"Booster separation!"

"Separation complete!"

Under the impact of the explosive bolts, the four boosters, which provided more than 80% of the thrust for the first stage, separated one after another after running out of fuel, forming a perfect Korolev cross in the strange flames.

However, they are not in free fall, and the Long March 10 Yao-2 rocket has several more small grille rudders than the Yao-1 booster and the core stage, which is not for recovery, but to deflect and control the landing area when falling.

Although the five dimensions of the Qiongzhou launch site are lower, the landing area of the wreckage after the rocket launch will pass through many countries in the South Seas, and in order to avoid international disputes, the rocket design will generally avoid the debris falling just in the densely populated area.

The Long March 5B rocket of the original World Line adopts a one-stage semi-orbit design and an extended core one-stage combustion time for this purpose.

The Long March 10 is different, when the Dawning program began, the space agency's first task was to build a qualified rocket, and the priority of the design was compromised in order to land on the area, and it was simply ignored in order to save time.

Therefore, the wreckage of the Yaoyi rocket was not deliberately controlled, most of it was smashed on the islands of Luzon, and there was a section of the wreckage of the booster that destroyed the farmland, which caused a bit of a sensation at the time.

Although it is a trivial matter compared to the moon landing, the Yao-2 rocket still added a few hundred kilograms of dead weight to control the landing area and fall into the sea as much as possible.

Not long after the booster was separated, the core stage also ran out of fuel, and the four highly-anticipated YF77Gs were started at the same time, and the wider flow regulation range made them first slightly correct the direction, and then gradually increase the thrust, when completely crossing the low-density atmosphere, the four YF77Gs can output close to 300 tons of thrust.

The second and third stages of the Long March 10 are the focus of its carrying capacity, and the R&D personnel of the Long March 10 and YF77G in the launch center are walking around to check the working status of the engines.

Until the end of the first phase of acceleration of the four engines, there was no abnormal signal from the engine sensors.

Satellites and survey ships have also sent back the measured orbit data to corroborate, indicating that the rocket has no problems so far, and will soon accelerate again into the Earth-Moon transfer orbit.

But now their hearts have not been put down, a total of 6 YF77s in the second and third stages, unless the spacecraft and lander assembly have smoothly entered the lunar orbit, it cannot be said that the YF77G has become reliable.

The journey to the moon lasted 3 days, and the YF77G started and stopped a lot of times, and if there were no accidents, it would mean that the high-thrust hydrogen-oxygen engine developed by the space agency was finally qualified.

……

“started！”

At Blue Origin's test site in the desert, the BE4 (M1) was again ignited, the throttle valve was increased to 100% in 50 seconds, and the liquid pure oxygen and methane poured into the combustion chamber wildly, and the mixed combustion produced a powerful tail flame.

On the horizontal thrust gauge in the control room, the numbers jumped wildly all the way up, and soon broke through the six-digit number.

The BE4 went through a full 180-second test run, and finally left a string of numbers on the gauge: 547,000 lb, 550,000 pounds of thrust, about 250 tons.

Jeff Bezos and Aramco Launch Alliance Director Umnol high-fived each other, both delighted with the BE4's first successful test run.

Unlike the original World Line, which has been lagging behind and its development has stalled from time to time, due to the urgency of the Artemis program, NACA directly appointed Blue Origin as the contractor for the manufacture of the lunar lander, and injected a large amount of financial and technical support.

Up to now, Blue Origin has received $3.8 billion in funds for the "Blue Moon" lander alone, and its technical strength has also grown a lot, and various non-technical needs have also been greenlit.

What's more, while guiding the "Raptor" generation of Lao Ma's full-flow liquid oxygen methane engine, Blue Origin's BE4 has also been supported.

Compared with the "Raptor", the BE4 is still a relatively backward oxygen-rich pre-cycle staged combustion mode, but the thrust is much larger, and on the whole it is more advanced than the Xinyuan M220, with a thrust of 250 tons.

The success of the BE4's 180-second test means that Blue Origin has finally won the throne of the world's first methane engine.

For Bezos, the initial success of BE4 means that the new Glenn rocket, which has a single-stage orbit and a carrying capacity of up to 45 tons, can enter real development; Bruno is pleased that ULA's new Vulcan Centaur rocket can have a qualified engine.

Most of the rockets launched by ULA are in service for the Afghan and US military, and the main forces are Delta-IV and Cosmos-V, there is still one left in the limited number of hydrogen-oxygen engines of Delta-IV, and there are 17 Cosmos-V in stock, which is now the main force.

The Cosmic God V uses Lucia's RD181 engine, and the 100 units purchased in the early years have been fully delivered, and Aramco plans to use its own engine to develop a disposable rocket that can replace the Delta-IV and Cosmic V, which is Vulcan.

The BE4 is one of Vulcan's alternative engines, and now it seems almost certain.

Don't look at the Falcon 9 reusable, but the LEO payload of 10 to 27 tons of disposable cheap rockets still have a lot of demand, and ULA is not at a loss.

Jeff Bezos: "Bruno, aren't you really going on a fascinating space flight with me?" ”

Bruno: "Thank you, but I've been busy lately......"

Jeff Bezos may be the most "reckless" billionaire Bruno has ever met, and last year the New Shepard suborbital rocket completed two successful recoveries, so Bezos plans to complete another recovery and then carry six passengers on board for the first time, including him and his brother Mark Bezos.

In any case, Bruno really admired this courage, at least he didn't dare to sit down.

Jeff Bezos didn't react unusually to Bruno's back-down, and not everyone has the courage to try new things like he does.

So he complained to Bruno instead: "NACA is in a hurry, you know, Director Claire recently asked me to bring forward the completion of the official lander from November to July, which is simply impossible."

Besides, I'm still working on a modification for it to be launched by the Heavy Falcon, which is too much work. ”

The "Blue Moon" lander is different from the lander of the Huaguo Dawning program, it is a monolithic type, and the landing and return are all integrated flights, and Blue Origin has carried out the concept and preliminary conceptual design very early.

The Blue Moon has a dry weight of 14 tons, but can reach 45 tons when fully fueled, and was originally designed to fit the launch design of the New Glenn rocket.

The New Glenn rocket is a single-stage orbit, so the "Blue Moon" needs to fill a lot of fuel to fly to the moon and then slow down and land, and the diameter of the new Glenn rocket body is 7 meters, which is much wider than the 3.7 meters wide of the heavy Falcon core stage, and the latter launch requires a lot of modifications.

The biggest compromise was to increase the length of the original 16 meters to 23 meters in order to maintain weight while reducing the diameter to 5.8 meters......

You must know that the "Blue Moon" lander is a bit high, which is almost 7 stories high, so special attention should be paid to attitude control when descending, and astronauts have to use the elevator to go up and down, otherwise it will be too difficult to climb the stairs.

The lunar lander with elevators, the heavy task requirements of the program, the complex structural design, and the excessively high center of gravity all have been proven to be feasible by NACA, but many people are still worried.

This naturally included Bruno, and when he learned that NACA actually asked for the manufacturing progress of "Blue Moon" in advance, his eyelids twitched.

With such a hasty execution of the moon landing program, can it really complete all the inspection processes......

(End of chapter)