On November 17, the space shuttle Solidarity, which completed its fourth seven-day tourist flight to the space station, returned with four wealthy foreigners and two billionaires from China.

Five space agency researchers, who will go into space in December, stood in the tower of the Xinyuan launch site and watched the shuttle Unity land in an extremely gentle manner, taxiing about 3,800 meters on the ground and stopping.

This mission was very different from the previous one, and for the first time, Xinyuan tried to use the autopilot system to take over the landing instead of the driver's manual control.

The experiment was quite successful, and the return route of the Solidarity was automatically calculated by the program, and there was no fault on the ground, which meant that the safety factor of the Solidarity was higher.

Director Huang of the Launch Administration said with a grin:

"Fellow students of the Tiangong Advanced Training Class, the next launch of the Unity will be yours."

Because it is nominally space learning, the annual training quota is now called the Tiangong space station refresher students, and no one thinks there is anything wrong.

After planned training, the five specialists, although neither of their age nor their physical condition were perfect, were also qualified to carry out launch missions.

The other four were a little overjoyed, only a little sad.

Tang Weitian knew why, just the day before yesterday, the Long March 6 A core level low-altitude vertical landing test failed, and a core stage was blown up.

The Long March 6A is a derivative development model of the Long March 6, and the original world line design is two YF100 engines in the core stage plus four solid rocket boosters with a thrust of 120 tons, with a 700-kilometer SSO orbit capacity of about 4.5 tons.

Now there is no need, the SSO capacity of the new Long March 8 is the same as that of the old Long March 6A, and it is still recyclable, so the configuration of the Long March 6A has naturally changed.

LEO capacity of 10 tons to 25 tons is covered by the Long March 8 and 7, and small rockets below 2 tons are Long March 6, so the range of 2 to 10 tons is a blank area, and there are no cheap reusable rockets.

In order to solve this problem, the space agency decided to develop a medium-sized single-arrow body recoverable rocket with a low-earth orbit capacity of about 7 to 8 tons on the basis of the Long March 6.

After careful thinking and pre-research on future rocket recovery technology, He Ruo boldly decided to develop the Long March 6A rocket with three YF100K and a LEO capacity of about 8 tons in the core stage.

Three YF100Ks can output 390 tons of ground thrust, the second stage engine is a YF115B engine, the third stage uses a YF50 poison engine, the take-off mass is 288 tons, the inland recovery capacity is 6.9 tons, and the offshore or Qiongzhou recovery capacity is 8 tons.

The design is not optimal, but it is the cheapest, and the rocket body is still 3.35 meters full of arrows, and there is no new technology.

The only special thing is that three YF100Ks were squeezed out of the core stage, which has higher requirements for the recovery control system, so a core stage was built for 1000-meter low-altitude hovering and recovery test.

This is the same as the layout and number of recovery engines for the future Long March 9, which is equivalent to preparing for the future and increasing the data of the technology library.

The landing was a success, but I don't know why it suddenly caught fire more than ten seconds after landing, igniting the remaining fuel and exploding.

The test can only be regarded as a failure, and the preliminary investigation result is that the bottom pipeline is too crowded and cracked, but the long six arrow body is so large that it is a bit troublesome to solve.

He Ruo: Tired~

Oh, and the "chopsticks" recycling technology, which is still under development, is the recovery of the clamping grille rudder, which blew up two Long March 6 modified verification rocket bodies, and the third is ready to try again before the end of the year.

The space agency's thinking has also changed because of the skyrocketing funding, and it is more tolerant of the success rate of testing rockets.

The Long March 6 now also has a production line, and the number of launches this year has reached seven and 22 times, with 1 failure to recover the arrow body on land, 1 failure to recover at sea, and the rest have achieved original success, while the number of launches of the Xinyuan-1 series this year is only 16.

The latter undertook more foreign missions and helped the desert country launch many small satellites, on the contrary, most of the domestic scientific tasks were eaten by Changliu.

SpecaX's Falcon 9 has taken on 29 missions so far, with many European countries opting for the cheaper and more correct Falcon 9, and ISS has also launched a resupply mission with the Falcon 9.

Due to the Wolf clause, domestic commercial launch missions can only be limited to Asia, but there are quite a few of them, which are temporarily acceptable.

In any case, the Long March 6 and the improved models under development are still the space agency's most successful series of recyclable rockets, and the future is still bright.

Shen Zuozhou, an expert in space propulsion technology at the First Hospital, wants to liven up the atmosphere:

"We're all on hiatus for training and rest for the remaining 20 days, why don't we find something to do? The Tianwen plan should be passed, and the Martian atmospheric round-trip vehicle should be for the Sixth Academy, right? Just research and research? ”

In the past few days, the Aviation Development Commission has been holding a small meeting to discuss the long-term planned mission of manned landing on Mars, which has been temporarily named the Tianwen series of plans.

In the mid- and late-stage missions, the tentative idea is for the Sixth and Fourth Academies to undertake the development of reusable atmospheric round-trip vehicles that will travel between the Martian surface and the Martian low-Earth orbit spacecraft.

Several people glanced at each other, and the five of them were one chief engineer of the arrow body, one chief engineer of the engine, and three chief designers of the spacecraft, which was almost enough.

"0.38G gravity, then you just want to transport 5 tons of payload to orbit, right?"

"How many seats? 3 seats are enough. ”

"Let's have basic ground support facilities that can also be used as a rapid mobility tool on the surface......

……

“Dream Chaser block1-Falcon-9 MISSON READY!”

“The assembly is in good condition and ready to launch.”

“Countdown 30 minutes.”

“……”

At the Kennedy Space Launch Center, the full-state Dream Chaser 1 was installed on a Falcon 9 rocket that had undergone two successful recovery missions, and the extremely low temperature brought by liquid oxygen covered the surface of the latter's rocket body with hoarfrost.

After nearly a month of rearmament, the Dream Chaser B1 shuttle has fully met the manned requirements and has received a manned permit from NACA, carrying four expensive dummies, ready for the last test launch before the manned flight.

At the launch center, Spanish astronaut Pedro Dick squints at the giant fairing that envelops the Dream Chaser.

Due to the use of more advanced technology, the preparation time of the Dream Chaser can also be shortened to less than half a month, which is similar to that of the Falcon 9, so the launch time of the next manned mission is December.

The first manned flight will carry three astronauts, a NACA engineer and a professional astronaut, Spanish astronaut Pedro Dick.

The latter had the most experience and was chosen as the commander.

"Pedro, how does it feel? You're going to fly a space shuttle, which is much more exciting than a Soyuz spacecraft. ”

"You're not an Amis person, but you're the first astronaut to fly her, and that's how we treat our allies."

Officials at the launch center chatted with Pedro, but the latter only barely managed to squeeze out a smile.

What kind of ally attitude is there for me here, ESA has a total of 3 places, 1 place around the moon, and 2 follow-up landing places, where to get a marginal country like Spain, it must not have his share, so NACA asked him to drive the Dream Chaser as "compensation".

Damn Yankees, always trying to squeeze old Europe, do you think ESA is a weak chicken like India?

Pedro cursed in his heart, while praying that ESA's Selene plan would be passed sooner rather than later, and that he would not work for Amiko in vain.

(End of chapter)