The first year of the galaxy, October 5.

A spacecraft orbiting the moon - Tinder 107.

Quickly use the Moon's gravitational slingshot to fly in the direction of Martian orbit.

The 2,864-ton Tinder 107 spacecraft is speeding in deep space about 70,000 kilometers from the moon and about 480,000 kilometers from the earth.

At this time, the Tinder 107 was flying at a speed of 8.5 kilometers per second.

Right now.

Tinder 107 suddenly adjusted its flight attitude, the vent of the methane liquid oxygen engine became the flight head, and the head became the flight tail, and the spacecraft temporarily relied on the previous inertia to fly.

After the head became a tail, this new tail began to deform, to be precise, the fairing was opened.

The fairing unfolds as if in bloom to form a 20-meter-diameter hood, with a special 9.8-meter-diameter vent in the center of the hood.

After reorienting yourself.

In the center of the tail spout of Tinder 107, a fist-sized sphere suddenly erupted.

In the next second, the ball emitted a dazzling bright light.

In this dark deep sky, it seems that a small sun has appeared.

In the bright light of the little sun, the speed of Tinder 107 suddenly increased a lot.

The next second.

Another small sun twinkled behind Tinder 107.

About a few seconds later.

NASA's ground command center.

The satellite, which monitors the direction of the Moon, suddenly detects a stream of Gamma rays and photons, and then on average, every 60 seconds or so, Gamma rays and strong light signals appear.

Even without satellite monitoring, many observatories that are observing the moon at this time can see a series of points of light near the moon through astronomical telescopes.

Then Bill, who was still sleeping, was hurriedly woken up by his subordinates.

Bill, who was sleepy-eyed, came to the office with an espresso.

"What's going on again?" He took a sip of espresso to refresh himself.

Deputy Director Davis said with a puzzled expression: "Homo sapiens has just carried out a nuclear explosion propulsion. ”

"Nuclear explosion experiments? You should have notified the Pentagon, not woken me up. Bill rubbed his temples speechlessly, then took another sip of espresso.

"The problem is that this time the location of the nuclear explosion experiment is in orbit near the moon."

"Isn't it the ...... the moon?? Wait a minute, where do you say? Bill's eyes widened.

Davis replied stiffly, "Lunar orbit." ”

"Wang Defa?! You say Homo sapiens conducts nuclear tests on the moon? Bill bounced off his seat.

"To be precise, it is a nuclear explosion propulsion test, and there is a Homo sapiens Tinder-type spacecraft that is accelerating to Mars under the propulsion of a nuclear explosion." Davis hastened to explain.

"Give me the details!" Bill's whole person is not good.

Davis took the papers from his assistant and handed them to Bill.

Bill quickly flipped through it.

A total of 50 miniature nuclear explosions were detected, and from the interval of 60 seconds, the speed of the Tinder spacecraft has been increased to about 50 kilometers per second.

At a speed of 50 kilometers per second, the spacecraft can fly 4.32 million kilometers a day.

At this time, Mars is about 110 million kilometers away from Earth, and the distance between the two planets is approaching at a rate of 500,000 kilometers per day.

In other words, the Tinder ship will only need about 26 Earth days to reach the orbit of Mars.

Of course, Bill knew that 26 days was impossible.

The reason for this is because Tinder is so fast that it exceeds the capture cap of Mars' gravity, so Tinder has to use it for a while to slow down.

But even so, the speed is quite impressive.

NASA has launched three Falcon launch vehicles in a row in the past few days, and all of them have been successful, which has made many people a little carried away.

Now Homo sapiens directly uses hard power to tell the world that your uncle is still your uncle.

Still playing with little rockets?

I have already driven a nuclear-powered spaceship to Mars.

Bill took a deep breath: "Inform the Pentagon and the Council!" ”

"I've been informed." Davis scratched his head.

Bill glanced at the other party meaningfully, and then changed the topic: "Then inform the other partners that I am going to have a video conference with the United Nations." ”

“ok。” Davis, who was a little weak-hearted, hurried to make a phone call.

Although he was a little angry about Davis crossing himself, he knew very well that the council would not be easily changed now, at least in the early stage of the space competition, and his position was simply a chore.

At this time, he was more concerned about the use of nuclear explosion thrusters by Homo sapiens.

The pressure on Homo sapiens is too great, and NASA is not at all an opponent of the same level compared to the other party.

There is a huge gap in technology, resources, talent, and organization.

This caused a hint of frustration to pop up in Bill's heart.

Although he hopes to force the council to pay attention to NASA through the pressure of Homo sapiens, it is obvious that the pressure on NASA by Homo sapiens is about to explode, which makes him not know how to deal with and catch up.

Soon, Davis, who had returned again, interrupted his thoughts.

"Director, the security conference room is ready."

"Let's go!"

When the two arrived at the secure conference room, several assistants had already turned on the video conferencing software.

Comte, president of the Earth Federation, and Matthew, the new head of the space agency of the Europa Consortium? Duke, as well as the head of Lucia's space department, etc., appeared in the video screen one after another.

The four people involved in the video conference obviously already knew about the lunar orbit.

Kong De's face was solemn: "The Homo sapiens company is really terrible! Even nuclear-powered spaceships were made. ”

"Now we have to follow up, although there is no way to build a Daedalus spaceship, we must have a nuclear-powered spaceship." Bill clenched his fists.

Comte hesitated: "Bill, wouldn't it be too dangerous to go directly to nuclear power?" ”

"So what can you do? If we don't want to catch up, we can't keep up with the speed of development of Homo sapiens at all, and even if there is a risk, I will promote the nuclear-powered launch vehicle project. "Bill is very tough.

The person in charge of Lucia also nodded: "Nuclear-powered launch vehicles are indeed one of the few effective means for us to compete with Homo sapiens, and there are definitely risks, but this is not a reason for us to reject nuclear-powered launch vehicles." ”

】

Obviously, in the face of this huge pressure and gap, they finally plan to adjust their flexible bottom line.

After some heated discussions, although the Earth Union agreed to the proposal to develop a nuclear-powered launch vehicle, it demanded that it should not be used in the atmosphere, and that the nuclear thermal-nuclear power program should be used instead of the nuclear explosion scheme.

However, this plan is actually more difficult than the nuclear explosion plan.

The reason why it is difficult is that the focus is on heat dissipation.

The nuclear explosion propulsion scheme does not need to consider heat dissipation.

However, the nuclear thermal-nuclear power scheme must consider heat dissipation, otherwise the nuclear battery or nuclear reactor will inevitably be unable to dissipate heat, and the phenomenon of hot melt will occur, causing equipment failure, and even the entire spacecraft will be scrapped directly.

Homo sapiens showed them the way, but they were self-righteous.

Without Homo sapiens' gold-based electric heating materials, it is still very difficult to play nuclear thermal-nuclear propulsion.

Of course, there are also thresholds for the nuclear explosion propulsion scheme, such as nuclear protective materials, which must be able to resist miniature nuclear explosions at close range, which has very high requirements for materials.