"What's the solution?" Tang Yue came up.

"Go, go, don't interfere with my work, go write your story of Leonardo da Vinci painting eggs." The old cat drove Tang Yue away, "I'm calculating the flow field." ”

"The story of Leonardo da Vinci's painting of eggs has been written."

"Then draw duck eggs, you can draw goose eggs after the duck eggs are finished, and you can draw your own eggs after the goose eggs are finished."

"Can't you tell me about it? Don't sell it at such a critical juncture! Tang Yue grabbed the old cat, "Mai Dong is also very concerned about this issue...... Right? Mai Dong? ”

"Huh? Can? What canned? ”

The girl appears in the communication system.

Mai Dong and Tang Yue discussed this issue, although the Orion spacecraft slowed down safely, there is no land field on Mars, and Orion 2 has no landing gear, and this sugar gourd more than 80 meters long will inevitably fall on the hard ground and fall into pieces.

If you let Mai Dong fall down with it, then this is too dangerous.

Thirty stories high.

There is no parachute on the United Space Station, so there is no such thing as parachuting away from the spacecraft in the air, and the stunt of parachuting out of the spacecraft in a high-speed fall has to be done by James Bond.

For most people, skydiving is a very dangerous thing, and the Soviets first tried to eject astronauts from the capsule and parachute down during the landing, but Yuri Gagarin almost had an accident during the parachute. It turned out that it was not wise to physically resist the harsh environment of high altitude, and the safest place was always in the command module, with a thick metal shell to enclose the astronauts and resist the air flow and low temperatures.

"Mr. Cat, do you have any ideas?"

Mai Dong also wanted to know how the old cat should solve this problem, after all, it was directly related to his own life and death.

The old cat stared at the colorful patterns on the monitor, the workstation console under the desk made a humming sound, the cooling fan was running at full strength, and the calculation of fluid mechanics was very computational.

It pouted.

"Who told you it must be more than eighty meters high?"

Tang Yue and Mai Dong were stunned.

"Isn't the Orion spacecraft more than eighty meters long? It landed vertically, which is more than 80 meters. ”

"Are you stupid?" The old cat turned around, leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs, "Who told you we're going to take the entire Orion into the atmosphere?" ”

"You...... What do you mean......" Tang Yue frowned, he seemed to have grasped something, and he had a little clue.

"Do you know why the main truss of the Orion spacecraft is a three-stage structure? Because it is a modular design, the entire spacecraft is assembled from the power module, the central module and the power module, and each module can be replaced, which is what the Orion spacecraft was designed with in mind. The old cat cocked up a finger.

What does this mean? This means that it is inherently removable, and the engineers have long reserved the removal interface...... We can't remove the engines, but we can cut the entire ship short. ”

"The total length of the Orion spacecraft is eighty-eight meters, and the length of the power module at the front is twenty-five meters. The old cat raised his paws and pulled them, his eyes showing a fierce light, "So I won't stupidly erect an eighty-meter-high thin stick vertically in the air tens of thousands of meters, that is too risky." ”

"Sixty-three meters." Mai Dong calculated, "The last spacecraft to enter the atmosphere is sixty-three meters long?" ”

"Yes." The old cat nodded, "The truss of the power module can be lost, which shortens the length by nearly one-third, and it is much easier to maintain balance." ”

"What about the difficulty? Is it difficult to implement? ”

Tang Yue remembered that the trusses of the Orion spacecraft, all welded by thick steel bars, stood up like a tower crane, and as soon as he said that he wanted to dismantle the trusses, Tang Yue's mind popped up and down the scene of a large group of workers holding acetylene up and down.

It sounds like a heavy project with a huge amount of work, and they must consider whether Mai Dong can complete it alone, such as disassembling the rocket engine, which sounds feasible and can't be operated at all, has no practical value.

"It's a reserved split interface, like a lock between the train cars." The old cat replied, "To dismantle them, you only need a wrench, which is much easier than dismantling the engine." ”

"The last half of the sentence is purely superfluous."

"Of course, it's not enough to just tear down the trusses." The old cat continued, "We're going to completely dismantle the Orion spacecraft and the Eagle lander, tear them all into empty shells, and throw away all the weight that can be discarded!" What solar panels, what living cabins, service cabins and storage cabins, all don't! We only need those nine engines, and we want the maximum thrust-to-weight ratio. ”

"We docked the lander to the Orion spacecraft, and the Orion was the ferry, carrying the lander over this journey of more than 100 kilometers." The old cat described the landing process, "At the time of the final landing, the lander disconnected from Orion, Orion crashed, and the lander landed. ”

"And the position of the lander is not so high, it is not hanging on the top of the truss, the docking position of the Eagle spacecraft is in the central module, only thirty-five meters from the engine."

"Thirty-five meters ......" Tang Yue calculated silently in his heart, "But thirty-five meters is not low, it must be more than ten stories high." ”

It is true that cutting off part of the truss can shorten the total length of the Orion spacecraft by twenty-five meters, which is conducive to lowering the center of gravity and maintaining the attitude, and the docking position of the Eagle lander is not as high as Tang Yue imagined, but the threshold of the last level is still the same as it cannot be crossed, from eighty-eight meters to thirty-five meters, isn't it still a bag of scum when it falls?

What is the difference between jumping from a thirty-story building and jumping from a ten-story building?

It could be that the former requires a shovel.

"There are no parachutes on the space station, so what can we do to resist the impact of this landing?" Tang Yue asked, "If you fall from a height of more than 30 meters, something will definitely happen, and the Eagle lander can't withstand such a fall." ”

Mai Dong also nodded.

"When I was in college, a senior brother with a doctor jumped off the building, jumped from the tenth floor, and died on the spot."

The old cat was silent and held his forehead.

"Your generation may not know very well, after all, you are both born in the late twenties, and this era is no longer visible with this approach...... But disappearing does not mean that it is unreliable, some methods have been eliminated by history only because there are better methods, but they are the wisdom of our ancestors after all. ”

"When we can't find the answer, we can look at history, and people have often given the optimal solution."

Tang Yue and Mai Dong glanced at each other, not understanding what the old cat was talking about.

The old cat wrapped his fingertips around his fingertips, exhaled softly, and leaned back in his chair, "You know, at the end of the last century and the beginning of this century, more than fifty years ago, the first probes to come to Mars...... How did the great forerunners get through this last hurdle? ”