"Mark, Mark, take a look at this plan and analyze its feasibility."

“oh shit！ It may seem strange, but it does seem to be very good, much simpler than a centrifugal space station. ”

When Claire submitted the specaX proposal to others for evaluation, people were the first to think that it was something, but when you think about it, it is quite reliable.

In Musk's plan, the gravity system based on the rope is called the "Flexible gravity device", that is, the FGD system, and the ring gravity device of Xinyuan is called the "Hard gravity device", HGD.

Compared with HGD, the biggest advantage of flexible gravity devices is that they do not need to be launched frequently, and only two spacecraft are needed to form gravity.

This is great news for Aramco's space community, which lacks giant reusable rockets like Xinyuan-2A and Xinyuan-3, and it is also flexible to use and can be separated at any time.

If two starships are really used for Mars landing, then the biggest problem in this scheme is only to send the starship into space first, and the centrifugal part is easy to solve.

While intuition may be a concern about rope breakage, it's actually the easiest, and now NACA's engineers can come up with dozens of ways to ensure its reliability.

For HGD, the centrifugal module must be able to connect with the central axis with a channel, or with a connection between the centrifugal modules, and there will be a problem in either case: in order to obtain greater gravity, the difficulty of increasing the radius is exponential, and the mass of 1,500 tons for the 120-meter radius Endeavor space station is sufficient, and the space station with a diameter of 200 meters must be at least 4,000 tons.

FGD is different, for the artificial gravity device for the normal life of personnel set the number of revolutions per minute is not higher than 2, resulting in 0.3G low gravity requires at least 60 meters radius of the iron law brought about by the quality of the space station has been solved.

Even two 10-ton modules can easily obtain 1G gravity.

However, FGD is not Musk's originality, in fact, a few years ago, the Mars Society was imagining Mars Direct (Mars Direct | The Mars Society) was proposed, but no one really wanted to use it in reality for the time being.

Now it seems like a good way to overtake in corners.

NACA first shared the idea with Lockheed Martin, who was in charge of the Orion's return capsule, who reacted a day later.

Lockheed Martin said that the technology is simple, adding a rope device between the docking sections of the Orion spacecraft's return capsule and service module, which can be released up to 120 meters long and rotate around the center to generate 0.25G gravity.

If the progress is fast enough, it may be used for the Artemis moon landing.

As for Lao Ma's starship boarding plan, Lockheed is a little ambiguous, thinking that the mass of the starship is too heavy and unreliable, and it is really a trouble to fly out if it is really thrown out, it is better to use a traditional spaceship, with 200 tons on one side, separating the manned part and the power part, and the mass of 400 tons is not too big or small.

Claire was confused for a while, how could he not know what Lockheed was thinking? Don't you just want specaX's starship to be a success?

NACA No, these veteran contractors are all big mouths, how can there be blue origin, specaX start-ups to call people easily?

You know, specaX and Blue Origin are all supported by NACA.

At that time, Xiaobu's "Constellation" plan was huge, including the "God of War" series of rockets, Orion spacecraft and other projects, which were even grander than the Artemis plan.

Later, the Constellation Project ended, and these projects were not left untouched.

The Orion spacecraft was completed at that time, Lockheed Martin developed the return capsule, and Europe (mainly Airbus) developed the service capsule.

The Orion spacecraft originally used the liquid oxygen methane engine developed by OPI in Huntsville, Alabama, and was fueled with Mars and the moon in mind.

At the end of the Constellation program, NACA couldn't stand the high price of these old contractors and gave the technology of the liquid oxygen methane engine to two companies: Blue Origin and specaX.

So why are the main engines of these two companies, the BE series and the Raptor, methane machines? This is traceable and has a source.

In the "God of War" series of rockets, the Ares 1 rocket using a five-stage SRB solid rocket made its first flight, and its rocket body and solid rocket recovery technology were given to specaX, which is the source of the Falcon 9 rocket's rocket body technology and part of the recovery technology.

And to talk about the vertical recovery of rockets, this was done by the alliance at the end of the period, and it is conceivable where the relevant personnel at that time went after the war.

In addition to the original Falcon 1, the most important Falcon 9 rocket body and recovery technology are strongly supported by NACA, and they are also very effective, and the entire Falcon 9 project does not cost more than the Ares 1 project in a month......

The launch cost of Ares 1, which uses a space shuttle booster as a first-stage rocket, is as expensive as an SLS rocket, so you can imagine how ruthless those contractors are.

NACA engineer Mike Hokachak also went to the field after the specaX launch pad exploded, and again

Since then, specaX has never had any problems with it.

But Starship is different, this is the plan that specaX itself wants to promote, for 9-meter rockets and spaceships, it is obviously not so easy, Musk may want to attract NACA's interest through the Mars program to get the same level of support as Falcon 9.

Although the Artemis program has decided to use the Blue Origin "Blue Moon" lander, Lao Ma has not been less interested in promoting his starship, but NACA has been hesitating.

First of all, the high-thrust methane machine, the BE4 of Blue Origin has not been smooth, and it is difficult to say how reliable the Raptor is.

To launch the Starship spacecraft into space, the super-heavy booster needs to install 29 Raptor generation engines, using a three-circle 1+8+20 layout, so many engines, NACA looks at it and feels the same as the alliance people look at the N1, I'm afraid.

The tragedy of N1 is vivid, and Claire is a little hesitant to let NACA step into this deep pit.

Technically, he believes that in half a century, human technological progress should have been able to solve the problems of controlling computers and excessive vibration, especially after the successful launch of the 19-engine Xinyuan-3 and the 10-engine, 20-combustion chamber Long March 10.

But Starship ...... This is not the same as the Falcon 9, which can take some mature technology, which requires a considerable amount of new development investment.

However, someone soon made a decision for him.

When the 220-ton Advance axis floated in low-Earth orbit, the first to go crazy were the congressional veterans, who were terrified of the Advance's tremendous progress and felt great pressure.

However, it is not a military spacecraft that cannot be sanctioned for various reasons, so after a difficult struggle, although the spending in the space field this year has exceeded 100 billion US dollars, Congress still gritted its teeth and approved a new plan:

NACA needs to conduct research on artificial gravity spacecraft.

(End of chapter)