Chapter 9: The Hunter Lifts Off
In a sense, Paul is the driving force behind Musk's and Huaguo's son-in-law Zach's Blue Origin, and a host of other commercial companies entering space. After the glory of Saturn V, the rice country mistakenly chose the space shuttle such a science and technology tree, although the tall space shuttle did achieve its own design goals, but the final research and development cost is an order of magnitude behind the budget, even if the local tyrant such as the rice country, can not afford the huge launch cost.
Every time the space shuttle lifts off, it is always accompanied by huge applause, as well as the tears of the head of NASA, "This year's budget, there is nothing left".
Then there was the last straw that broke the camel's back, the Challenger exploded soon after launch because of the damage caused by a few pieces of foam to the booster rocket, causing the biggest tragedy in the history of the rice country's spaceflight, so the space shuttle program ended hastily, so that the daily maintenance of the International Space Station required the chartering of the Soyuz spacecraft.
At this time, as the scientific adviser to the black president, Paul promoted the privatization of aerospace technology, and with his efforts, NASA opened the Merlin rocket in the waste paper heap, the reentry engine of the lunar module, the main engine of the space shuttle and other black technologies in the last century to private companies free of charge, and at the same time, NASA will also launch orders in the form of bidding, open bidding to private companies.
This is also the internal driving force for the vigorous development of private aerospace companies such as SpaceY and Blue Origin in the new century, after all, if it is necessary to develop rocket technology from scratch, no company can bear such a huge financial and labor cost.
For Paul, Musk is very grateful, so much so that after the presidential change, he worked with Zach and others to achieve the re-election of the president's scientific adviser, which is unique in the government team of a son of heaven and a courtier.
Naturally, this time, the latest Hunter heavy rocket launch, Musk also invited Paul to visit, but he never dreamed that this Paul was no longer Paul.
As a competent representative of science, Paul is of course inextricably linked to the scientific and corporate worlds, Paul's consulting company before entering the White House, the largest client is an unknown company named FutureY, if you look closely, you will find that this FutureY has only one and only one shareholder, that is, Elena. Musk Foundation, do you feel that this Musk's name is very familiar, you guessed right, this Musk is the underage daughter of Musk.
Paul successfully entered the White House through his own efforts, and the Foundation was richly rewarded, and the Merlin engine, which was of immeasurable value, became the watchman of SpaceY.
Originally, this is a typical story of collusion between politics and business, well, wrong, and clever investment vision, but unfortunately, the foundation still does not know enough about its investment object, Paul, although he knows that he is the great-great-great-grandson of the famous physicist Paul, in the foundation's archives, Paul is a slight theist, a rational scientific adviser with sufficient scientific literacy, and a worthy investor.
Even Paul had always thought so, until that day, when he returned to Europa, to the place where his great-great-grandfather once lived.
Paul met a strange man, he swore that he had never met this person before coming to Europa, but in the back of Paul's heart, a voice seemed to be whispering, "Trust him", "Follow him", so the ghost sent Paul, and Paul followed this mysterious fellow to a church.
Paul saw a miracle, yes, a miracle, when the god of the cross, shrouded in a milky white light, in Paul's mind, the voice became extraordinarily clear, the auditory hallucinations and headaches that had plagued Paul for many years, seemed to disappear all at once, and Paul saw his great-great-grandfather, yes, the guy who proposed Paul's incompatibility principle.
As if a piece of code in his genes was activated after certain triggers were met, Paul felt as if he had experienced his grandfather's legendary life in just a few minutes.
As one of the brilliant stars of the explosive development of physics at the beginning of the twentieth century, Paul was a lonely, but impossible to ignore star, and his Paul's principle of incompatibility is not a natural corollary of quantum mechanics as most people think, on the contrary, the principle of incompatibility does not contradict all theories of quantum mechanics, but it cannot be deduced from the more basic Schrödinger wave function or Heisenberg's matrix, just like Euclidean geometry and parallel line postulates.
Physicists have discovered that without Paul's principle of incompatibility, atoms would not be as large as we see them by electron microscopes, so large that they could make up the macroscopic world we are familiar with, and the nuclei and atoms are five orders of magnitude different in size.
Without Paul's principle of incompatibility, the atom would inevitably collapse, and everything we know as it knows will cease to exist.
Paul, a scientific advisor, saw a different side of his great-great-grandfather in this church, shrouded in some magical divine light, yes, Paul Sr., a scientist and a member of a mysterious organization.
It was this amazing organization, in the darkest days of Europa, that smuggled Paul to Princeton, avoiding the murderous hands of the mustache. It is precisely because he could not find a natural explanation of Paul's incompatibility principle in the basic theory of quantum mechanics that Paul Sr., like Newton, turned to the first impulse of omnipotence, to the ultimate answer to all problems, and became a devout believer.
Paul, the scientific advisor, was also surprised to find that he was able to beat many competitors and become the scientific representative of the White House for two consecutive terms, not just by accident and effort, the truth is often cruel, and many things, in fact, were planned decades ago.
Of course, most of the time, the Guardian Alliance is a loose, legitimate organization, especially a high-ranking member like Paul, the organization will never ask them to do anything, that part of the code seems to be engraved in the genes, just ask them to protect the glory of the only great existence of the almighty, this is all the members of the alliance, engraved in the deepest part of the genes, the most instinctive code.
