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Earth, Houston Space Center, USA. Pen "Fun" Pavilion www.biquge.info

June 22, 2028, 17:22 New York time.

"The latest news from the Noah...... It's here! It's here! Here they are! They arrived safely on Mars...... "The female staff member staring at the screen was a silent reader at first, and when she saw the content of the text message, she was thrilled, and the message quickly spread.

When the Houston Space Center received the latest text message from Noah, the entire NASA headquarters was in a boil. Bol was inevitably excited. The news was spreading at an alarming rate, and NASA got the news out as soon as possible, and almost all the headlines around the world were about the successful arrival of Noah on Mars.

The media in the United States has covered this overwhelmingly.

This is undoubtedly a phased victory, the five astronauts carried by "Noah" deservedly further refreshed the "horizon" of mankind, the last time to the farthest was the moon, and this time it is more distant Mars, which is of extraordinary significance.

In Washington's capital, the White House also sent a spokesman to congratulate the victory.

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On June 22, when the Americans' "Noah" successfully and safely reached the orbit of Mars, and its news was transmitted back to Earth, the "Mars Express", which had departed as early as mid-May, had been traveling long distances for more than a month, with a distance of more than 129 million kilometers.

The propulsion system of the "Mars Express" is very special, compared with the conventional ion engine drive, which ejects argon atoms backwards at ultra-high speed to obtain thrust, the propulsion system of the "Mars Express" is a bit of the opposite, its propulsion engine is not only not a rear conventional fuel thruster, but a kind of front engine, using thousands of lasers to irradiate hundreds of thousands of lasers to use light sails to propel Mars Express and its "Firefly".

Although a thousand groups of lasers will produce a reverse thrust when they start, compared to the thrust kinetic energy generated by the light sail is completely acceptable, only a small part of the thrust is needed to offset the reverse thrust, and the acceleration of the light sail to push the whole object is indeed very fast, but it does not seem too shocking, on the one hand, it is an energy problem, and on the other hand, it is also the factor that there are astronauts on the spacecraft.

Despite this, in the long sailing phase, the acceleration of more than ten times respectively, the continuous acceleration of the entire spacecraft in batches along the way, after a long period of accumulation, can also bring a fairly fast acceleration to the spacecraft. Theoretically, in an ideal state of sufficient material strength and energy output, continuous acceleration can make the entire spacecraft infinitely close to the speed of light, and infinitely close to the speed of light only needs to be continuously accelerated for 8 months, of course, this is the ideal state.

But these problems are not the key to making the "Mars Express" design as a front-engine, the most critical factor is the size of the entire vehicle, the "Mars Express", "Firefly", and their accompanying outpost bases to be built on the surface of Mars, a surface crystal cutting laboratory, plus two landing vehicles, and other miscellaneous materials.

The combined volume of the entire spacecraft is already quite amazing, the "Firefly" operating in the Martian orbit alone has reached a volume of nearly 1,500 tons, plus other parts, the entire spacecraft is almost close to 4,000 tons, which is equivalent to half of the "Tiangong Orbital Starport".

With such a huge volume, the actual situation is that only the use of the front engine can safely take this big guy to shuttle between the stars.

Imagine a conventional propulsion system, such as a rocket-like engine rear aircraft, whose hull structure and material properties must be strong enough to cope with the thrust of the engine. In other words, the structure of the entire vehicle needs to be built like a skyscraper, with a solid middle and bottom part to ensure that such a massive spacecraft will not collapse and fall apart in the face of strong thrust.

This is also the reason why the size and outline of the rocket are like a spire-like structure, and the upper end is small and the middle and lower layers are huge, such as the American "Saturn 5" and the current American "Noah" are designed in this way.

But the front engine is very different, the hull does not need to be designed to be as thick and strong as a super-heavy rocket or a building, the biggest requirement is to be as tenable as a rope, which is why the total length of the "Mars Express" and its "Firefly" once exceeded 1,000 meters, and the structure appears so slim.

The design of the front engine can greatly reduce the weight of the hull structure, making it possible for super-large spacecraft to travel long distances to the stars, and the mining operations and transportation to the asteroid belt is not an unattainable fantasy, which is undoubtedly of great significance for interstellar travel.

Otherwise, why is the American "Noah" so "small"? Why is it a tower gyro? Moreover, due to the carrying capacity, the Americans' "Mars Program" will be divided into three times, and a one-way journey will take nearly half a year, and a round trip between the Earth and Mars plus the mission time will take almost a year, and it will take a year to wait for the golden voyage stage of relative distance.

It's not that the Americans don't have that financial resources, it's not that the few giant companies involved in the "Mars mission" are not without money, and the United States is not without money.

The real reason is that the field of laser technology is not as good as China, and the field of light sail technology and solar panels is also far ahead of China.

Not to mention the most critical energy supply problem, for Americans who do not have amethy crystal, this is a real knot that cannot be untied, not to mention the problem of mature laser technology, that is, if you want to get enough thrust, you need more fuel to supply the energy output of the laser column, and carrying more fuel means that the size of the spacecraft will increase, which in turn requires stronger thrust, obviously, this is an endless loop.

But Amethyst helped CMSX unravel this biggest loop, which was to reduce the size of the ship without losing energy supply.

At this moment, in the space of the "Firefly".

Ren Hong was sitting on his desk in the centrifugal cabin staring at the dizzying data on the screen without saying a word, this time he spent a lot of money and traveled hundreds of millions of kilometers to Mars, the purpose was to get the amethyst on it.

But obviously, it is not a simple thing to get these crystal ores with fatal attraction on Mars, Ren Hong is most worried and concerned about how to cut off such a large piece of purple stone piece by piece, and according to the current understanding of the characteristics of amethy crystal, it is a bit unrealistic to estimate that the idea of wanting to collect scattered spar fragments at the fall point first.

Even a nuclear bomb bombardment is unlikely to decompose this stone, and this time the huge "Terminator" fell to the surface of Mars, and perhaps not even a piece of debris and slag would fall off, which meant that it would have to be artificially cut from this big guy piece by piece.

Ren Hong did invent the technology of cutting amethy source crystal, that is, the "condensation cutting method", but it was the advantages of the favorable external environment on the earth and the size of the cutting object, and in the face of a "terminator" calculated in kilometers, it was really urgent to scratch the head.

This is Mars, not Earth, and the environment is harsh, and it is also a relatively difficult problem to create an ultra-low temperature environment with infinitely close to absolute zero, and the unavoidable harsh practical environment requirements need a mobile cryogenic laboratory to meet.

What makes him feel fortunate is that he currently has a large amount of amethy source crystals full of energy, and a series of activities to be carried out on Mars require a large amount of energy as support, whether it is an outpost base, a mobile cutting laboratory, or a mobile laboratory that creates an ultra-low temperature environment, it is a large consumer of energy that is driven by its operation, but fortunately, the amethy source crystal with high energy storage can support the huge energy consumption of a series of equipment.

"Old ...... Uh, no, Professor Wang. News came from the Earth Command Center 7 minutes ago. Just then, Shaw Ray, who played the role of his assistant, came to him.

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… (To be continued.) )