In the airspace west of Rongcheng, on a Jianjiao-7, two pilots, one old and one new, were piloting it for training subjects.

After completing the first roll, the voice of the tower sounded in the headset:

"Eagle, there is a GJ-21 Meteor High Education Plane above your plane, please pay attention, over."

"Eagle received."

"Eagle received."

The instructor in the back seat raised his head, and sure enough, he saw a beautiful meteor high education plane painted red and white at high speed.

The "young eagle" also glanced at it, and then said with some envy:

"Boss, private companies have flown fly-by-wire flight control trainers, and the Meteor high-level trainer can fly 22,000 meters at 2.2 times the speed of sound, right? Why are we still flying Jianjiao 7, when can we fly to teach 10? ”

Eagle: "Teach 10?" That's the top people in the capital and western Xinjiang who flew on, and this batch of Jianjiao 7 was replaced by the southeast and the Mountain Eagle High Education Plane, and it would be good to have Jianjiao 7 flying, and besides, people are training astronauts, can it be the same. ”

Speaking of which, the GJ-21 Meteor high-altitude training aircraft was originally designed with a maximum ceiling of 16,500 meters and a maximum speed of Mach 1.6, which is about the same as the standard training aircraft of various countries.

But when it was actually manufactured, Xinyuan's engineers felt that it was too slow and could not give full play to the high-altitude and high-speed performance of the XW-9, so they modified the airfoil and changed it all the way to the "double two-two" index, that is, 22,000 meters, Mach 2.2.

In fact, it can be higher, but that is not very cost-effective, but even now it is very exaggerated, the Meteor high education aircraft has an empty weight of 6 tons, a maximum take-off mass of 14 tons, and a XW-9 thrust-to-weight ratio directly over 1, with a cruising radius of 750 kilometers.

This is basically a slimmed version of the J-8 with super enhanced maneuverability, and in fact, the airfoil of the GJ-21 is usually used on fighters below Mach 1.8, and the reason why it can go up to Mach 2.2 is purely by thrusting to weight ratio.

The XW-9 high-altitude data and fuel consumption are so good that the 601 Institute even had the idea of buying two J-8IVs with double-three-three indicators.

Such a Meteor high-education aircraft flew frequently after it was manufactured, which made the rookies of the nearby air base not envious.

Eagle: "Actually, it's not that I can't drive it, next week I will rotate to Hushan Airport Flight School to supervise, when I drive, I will definitely show you a cobra in the sky, learn hard." ”

Eagle: "......"

"I really envy these students, they can fly hard during the holidays, I have never seen less than fifty planes in the sky flight school."

"Okay eaglet, we're going to fly at low altitude right away, the eagle's nest, do you see a flock of birds on the radar?"

"Eagles, not at the moment, please be safe."

"Understood, Eaglet, push the lever forward and throttle!"

“……”

On the ground, Deng Lei looked at the ten Caiyun trainer planes waiting in line for takeoff, and moved his neck carefully before looking up at the Jianjiao 7 flying in the distance.

On October 4, Deng Lei, who had experienced more than 6 months and 208 days of space travel, landed at the airport of the Xinyuan Launch Site on the Space Shuttle Progress.

This time, he still walked out standing, but he was a little more tired than before.

The ground has always believed that the zero-gravity environment for more than 6 months will make it difficult for the astronaut's body to adapt to gravity, and it will take at least 4 to 7 days to lie down and recuperate after coming down.

It's not just a matter of willpower, it's also that the organs in the body have adapted to zero gravity, and it is difficult to adjust suddenly.

But this time, the four people who returned in unity did not let them carry out, and they still walked out standing.

Because the space shuttle is different from the spacecraft, it has to go through a relatively long process of deceleration and gliding, and the process of feeling gravity is almost two hours, and the body has slowly adjusted in the process.

As long as it's not too strenuous exercise, the four crew members are fine.

The next crew is the Unity space shuttle launched on October 20 with six people, and the space agency is still three professional astronauts, but the three new ones are all payload experts, including Guo Shen.

Although the latter kept clamoring that he was going to work on H2M, he was still sent to the airport by Serov.

Seryov is the real busy man, and Seryov, who is thoroughly familiar with the work of the base, has presided over several projects in succession, restoring his workaholic state in the Union.

The 24-year-old is healthy and energetic, and all the ailments that plagued Korolev in his later years are gone, and now he just wants to work to the fullest, and the huge production capacity of the B-class base and Huaguo is unimaginable during his time in the Union.

At the beginning, he said to Lin Ju: "In our time, I thought that the current human race should have established a Martian city, and there should be colonies no matter how bad it is, but now the two camps are still working hard to land on the moon, which is a serious regression."

With the power of Xinyuan, we will have to walk the footprints of human beings in the solar system in 20 years, preferably 10 years! ”

Even during his vacation time at the base, Seryov only stayed in the design office and constantly conceived new spacecraft, new rockets, plans for the landing of major planets and satellites, etc., and was single-mindedly advancing into space.

……

Oct. 10, Cape Calavral launch site.

A small space shuttle belonging to Sierra Nevada, the successor to the NewSTS program, is hoisted on an Atlas V rocket and is preparing for launch.

Sierra Nevada was originally preparing for the first Dream Chaser launch in November 2016, but with NACA's strong support and scaled back quality metrics, the Dream Chaser has been able to move faster.

Although it was advanced by a month, the 15-ton "Dream Chaser Blok 1", the Dream Chaser B1 version, is not a test machine, but a formal version that can theoretically carry people.

With an empty weight of 10.6 tons, 9 seats, and even the potential to be converted to 11, without a cargo hold, this is the internal situation of the Dream Chaser B1.

Compared to the old STS, the Dream Chaser is called a "mini space shuttle", but in fact it is not small, in order to allow the Falcon 9 launch to carry out a large weight reduction measures, the real size is not much smaller, it still looks quite large.

Its thermal insulation tiles are more advanced, less numerous, more reliable, and more importantly cheaper than the old space shuttles.

Unlike the old Space Shuttle STS, the Dream Chaser and H1 series are launched in a fairing, which greatly reduces the indicators and weight of the thermal insulation tile.

There are three main developers of the Dream Chaser space shuttle: NACA, Sierra Nevada, and Lockheed Martin.

For example, this first flight was supposed to be undertaken by the Falcon 9, but under various compromises, the Cosmos 5 rocket of the veteran launch contractor ULA was still used, and the capacity was greatly surplus.

NACA pinched her nose and agreed, because these veteran contractors had invested a lot in the early stage of the Dream Chaser Project and always had to give some meat to eat, and they were already very dissatisfied with NACA's support for SpecaX.

For example, the FGD soft gravity device, the giants tacitly ignore the fact that SpecaX proposed it, want to join forces to win the future artificial gravity device project, and start to actively promote the project that can overpower the starship.

(End of chapter)