"Is this the essence of the Heavenly Empire!"

Setomo Zen and Masashi Okada stand together on the beach outside the launch tower, and the latter mutters to himself.

On May 8, at the Qiongzhou Cosmodrome, a Xinyuan-5B rocket was erected at the No. 3 station, and Chang'e-4 was erected on top of it.

Xinyuan-5B rocket ...... Anyway, it looks a little shabby.

This Xinyuan-5B is also a model worker, and this year it has carried out three satellite launch missions, one H1 launch mission, and last year was the seventh reusable flight.

The Seven Hand Rocket, due to the ablation of the atmosphere many times, will leave similar scorched traces on the surface every time, and it is not easy to deal with even repainting in the future.

As a result, the stains on the surface of the rocket became heavier and heavier, until the end of last year, Xinyuan's heat insulation coating formula changed, the color was very light and almost transparent, and it was cheaper, so the appearance of the reusable rocket became worse and worse.

Fortunately, with the gradual increase in the number of launches of reusable rockets, the media has also gone from surprise to indifference at the beginning, and now only occasionally complains.

This is not an isolated case, as recyclable rockets all over the world are like this.

Not to mention Ma Yilong's Falcon 9, after participating in NACA's Artemis program, the funding is more sufficient, and the Falcon 9 keeps launching and recovering, and the surface is too lazy to deal with it, and the charred black shell looks from a distance and thinks that the rocket is black paint.

Since the success of the Long March 6 Yao-4 rocket mission, the space agency has used its "Yunkai" recovery control system to carry out four recovery missions in succession, one failure and three successes.

At the beginning, of course, the rocket was tossed to a clean state according to Huaguo's management, but after only the third launch, it was found that although the cost of tossing was not too high, it had no impact on the performance, and it was simply left alone.

If it's dirty, it's dirty, as long as it can be used.

Not to mention, after the successful recovery of the Long March 6, the space agency was surprised to find that the cost of recycling was greatly reduced, and then it could no longer be discarded.

At the level of the Long March 6, it can be re-packed and launched again in four or five days at the earliest, and the cost is directly reduced by 60%, which was unimaginable in the past? R&D costs are no longer a thing.

The space agency seems to have opened the door to a new world, and now it is actually thinking about how to carry out secondary recycling, even the fairing can be fished out of the sea to try to reuse, so that almost a whole rocket is recycled to the end, 90% of the components are recycled, and the cost is even lower.

Far away......

Although Xinyuan 5B looks a little bit like that, it was the space shuttle Firm that undertook the first commercial manned launch mission on May 10, and it only carried out an unmanned flight more than ten days ago.

The Firm can carry up to 10 people, but there are only 5 people on this mission, Hu Dong, a professional astronaut from Xinyuan, Chen Jun, an executive of Xin'an Automobile, two coal bosses and a wealthy man from the island country, as well as 800 kilograms of supplies and five sets of extravehicular spacesuits.

Now, Hizen has finished his training and is with Masashi Okada, the chief engineer of JAXA and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries H3 rocket, who came to China in a low-key manner.

Okada Masashi came here quietly by himself, and he had long wanted to see with his own eyes the great achievements made by Huaguo in aerospace in the past two years, so he simply did not report and secretly entered the country in the name of tourism.

He was received by a friend and invited him to come to Qiongzhou to watch the rocket launch and watch him go to the sky.

"Okada-kun, take a look, Huaguo has built Qiongzhou into a huge space base, and the Tanegashima Space Center is too stingy compared to it."

In the continuous space launch mission, in order to facilitate the maintenance and some adjustment work after the rocket recovery, Xinyuan continued to increase the number of engineers in Qiongzhou, and later found that the scale reached more than 100 people, plus more than 200 other personnel, and simply set up a sub-base here.

Even some industries have been transferred, and some manufacturing work can be completed at the sub-bases here.

This is only a direct impact, Qiongzhou's economy is now tourism and aerospace two legs, walking steadily and fast, the local area is also very able to feel this characteristic, there are aerospace elements in the streets and alleys.

Masashi Okada could only sigh when he saw this, JAXA, even in China, is not very good.

Probably due to historical reasons, they have a perverted obsession with "big", and they have to bear the name of "big rocket" when they have a launch mass of more than 400 tons, and they are also trying their best to develop truly large spacecraft.

But for some reason, this kind of plan always fails, regardless of the scientific aspect.

The scientific research of island people can often do very well in a certain aspect, and even be relatively advanced in several directions, but when it comes to integration, it is a third-rate commodity, which is puzzling.

For example, their large transport aircraft project C2 uses CF6 engines provided by Aramco, with a thrust of 26 tons for a single unit, 52 tons for two, and only 62 tons for the four Y-20 engines.

The Y-20 has a maximum load of 66 tons and can fly 53 kilometers when loaded with 2000 tons of cargo.

The maximum load of C2 is 37 tons, but in fact, there will be strength problems when it is loaded so much, and the structure cannot withstand it, at most 20 tons, and the range is barely more than 1000 kilometers.

This performance makes one wonder if the plane was designed by the Army Red Deer.

The same is true for rockets, the H series rockets are also good in terms of hydrogen-oxygen engine parameters, but they start the old open cycle, only 140 tons of thrust, it is difficult to say how advanced it is, and the launch quality depends on the bundled solid rocket booster.

In this way, the H series rockets always failed to launch, and the success rate made JAXA never straighten up in front of the media.

Okada doesn't think H3 will succeed either, even though a $1.9 billion grant was approved last year.

1.9 billion US dollars, you can buy an H1, which point of the H3 rocket is comparable to the H1?

Just more than 20 days ago, the first flight of the An-1250 was born, and as soon as this super large aircraft that was the first (bold) in Asia and the first in the world was born, I don't know how many young people from island countries cried bitterly overnight.

In the world, island countries always think that they and China represent Asia and the yellow race, so there will always be a strong sense of identity in inexplicable places.

For example, sports, scientific and technological achievements, etc., when the first Asian to ride a rocket made in their own country in 2003 went to the sky, the island countries were also rejoicing, and they felt that it was still our greater East Asia.

An-1250 is also, the world's first super transport aircraft, the island people gave him the nickname "Flying Yamato", many people petitioned to buy one in China, and even inquired about the specific place and time of the An-1250 No. 2 aircraft B4143 passing through the southern part of the island country, and ran to the Chinese Internet to leave a message hoping to fly lower, so as to enjoy the glory of Asians.

Masashi Okada also has this identity in his heart, as the head of the H3 rocket, he knows very well that the H series rockets are destined to be difficult and unsuccessful, and the real stage is in the East.

(End of chapter)