The melon-eating crowd warmly welcomed the landing of the world's largest space shuttle, Pioneer, and witnessed five experienced astronauts walking down the ground with their heads held high to receive flowers.

But they did not leave, because opposite the airport, the assembly building of station No. 2 of the Qiongzhou launch site was brightly lit.

The Long March 10 Yao-2 rocket has completed its final assembly and will be launched at an opportune time in the next three days.

According to the disclosed information, this mission will carry a full-body new-generation manned spacecraft and four dummies (sex unknown) to lunar orbit for an unmanned mission around the moon.

The Long March 10 has a lunar orbital carrying capacity of 45 tons, and the new generation of manned spacecraft only has about 22 tons, and the remaining 23 tons are not wasted.

The full-fledged lander is still being tested, but the space agency has built a ready-to-use half-finished "model" that is still mounted on the front of the spacecraft.

This semi-finished "model" was codenamed "Full Moon", and the landing part was exactly the same as the official version, except for the ascent.

The lander is carrying manned lunar rovers, some improvised probes, etc., while providing electricity and communications; The manned part is integrated with the ascent vehicle, which is the space for lunar astronauts to travel between the lunar surface and lunar orbit and the living space.

The manned part has not yet been fully finalized, but the semi-finished lander will still work.

They will make an unmanned landing in the Qom impact crater, sending two lunar rovers and some probe instruments and tools there, which will also be the landing site for manned landings in the future.

The next four explorer robots will then load the collected 55 kilograms of ice and lunar soil samples into the refrigeration equipment in the ascender, and take them with them to rendezvous with the new generation of manned spacecraft flying around the moon.

When the spacecraft returns to Earth, the 55-kilogram sample will also be brought back for analysis on Earth.

In this way, the Long March 10 Yao-2 mission can not only verify the rocket and spacecraft, but also carry out an unmanned return mission with a sampling volume of 55 kilograms.

This is also thanks to the fact that the Rover is Explorer II, which is able to climb stairs for personnel to go up and down, which allows the samples to be returned.

The space agency has always been angry that the original planned Chang'e-5 sample return mission was replaced by Explorer II, and this time it plans to bring back more than 50 kilograms of samples in one go, enough for hundreds of scientific research institutes to share a share of the research, and let the superiors inadvertently send 1 gram of lunar soil sample during the visit, showing off in a simple and unpretentious way.

In addition, by analyzing the data from different sample collection sites, scientists can understand the more detailed distribution of resources around the Qom crater, so as to seize the opportunity in time.

"Why don't you get Jade Rabbit 2 back? What are you doing with that thing? ”

Launch center, Academician She didn't understand Lin Ju's idea, although the fuel surplus of the ascender could bring back a few more robots, but this is not a scientific research sample, bring it back to the museum for primary and secondary school students to visit?

Lin Ju: "She Lao, but the Jade Rabbit No. 2 is broken, and the function is not as good as the Jade Rabbit No. 3, it is better to move back as a souvenir......

Academician She: "That's not good, there are still scientific instruments cooperating with Germany on Yutu-2, so we can't just withdraw it now." ”

“……”

Compared with the sturdy and reliable Yutu-1, the luck of the Yutu-2 is actually not very good, I don't know if it is because the magnetic force of the landing site is relatively sufficient, and the solar panels are always stained with ash to affect the efficiency.

Even more unfortunate was when Explorer 1 went over to dust it and jumped onto a fragile moon rock, and the debris burst out of the debris that made a pit in a power panel, causing its effective working time to be reduced again.

Explorer 1 is also not optimistic, the eight spider legs that were active in order to bring more batteries accounted for a high weight, and the wear and tear of the joints was very serious, and the gaps were filled with charged moon dust after high-intensity work, and its body gradually became less flexible than before.

Combined with the impact of jumping around, it is estimated that Explorer 1 will be able to work like this for about four months under the current situation, and then it will have to restrict its movement due to excessive joint wear and tear, and enter a state of "retirement" until it is scrapped.

Therefore, the total life of Explorer-1 is almost one year, although it is short, but considering its huge workload, it is completely worthy of the cost of only more than 10 million.

However, compared to lunar exploration, in fact, Lin Ju wanted to complain more about the crazy speed of the space agency.

Although the Long March 10 is destined to be a one-time product with a backward concept, it can only be said that it can only be said that the pressure is too small and there is no motivation in the past, and everyone is busy evaluating job titles and ignoring world competition, which is much better now.

When is the next launch of the SLS rocket? Anyway, it's a lot later than ten years longer.

Thinking of lunar exploration, Lin Ju asked Academician She the question in his heart:

"She Lao, the Apollo program did a spacecraft flight around the moon in full state because it was not enough for technical reasons, why did the Dawning program also do it? In fact, I think it is possible to carry out the landing mission directly on the third rocket. ”

Academician She: "The Apollo program is indeed a technical factor, and the lander's automatic computer crashed due to lack of memory during the first moon landing, so the Venerable Master should be cautious; 10 ...... long The main thing is that the YF77 has a bit of a malfunction for the first time, otherwise we can carry people around the moon this time, and go directly to the moon next time.

Although it is theoretically feasible to land on the moon for the next ten months, I decided to be more cautious, and it is not too much to take the most serious attitude towards human life. Besides, it's fast now. ”

As the chief engineer of the Dawning Project, what Academician She said at this time will naturally affect the progress of the plan, which is basically the truth.

Lin Ju: "What about the astronauts who landed on the moon?" Are you sure now? ”

Academician She: "The two crews have been decided, in fact, they were basically decided half a year ago, and I can't say who they are." ”

Although he said that it was a secret, Lin Ju actually almost knew that Xinyuan's astronauts and the space agency were training together, and as long as they paid a little attention to it, they would know the general situation, but they knew it.

"What about you? H2 should be about the same, right? ”

The H2 mentioned by Academician She is the initial version of the H2 space shuttle carrying the A100.

The so-called space agency bought the third H2M half-truth, and the space agency did buy one, but it was used for the 909 project, and now the progress is only a little bit.

Xinyuan's own construction plan was originally the first batch of two H2 and two H2M, the first three fuselage to be completed gave priority to the conventional power version of the construction task of the Qianjian, and the third was waiting for the A100 to be officially mass-produced for installation testing.

The fourth and fifth H2 have also been built, and one was purchased by the 909 Project military (entrusted to the Fourth Academy), and after the fuselage is built, it will be pulled to the secret base of the Fourth Academy for weapon installation.

The naming of the third H2 has not yet been decided, and as the first manned nuclear-powered large spacecraft, it still has to be named meaningful.

Lin Ju: "The ground test of the A100 has been completed, the results are quite ideal, we do not plan to do more tests, the next time we will directly install the mass-produced A100, and it is expected that the first manned flight will be carried out in May or June." ”

The H2 was originally conceived as an A100 engine using methane fuel, but after entering the actual study, it was found that the methane molecular weight was too large to achieve the required specific impulse, so it was changed back to the liquid hydrogen fuel when the system was sold, and the design goal was fully achieved.

The mass of the hydrogen atom is only 1/16 of the methane molecule, which is the best choice to improve the specific impulse, but it is more expensive and difficult to store, but it is not a big problem for the A100.

Although Academician She also had some understanding of the A100, he was still shocked that this epoch-making engine reached the design indicators on schedule.

According to the envisaged technical parameters, the H2 can depart from low-earth orbit with five astronauts and a landing module, reach the moon in 10 to 20 hours, and then return to Earth in 7 to 8 hours, consuming a total of no more than 10 tons of fuel.

I haven't finished this chapter yet, so I'm too busy......

(End of chapter)