Texas.

A C17 transport plane landed at the military airport here, and inside drove a truck covered with a white cloth and a Canadian space agency logo, with a small line underneath: "Canadaarm3"

The Canada-3 robotic arm, which was equipped with the first part of the Artemis Portal space station HALO (Habitat and Logistics Outpost), was manufactured ahead of schedule and arrived at the final assembly base in Texas.

With a mass of 8 tons, the HALO module is the centerpiece of the "Gateway".

The current portal space station has roughly four identified parts:

PPE (Power & Propulsion Element), which provides propulsion and 60 kW of electricity, manufactured by Aramco MAXAR;

HALO (resides in a logistical outpost), which together with I-HAB provides 8 cubic meters of space for 4 people, manufactured by Northrop Grumman;

I-HAB (International Residence Module), manufactured by ESA;

HLS (Lunar Surface Lander), the "Blue Moon" temporarily created for Blue Origin, may also be a StarShip starship in the future.

Science is still being discussed, as well as airlocks and extended logistics modules, but in the first four parts, PPE and HALO have already been completed, and a robotic arm can be installed to send them to lunar orbit.

The two sections, with a total weight of 13 tons, will be launched using a Heavy Falcon rocket, the launch date of which has already been set for mid-January.

At Cape Calavall, Lao Ma squinted and watched as a Falcon 9, which had been reused four times, sent four satellites from Singapore, Australia and the Belt into the sky, and the excitement stopped for a while.

The excitement is that the reusable technology of the Falcon 9 is becoming more and more mature, the international market is frantically sweeping orders, the outside world is getting higher and higher valuation of SpecaX, and NACA continues to support it, and the development trend is extremely good.

Up to now, although the total launch quality is far inferior, the number of commercial order launches of specaX has surpassed that of Xinyuan Aerospace Power by a large margin.

At this time, he couldn't help but be a little glad that Wolfe clause had been limited to a small area around the space agency's foreign commercial orders, although it was quite a lot, but it was definitely not comparable to specaX.

Xinyuan's biggest advantage is manned launches, at least the outside world analyzes that most of their income comes from commercial flights, Unity and Steadfast together have maintained the record of an average of one launch mission every 8 days in the past four months, sending a total of 95 people into space, and the amount of travel orders completed alone is as high as 900 million US dollars, that is, 6.03 billion yuan.

And there are a lot of people lining up in the back, and what is even more outrageous is that there are more billionaires in Europe than in Asia through the Oriental International Space Hotel Company, which is incredible.

There is also gossip circulating that after the Alenia Space Hotel was launched in 2017 to dock with the Tiangong space station, the Oriental International Space Hotel will be restructured to prepare for listing, and the New York Stock Exchange predicts that its market value may be more than $50 billion, and the outlook is extremely optimistic.

In this regard, specaX plans to use the Falcon 9 rocket to unite with Dream Chaser, and cooperate with Boeing, Grumman and other manufacturers to start a benchmark space tourism program, which is expected to be completed by the end of 2017.

Starlink is also not bad, thanks to the Latitude and Longitude satellite network and several six-ton geostationary orbit satellites orbiting overhead, NACA and the International Telecommunication Association fully support Starlink, there are no launch problems at all, and the first generation is quickly built.

The first generation of Starlink weighs 260 kilograms and is mainly used for testing, but because of the huge discovery of the Qom impact crater, Lao Ma decided to send it to the moon, which can provide navigation services in cooperation with the Artemis program.

But it is precisely on the moon that the lead of the Aviation Development Commission is too much.

Not to mention anything else, the 8 rovers that have landed, and 3 landers with a lot of scientific research equipment, have left the world far behind.

In fact, both NACA and SpecaX are extremely interested in the technology of the Explorer robot, and it took several months of progress in the artificial intelligence laboratory composed of Google, MIT, and NACA half a year ago to find a little bit of a doorway.

According to their research, it is not difficult to make an explorer with existing technology, but it requires a lot of precipitation, but if it is on the moon, it is very exaggerated, at least the power consumption of the chip is a troublesome matter.

The lab's agenda is to launch a robot as intelligent as the Explorer in 2018, no matter how fast it is, and AI training takes time, so they also acquired Boston Dynamics.

They believe that ternary chips have a huge advantage in AI, but it is too difficult to turn at this time, and they still stick to the original route.

As for Tesla and SpecaX, this is just getting started.

The former's super factory in the magic capital has finally negotiated after complex negotiations and is ready to start construction in March next year, which is expected to be put into production in 2018 with an annual output of one million Tesla cars, but in the end it is just a plan.

Musk reached out and grabbed his hair, although it looked a bit like a fat house, but it was very comfortable and allowed people to relax and think.

The first-generation Raptor engine has been successful with NACA's support, reliability has been accepted, and production lines are being built, representing the Starship is about to enter the physical construction phase.

The take-off thrust of the Starship-Super Heavy will exceed 6,000 tons, although it is much smaller than the more than 7,000 tons of Xinyuan-3, but the booster and spacecraft can be reused, and in general it is also of the same level, and it greatly exceeds the Long March 10 and SLS rockets.

Starship is SpecaX's second reusable rocket project, and the difficulty is exponentially higher than that of Falcon 9, and the parallel connection of 33 engines is an unprecedented challenge, but Musk is not afraid.

……

"What is this new generation manned spacecraft called, it has not yet been named?"

"The Aviation Development Commission is soliciting, the whole society is participating, and the results will be released in a month, anyway, it's too late."

At the Qiongzhou Cosmodrome, a Long March 7 rocket was erected, and on top of it was a new generation of manned spacecraft - the official version.

Anderov was tossing the Pioneer here, and he happened to chat with Academician She who came to the launch site.

The new-generation manned spacecraft has completed two unmanned flights so far, one by a suborbital atmospheric test ship in July, and one by a full-state unmanned test ship carried by the Long March 10.

And today, on December 25, the launch is the third, also manned version.

The Shenzhou spacecraft originally used four unmanned prototypes because they lacked experience in the first development and did not dare to take risks, but the new generation of manned spacecraft was different; after careful demonstration, the Aviation Development Commission decided to carry out a manned test launch mission before the end of the year.

The first mission carried three experienced astronauts from the space agency, who will travel to low-Earth orbit for about three days without docking with the space station to simulate life from Earth to the moon during a lunar landing.

Two months later, the Long March 10 Yao-2 mission will send a new generation of manned spacecraft to the moon and return after about 15 days, because the YF-77GA is the first test flight, so it will not be manned.

The Yao-3 mission will be a manned full-state flight around the moon with a lunar lander, which can theoretically be used as the last exercise before the moon landing.

Academician She clenched his fists, and suddenly felt that time was so fast.

Sending people to the moon in less than three years is the real strength of Huaguo Aerospace.

Because of inflammation, the eyes rested for 3 days and had fewer updates, and began to resume 3-4 chapter updates on Friday

(End of chapter)