So, before awakening, Paul pushed for the privatization of aerospace technology, perhaps because of the natural impulse of human beings to pursue freedom.
However, when Musk's rocket got bigger and bigger, and even sent his own sports car to Mars orbit. When the Hunter Heavy rocket once again restored the carrying capacity of human earth orbit to 64 tons (not to mention the 140-ton bug of Saturn V, which was definitely made by the black technology of aliens in the rice country back then), Paul was horrified to find that the privatization of space technology he single-handedly promoted once again set off a new climax of space exploration.
And the black hole in the South Pacific, and the starry sky looming behind the black hole, gave Paul a very bad feeling, perhaps, a certain aircraft sailing in space, will discover some facts that will frighten ordinary people, and even the Almighty Lord.
Without telling anyone, Paul decided to take matters into his own hands to make up for his mistakes.
Time flies quickly, seeing that the scheduled rocket launch time is coming, 40 p.m., the last 20 minutes of preparation time, unlike traditional rocket launches, the Hunter Heavy rocket uses a payload tethering scheme, that is, after the rocket engine is ignited, it will not immediately enter the full power working state and quickly leave the ground. Instead, all rocket engines carry out low-power ignition operations, and the rockets are forcibly left on the ground by fixed devices.
Only after the rocket engine works long enough, the indicators are normal, through a series of self-test tests, and then gradually increase the operating power of the engine, when the rocket engine works in a stable state, and then eliminate the tethered state of the launch tower, the rocket will slowly lift off, in the whole launch process, if any engine has a problem, you can stop the launch at any time, repair the fault, or even replace the problematic engine and re-launch.
Therefore, the launch process of the Hunter Heavy rocket is much longer and more reliable than traditional rockets, such as the CZ series of the Rabbit.
It was the first time for Wang Yinan to watch the launch of the rocket at the scene, and several high-magnification telescopes were placed on the side of the floor-to-ceiling windows, through which the guests could clearly see the details of the launch pad.
Wang Yinan looked curiously from the lens of the telescope, the milky white arrow body of the hunter heavy rocket on the launch pad scattered golden light in the afternoon sun, this is a newly manufactured original cargo, not a first-stage rocket that has been recovered many times, it looks particularly spectacular and beautiful, after all, this is the second launch of the hunter, although the first launch was successfully put into orbit, but the first-stage rocket that was originally planned to be recovered did not find the barge to land and fell into the sea.
After carefully looking at this masterpiece of modern industry over and over again, Wang Yinan's determination to go up and have a look was stronger, "It seems that Mars can't compare to you", Wang Yinan thought, "Then I can only go to Callisto first, that place, but the inner solar system, a more mysterious corner than Mars."
Reluctantly removed his gaze from the telescope, Wang Yinan saw Paul as soon as he turned around, this scientific advisor who felt a little weird, also happened to raise his head from another telescope, on Paul's forehead, Wang Yinan seemed to see something shiny, "It won't be better than I haven't seen the world", Wang Yinan thought to himself.
"This guy looks like a Wrangler from rural Texas, and he doesn't know how he got into the position of the president's scientific adviser", Wang Yinan accidentally guessed the truth.
At this time, Musk and other high-level executives of SpaceY gathered in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows, looking at the milky white Hunter in the distance, at this time, the pipes that filled the engine with fuel and liquid oxygen had fallen off with insulating foam, and the nine latest Merlin engines of the main rocket, as well as the eighteen Merlin engines on the two boosters, ignited at the same time and entered the pre-launch stage.
The massive steel monster roared, accumulating its strength on the launch pad, but the huge steel frame pressed the hunter tightly to the ground, and as the thrust of the rocket engine steadily increased, the steel frame slowly began to be unable to withstand the tremendous thrust generated by the twenty-seven Merlin engines.
"The core-stage engine is working properly",
"Booster A works fine",
"Booster B is working normally", in the viewing room, the real-time broadcast of the command center was transmitted simultaneously.
Everyone stared nervously at the slowly trembling behemoth in the distance, trying to break free, except Paul.
No one noticed, and Paul, who had beads of sweat on his forehead and a somewhat unusually flushed face, paced to the corner alone and quietly dialed a phone call.
Execute as scheduled.
At this time, the total thrust generated by the 27 rocket engines has far exceeded the total weight of the rocket of 1,500 tons.
"Release tethered device",
With the command of the launch commander, the steel frame that held the hunter tightly was slowly released.
Slowly, the huge thrust of the huge Hunter Heavy Rocket exceeded the gravitational pull of the Earth on it, and this milky white behemoth, slowly, but without hesitation, left the ground, and flew towards the sky little by little in the dense fog formed by the huge vaporized cooling water.
As the hunter left the ground and flew higher and higher, the observation room erupted in a round of applause and cheers.
"It's perfect", Wang Yinan thought to himself, he watched Musk surrounded by a celebratory crowd, and thought to himself how to congratulate this good friend he had just met, a future competitor.
"What's that?" ,
Outside the crowd, several guests who had been staring at the Hunter Rocket suddenly heard an exclamation.