In addition to the Dream Chaser, specaX has also announced its own manned Dragon spacecraft.

Lao Ma planned his second-generation Dragon spacecraft three years in advance, and directly carried out the manned version first.

After the NewSTS program was handed over to Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser, Lao Ma announced that the second-generation Dragon spacecraft would make its first flight before January 2017 and would be a manned version.

This is two and a half years earlier than the second-generation Dragon spacecraft from the previous timeline, and there are only minor changes in configuration

It still weighs up to 15 tons and can seat 7 people, and the 6 "Super Dracon" engines that come with it can escape without the need for an escape tower.

The cost of a seat for a different old horse has been reduced again, from $25 million to $15 million.

Although it seems much more expensive than the Dream Chaser space shuttle, it is much more likely to be realized.

In order to reduce costs, the second-generation Dragon spacecraft will use all reusable Falcon 9 to launch, and the proportion of expensive materials is also to minimize the proportion of expensive materials.

As for the other two commercial players of Aramco, they have also made great achievements in the competition with Xinyuan.

Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic's main business is suborbital manned flight, that is, it is not in orbit, and some even can't fly the Kármán line, fly out of the atmosphere and then come back after a short experience of 3 to 15 minutes of weightlessness.

Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket is like this, although it has not yet made a manned flight, but the New Shepard rocket has been successfully recovered two or three times, and Jeff Bezos is tweeting that he will also fly in New Shepard for space.

Then there's Virgin Galactic, which is actually a band company, and their route is to take transport planes into the sky with small planes equipped with rocket engines, and then also stay in suborbit for a short time, but it's much cheaper than Blue Origin, a seat is only $250,000, the latter is $25 million.

Virgin Galactic's spacecraft (a small plane with a rocket engine) crashed once in 2014, but it has made a comeback this year, with the new "VSS unity" spacecraft already being built ahead of schedule and preparing for its next test flight.

According to the statistics of some media, as of May 1, 2016, the number of commercial manned missions directly or indirectly undertaken by Xinyuan Aerospace Power, specaX, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic has exceeded 50, and the number of interested people may exceed 500.

And the cost of space tourism is expected to be reduced by more than 70% compared to last year, marking a possible expansion of the potential user base of space tourism by about 100 times.

Among them, the media highlighted the Oriental International Space Hotel, which has the largest number of people who have signed contracts, and the wealthy from seven countries have chosen this space tourism company.

Driven by the race to the moon and commercial manned spaceflight, this year's space community is quite a group of heroes, and no less than four giant rockets are expected to be launched, which is a grand scene that did not exist in the Cold War half a century ago.

Many media outlets are saying that this is a sign that the second space race is far more than the first, but this is only in terms of technology and scale, and the bigger impact comes from a policy announced by the Chinese government, and the impact will be even greater than the subsequent mass defection of JAXA engineers.

……

On May 13, after the Chang'e-4 lander successfully landed at the predetermined location, the space agency boss suddenly received a notice to go to the capital to discuss a policy.

Four days later, it said that it would carry out a new reform of the talent system within the space agency, and the theme of the reform content was: "Proposal for Expanding Community Awareness of Space".

The proposal believes that in the current world, space has become the inevitable destination of mankind in the future, and it is necessary to invest more resources in the field of space and strengthen the understanding of space by practitioners in the field of space development, and deeply understand the value and great significance of space development.

After deliberations, it was decided that one to five senior scientists, key cadres, and chief designers of the space agency would be sent to low-earth orbit and other space activities of varying durations once a year, using a low-cost space travel program.

During the space training period, each person should carefully summarize their own knowledge and feelings about space, as well as the inspiration they have received and their opinions on the future direction.

This will be used as part of the personal resume, and the higher authorities will approve 400 million yuan of funds every year to improve "space awareness", and adjust it year by year according to the actual situation.

This year, the first "space training" mission will be carried out, and the preliminary list is: Tang Weitian, an expert in engine technology, He Wei, an expert in recovery control technology, Zhao Liang, an expert in space technology, Shen Zuozhou, an expert in space technology, and Yang Hong, an expert in space technology.

There are exactly five people, and the spacecraft in space is currently undergoing internal bidding by the Aviation Development Commission, and is expected to carry out a flight mission around December this year.

The oldest of them is Tang Weitian, but since Zhou Rui can go up, he doesn't have much of a problem, at least the indicators of last year's physical examination are still quite good, and there is no big trouble.

Five experts in the four fields of engines, rockets, satellites, and space stations are all important figures in the current space agency, but they will all undergo space training and are expected to stay on the space station for about 3 to 7 days.

Lin Ju happened to be still in the capital, and he listened to the entire content of the proposal and observed how the faces of the people who heard the news reacted.

It was shock, puzzlement, excitement, and a novel gaze at Lin Ju.

Because the interpretation of this proposal feels very similar to Lin Ju's remarks about sending Xinyuan company's engineers to the sky some time ago, even the reason is very similar.

It's hard to say that this proposal wasn't influenced by Lin Ju, or at least it was inspired by it.

And although it is said to be a proposal, even the people have been selected, isn't this just to be sure of implementation? And it will be launched at the end of the year!

There was also a special figure among the participants, and that was the person concerned.

While continuously improving the "Yunkai" recovery control system and improving the Long March 6, He also received an order from the Space Administration to develop a 5-meter-level core-level recovery technology for the Long March 5 and an overall bundled recovery technology for the Long March 7 and Long March 8.

These three types of rockets were all undertaken by the First Research Institute, and He simply flew to the capital to communicate with the team researching a new generation of manned test spacecraft.

The new generation of manned spacecraft, that is, the moon landing, will use the same configuration of spacecraft, but the details have been changed according to the purpose, and the old version of the escape tower needs to be modified to adapt.

As a result, I didn't expect to have a meeting suddenly, and I was going to heaven as a result?

Facing the eyes gathered from all directions, He Ruo finally said a sentence after a long time:

"This ...... Or is there no need for the organization to spend this money, plus the training can't do work for several months, and we leave the project? ”

(End of chapter)