn up after completing their missions.

In the past two years, the space launches related to Operation Courage have been 1,000 times the total number of space launches in the decades since the launch of the first artificial satellite by the former Soviet Union! Someone has made statistics that the total number of space launches of Operation Courage is equivalent to 300 times that of the American Apollo project! That is, in the past two years, the average annual launch has been 3,000 times the average annual launch over the past few decades.

What is this concept?

Over the past two years, an average of fifteen space launches have been carried out per day.

No one would believe this if they didn't experience it firsthand.

It is important to know that this is a space activity carried out without the knowledge of more than 8 billion people. In two years, the 10 members of the Planetary Defense Council have not only built a large number of launch vehicles, but the five nuclear powers have also used all long-range and medium-range ballistic missiles, including strategic ballistic missiles, which were once the pillars of national security. In order to avoid people's eyes, the United States, China, and Russia have also renovated dozens of sea launch sites with supertankers and oil and gas drilling platforms, and concentrated them in the waters set up as military restricted areas near the equator in the Pacific Ocean to carry out space launches day and night. The United States has also opened a secret military base on a nearby island to provide security for the Sea Launch Site.

The sheer scale of space launches means that a lot of money is needed.

"How much did Operation Courage cost?" Luo Jinyong only cares about technology, and never asks about funds, so he doesn't have a clear concept. “

"Guess what." The source of funds is directly related to security and confidentiality, so it is primarily the responsibility of the Commissioner.

"Can't guess."

"Burned almost a tenth of the wealth of mankind."

"What!?"

"As of early August, the total cost was around 15 trillion dollars."

"Where did you get all this money?"

Zhang Xiaogang smiled and said, "Counting the Japan that is out, which country is the weakest among the eleven countries of the Planetary Defense Council?" ”

"Israel?"

"Wrong, it's the United States."

"Are you kidding?"

"If you look at the proportion of capital contributions, Israel is not only not the weakest, but also the strongest. Don't forget, the Jews are the richest people. ”

"This ......"

"Two-thirds of the fifteen trillion dollars spent on Operation Courage came from Jews, or more precisely, through Israel."

"Private funds?"