Chapter 13: The Interstellar Age (1)
Yes, the interstellar age has come.
At the beginning of the twenty-second century, the United Nations has developed into the most powerful global coordinating organization. The United Nations has established the Interstellar Navigation Administration in accordance with the development trend of the earth, and has set up seven interstellar bases on the earth.
The first interstellar base is located in Eastern Europe, specifically in the Russian Space Agency, or RKA.
At the beginning of the 22nd century, the RKA was the focal point for space exploration programs in Eastern Europe, and it also carried out space programs for civilian and government agencies, including astronaut training programs and monitoring of planets in the solar system.
The reason why RKA can win the title of "No. 1 Interstellar Base" is not in vain, you must know that RKA is the absolute inheritance of the former Soviet Union, so it has inherited countless firsts accordingly.
For example, it launched the first artificial earth satellite, launched the first manned spacecraft, sent the first male astronaut into space, sent the first female astronaut into space, sent the first group of astronauts composed of multiple people into space, and was the space agency with the largest number of spacecraft, satellites and probes in the world.
As a result, RKA rightfully won the title of "First Starbase", and has since been referred to as the First Sector for short.
After Eastern Europe won the title of "First Zone", Western Europe also won the title of "Second Starbase". And the reason why Western Europe won the title of "Second Starbase" is also very simple, because the predecessor of the Interstellar Navigation Administration was the Air Sports Federation, and the headquarters of the Air Sports Federation has always been located in Paris.
At the same time, Paris has been home to the headquarters of two other aerospace organizations. One is CNES, which is the French Centre for Space Research. The other is the ESA, which is the European Space Agency.
At the beginning of the 21st century, CNES has successfully developed a space formation flight technology, which allows aircraft to carry multiple groups of heavy components in the same orbit to fly in formation, but can be thousands of kilometers away from each other, or even tens of thousands of kilometers. And this technology has long been successfully applied to space security and space defense.
And what about ESA?
The ESA, on the other hand, has the advantage of focusing on the coordination of intellectual property and financial assets among Western European Member States, and its ability to manage them in an integrated manner is far beyond the scope of any one Western European country.
As a result, ESA exerted its strong coordination ability, and with the strong cooperation of CNES, it successfully won the title of "Second Starbase", and was known as the second region together with CNES.
So, what about the third starbase?
After Eastern Europe and Western Europe won the titles of "First Starbase" and "Second Starbase" successively, the Interstellar Navigation Administration soon assigned the title of "Third Starbase" to NASA.
However, this NASA is not the other NASA.
The former refers to NASA, and the latter refers to the former US Aeronautics and Space Administration, which has long since declined.
The former is owned by SpaceX, the best private aerospace manufacturer and space transportation services company on the North American continent and on the planet. And the latter is a government agency of a beautiful country that has long been exhausted by the virus and has long been powerless.
Things are different now.
More than 100 years ago, no one on Earth, including North America, would have believed that a private sector could compete with government-led space agencies, especially NASA and CSA, the two largest government space agencies in North America at the time.
However, SpaceX has created one brilliant achievement after another with its ambition and enterprising spirit, and these achievements can be called milestones in the history of human space development.
This has to make people look at each other, right?
For example, at the beginning of the 21st century, SpaceX has sent the first humans to Mars and successfully established the first Martian colony.
In the middle of the 21st century, for example, SpaceX has begun to build large manned spacecraft, unmanned cargo spacecraft, and Trailblazer-class spacecraft designed to find water sources and spread air catalysts.
These are achievements that not only all other private space agencies have not been able to achieve, but also the vast majority of government-led space agencies. What SpaceX has done is to do a lot of reliable and forward-looking space exploration and space supporting work for humans on Earth to fly out of the earth and fly out of the system to establish colonies.
Therefore, after the current decline of NASA, SpaceX integrated the aerospace resources of the original NASA, CSA and other private institutions, and re-established a North American space agency similar to ESA.
The abbreviation of the English name of the new North American Space Agency is also NASA.
As a result, this new NASA, which is mainly led by SpaceX and is also compatible with the two major aerospace resources of the original NASA and CSA, is known as the third region.
And just after North America won the title of the third region, the South American space agency immediately went to the International Interstellar Navigation Administration to fight for the "fourth" interstellar base.
And the reason for South America is this: South America originally had three powers, namely Brazil, Argentina and Chile. But Colombia, South America's most populous country, is also on the rise and is on the verge of becoming one of the top four in South America.
And the top three also intended to bring this little brother to play together, so they took this opportunity to fight for the title of "Fourth Starbase" from the Interstellar Navigation Administration.
And what about the United Nations and the International Interstellar Navigation Administration?
Don't they also want Colombia, which has the largest population stock in South America, to continue to progress, do they? As a result, the title of the fourth interstellar base was given to South America, and the South American space agency was called "Region 4" as it wished.
So, what about the Fifth Starbase?
There is no suspense that the General Administration of Interstellar Navigation has set up the fifth interstellar base in East Asia, specifically in China, and in the famous CNSA.
There is only one consensus in the world that CNSA can win the title of an intercontinental interstellar base on its own, that is, CNSA is too hardcore, and this hardcore is mainly reflected in the following three aspects.
First, CNSA is the only aviation organization on the earth that has five major launch bases within its own territory, that is, it can simultaneously establish five launch bases in the country, including ground launch, underground launch, sea launch, submarine launch, and low-earth high-altitude launch.
Second, CNSA is the only organization on the planet that completes the design, research and development, production, supporting, assembly, testing, launch and subsequent operation and management within its own territory.
Third, the CNSA has been known as District 5 since its inception.
Therefore, CNSA single-handedly won the title of "Fifth Star Base" on the Asian continent, the largest on the earth, which is the most hardcore and the most deserved.