Dec. 3, 9:20 a.m.

Kaohsiung City, East Island, among the Kaohsiung Space City.

Preparations are underway for the lifting of the operating orbit of the new Kaohsiung space station.

Wang Tu, who has been promoted to director of the East Island Space Bureau, is in the hall of the general control room at this time, and next to him is Zeng Baojiang, the person in charge of the Kaohsiung base.

"The situation of Xinjiang, how are the preparations for the orbit upgrade?"

"It's ready, and we can go up at ten o'clock." Zeng Baojiang hurriedly replied.

"For some emergencies, we need to make more emergency plans, so as not to be in a hurry." Wang Tu reminded.

"The king's reminder is right."

Suddenly, a staff member ran to Wang Tu's side and whispered in his ear: "Wang Ju, this is a document just sent by NASA, saying that an asteroid is approaching the blue star." ”

As soon as he heard the word asteroid, Wang Tu suddenly became nervous, and hurriedly took the documents over and browsed them.

According to NASA, an asteroid is approaching the blue star at a rapid speed, and the asteroid discovered by NASA's asteroid tracker at around 3 o'clock this morning was named 2019XW.

The asteroid was spotted heading towards Earth in a "close" orbit on December 3, 2019, and NASA now predicts that the asteroid XW will pass by on the afternoon of December 10.

They estimated the rock to be between 144 and 324 feet (44 and 99 meters) in diameter.

According to the upper limit of NASA's valuation, the asteroid is taller than the Big Ben clock tower in London's Palace of Westminster, and may even be taller than the Statue of Liberty in New York, the length of a football field.

According to NASA's valuation floor, the asteroid's altitude is comparable to that of the Arc de Triomphe in Gallic Paris.

Based on orbital observations, the rock will pass by the blue star on the afternoon of December 10, 2019.

Asteroid XW will reach incredible speeds of about 15.59 kilometers per second (56,124 kilometers per hour), which is twice as fast as NASA's space shuttle.

However, although the asteroid WX will have a "close contact" with the blue star, NASA has assessed that the asteroid WX will not hit the blue star.

After all, NEOs sometimes approach blue stars as they orbit the Sun, and at their closest approach, the asteroid WX is 0.02764 AU away from Blue Star, and one AU describes the distance between Blue Star and the Sun, which is about 149.6 million kilometers.

In other words, the space rock will pass by about 4.1 million kilometers from Blue Star, a distance almost 11 times the distance of the Moon, and after this flyby, the asteroid will approach Venus again in August 2021.

It turned out to be a false alarm, and Wang Tu breathed a sigh of relief.

"What's wrong with the Wang Bureau, you were so nervous just now?" Zeng Baojiang looked at Wang Tu, whose face turned from cloudy to clear, and asked.

"Nothing, NASA informed us about an asteroid coming close to the blue star." After Wang Tu finished speaking, he turned around and instructed the staff who had just come over with the document:

"Let's keep an eye on this asteroid for our cosmic monitoring department."

"Okay."

Zeng Baojiang flipped through the documents, only to find that the WX asteroid was passing by the Blue Star, and the distance was as high as 4.1 million kilometers.

"It turned out to be a false alarm, and there are such things as asteroids approaching the blue star every year, but most of them are the same as this WX asteroid, and they pass by the blue star."

"I've got people staring at this WX asteroid, and we continue to prepare for the lift." Wang Tu also put this matter aside.

December 3, 10:00 a.m.

"Prepare for a change of track." Zeng Baojiang gave an order, and the staff in the entire control room hall suddenly became busy.

Invisible radio waves continue to move from the ground base station to the specially built high-altitude (60 kilometers above sea level) 6G airship, and then the signal is amplified.

Because the atmospheric density of outer space is very thin, about less than 1/100 million of the tropospheric atmospheric density, the air has very little impact on the road loss of terahercity communications.

The effective communication distance of 6G terahertz waves in outer space is about 1600~1700 kilometers.

The special 6G airship can be networked with the Nandou satellite system, with the cooperation of the 6G airship and the Nandou satellite system.

One by one, the radio waves quickly arrived at the new Kaohsiung City space station, and after receiving the ground command.

Modules 3 and 4 of the new Kaohsiung space station are the installation compartments of the two main engines, and the two main engines are immediately ignited.

The light blue tail flame is gushing out from the nozzle of the main engine, and the new Kaohsiung space station is rapidly changing its orbit under the action of the engine's anti-thrust.

In order to save some fuel, the new Kaohsiung space station has chosen to orbit several times to reach the designated 450 kilometers of low-earth orbit.

During this period, the main engine needs to be ignited at least three times, and the rest of the work is done by the auxiliary engine to adjust the track.

In fact, even if the new Kaohsiung space station uses brute force and directly increases the engine thrust, it can directly reach 450 kilometers from 160 kilometers in low-earth orbit.

The problem is that doing so consumes a lot of fuel and may require about three times as much fuel.

Although the mass projector is used to launch materials into outer space, the single cost of the Xuanwu class is about 340,000 Chinese yuan, and this cost is mainly the depreciation of electricity and spacecraft.

Coupled with the cost of the mass projector system, the cost of a launch is about 100~2 million yuan, and the more times the launch, the lower the cost will be.

However, even if it is 2 million Chinese dollars, it is also very cost-effective, 2 million Chinese yuan to send 60 tons of materials to low earth orbit, which is equivalent to 34,000 Chinese yuan for 1 ton of materials and 34 Chinese yuan for 1 kilogram of materials.

However, at present, the actual freight is still higher, about 40~50 yuan per kilogram, but with the passage of time, the cost will be lower and lower.

This is where the advantage of the mass projector lies, a one-time huge investment, and then the use of cheap launch costs to transport a large number of supplies to outer space, in this way to spread the construction cost of the mass projector.

The Space Development Committee estimates that the service life of the two mass projectors in Kaohsiung and Bazhong is 20~30 years, and if there is a breakthrough in science and technology in the future, it may be possible to extend the service life by upgrading and renovating.

The service life of 20~30 years is enough for the Space Development Committee to recover the construction cost.

The gaze returned to the main control room of Kaohsiung Sky City.

"The current orbital altitude of the space station is 330 kilometers in low-Earth orbit and the orbital speed is ......"

"The main engine is ready for the third finition."

"The ignition was successfully started, and it is expected that the designated orbit will be reached in 50 minutes."

……

Wang Tu kept staring at the holographic simulation real-time monitoring model in the middle of the hall.

I saw that on the low earth orbit of the blue star, a regular hexagonal red model is constantly orbiting the low earth orbit of the blue star, but the orbit is rapidly rising.

And at this moment, it is not only the East Island Space Agency and the Space Development Commission that are closely monitoring the new Kaohsiung space station.

The world's powerful space agencies are also paying close attention to this behemoth, which is constantly changing orbits.

Although Wang Tu was very calm on the surface, if anyone noticed his forehead at this time, they would know that Wang Tu was also nervous to death, and his palms were about to sweat.

After the third ignition of the main engine, the orbit of the new Kaohsiung space station became larger and larger, and the distance from the ground of the blue star became larger and larger.