"Wow, is this where we're going to land?"

Zhou Qingfeng pointed to a small circle of images transmitted back from the moon surface in real time on the screen, and asked his grandfather curiously.

Zhou Rui: "Qingfeng, the diameter of the Qom impact crater is less than 5 kilometers, think about it, with the operating altitude of the Dawning spacecraft, how big is the impact crater you are referring to?" ”

On the evening of February 14, the Dawning spacecraft and the "Full Moon" lander assembly arrived in lunar orbit, and six YF77s completed their mission and sent the 45-ton assembly to the lunar orbit safely.

Three ultra-high-definition cameras are fixed in the cockpit of the Shuguang spacecraft, and the images they capture are directly relayed back by the "Queqiao" relay satellite, providing the clearest live broadcast picture to the world.

The Aurora spacecraft is expected to return after 25 days in lunar orbit, where it will carry out the landing of the lander and the docking and return of the ascent, simulating the whole process of manned landing on the moon.

The reason for the "Full Moon" lander is that the lander and ascender are separated, and the weight is 14 tons and 9 tons, respectively.

The reason why it is not necessary to save more mass and simplify the structure of the monolithic is because the lander will be designed as part of the future lunar base to generate electricity, store supplies and conduct scientific research activities, while the ascent will be disposable, and the manned compartment inside can support three people to survive for up to 7 days, and then be discarded after the mission.

Therefore, it is not a waste that the Aurora spacecraft has to throw away an ascender and a service module every time it performs a mission to the moon.

According to the disclosure of the Aviation Development Commission, when the circumlunar space station and the lunar scientific research station are completed in the future, an ascender capable of repeating round trips will be developed, which can be refueled in lunar orbit or on the lunar surface as a long-term uplink and downlink carrier.

At that time, landing on the moon will only need to be reduced to two boosters of the Long March 10A or the new Long March 5, and the Dawning spacecraft will be sent directly with a capacity of 27 to 30 tons in lunar orbit, and even the Xinyuan-2 rocket can barely do it, so that the cost of landing once is far less terrifying than the Apollo program, and once a year can be done without affecting the overall situation.

At present, the Aurora spacecraft is orbiting the lunar surface at an altitude of about 28 kilometers, because there is no atmosphere to obstruct it, and the craters and various landforms on the lunar surface are extremely clear at a glance.

Zhou Qingfeng lay on the screen, imagining that he was in the crew compartment of the Dawning spacecraft, looking down on the surface of the moon through the porthole.

In his imagination, he is the astronaut who is about to land on the moon, and then he will get into the lander, then detach, pull the joystick and slowly slow down the orbit......

"Grandpa, will we be able to land on the moon this year?"

Zhou Qingfeng suddenly thought that this time it was an unmanned flight, and next time it should be able to directly land on the moon, right?

Zhou Rui kindly touched Zhou Qingfeng's head and shook his head gently:

"The next time is a manned flight around the moon, and there will be another dress rehearsal, and the real moon landing should be next year."

Zhou Qingfeng: "But it's already possible." ”

Zhou Rui: "Qingfeng, the Apollo program Ami from Apollo 7 to 10, conducted four manned tests before the official moon landing, we only carried out one is very aggressive, and now Ami also has to carry out a manned orbit around the moon." ”

"Grandpa, then you said that if the flight around the moon is a full-state test, will the astronauts be able to operate the lander to land on the moon in advance?"

"This ......"

Zhou Rui was stunned, blinked his eyes and shook his head.

"No, everything has to be arranged by the organization."

On May 18, 1969, astronauts Thomas Stafford and John Young and Eugene Cernan were launched from Cape Kennedy for a full-state "dress rehearsal" for Apollo 10.

Because the automation technology is not yet mature, the Apollo spacecraft and the lander are mainly manually controlled, and theoretically the three astronauts can directly carry out the moon landing against the plan.

What really restrained them was not how disciplined they were, but that the NACA Director at the time, James Webb, expected that this would only add half of the fuel to the lander, and only allowed the landing to be carried out and could not be climbed back again.

In this way, the crew of Apollo 10 struggled for a long time, and finally did not bet that they could survive in the wilderness on the moon until Apollo 11 came to the rescue, otherwise it was really possible to advance the moon landing as soon as their minds were hot.

Now in another case, the automatic landing program takes precedence over the manual one, and as long as the program is locked, the astronaut cannot go his own way.

After listening to his grandfather's explanation, Zhou Qingfeng was slightly disappointed, and this kind of conformity made him feel that he had lost the fun of space adventure.

If you can't drive a spaceship manually, what kind of space adventure is it?

……

"Ahhh

Beijing, an aerospace test site.

With a series of exclamations, the attitude of the simulated lander controlled by Lin Ju was greatly unbalanced, and the suspension cable 20 meters above was immediately locked, and at the same time, the engine of the simulated lander was shut down, allowing it to dangle in the air with Lin Ju and start spinning at the same time.

The ground personnel hurriedly operated the machine and hurriedly put him down, and Lin Ju sat on the grass only to feel that his limbs were trembling because of excessive tension.

"Teacher Lin, are you okay?"

A little girl with her hair tied up ran over to help Lin Ju up, and the latter hurriedly stepped back with her hands and feet, like a frightened grasshopper.

"It's okay, it's okay, you don't need to help me, you guys go and get busy......"

Time back to 5 hours ago, Lin Ju finished the preparatory meeting of the Aviation Development Commission, and went to the test site of the manned lunar exploration office to walk around.

The Aviation Development Commission will meet again in March, but the important contents are all determined before the meeting, and the conference is just a notice.

Lin Ju, who had no plan, found a manual simulator for training astronauts on the moon here, that is, a machine that simulated a lander was hoisted with a rope, and the rocket engine was placed according to the layout of the real lander, so that a real person could sit on it and simulate the manual manipulation of the moon landing.

Lin Ju saw that the machine was idle and wanted to try it, but he didn't expect that in order to truly simulate the environment under low gravity, the feedback sensitivity was several times higher than normal.

The supervisor here ran over to care about the situation of the Standing Committee member Lin, and saw that there was nothing serious, but he was a little dizzy, and said in his heart that this lord can neither be reversed nor hurt, and it is really a small temple to welcome the big Buddha here.

"Commissioner Lin, the simulator is to reflect the real emergency, so the difficulty is relatively high, and under normal circumstances, even if the computer fails, there is an auxiliary semi-automatic system, this kind of full manual is only encountered in extreme cases, and it is also very difficult for our astronauts to train."

Lin Ju knew what he was worried about and hurriedly waved his hand: "I'm fine, I haven't trained for a long time, and I just shook my head a little ...... Ahem, ahem, I'll just sit down and rest. ”

"Then I'll let Secretary Chen help you go to rest......"

"No, no, no, it's so inconvenient for girls to do this, I'll get up now!"

Seeing Lin Ju struggle to get up and walk away quickly, the supervisor and Secretary Chen, who was at a loss not far away, glanced at each other and made helpless expressions.

Lin Ju often came to the capital, and the Aviation Development Commission originally assigned him a guard and temporary assistant Xiao Zhang, but for some indescribable reasons he was replaced by a young and beautiful secretary Xiao Chen, but Lin Ju was completely business-like and never carried out any behavior that might increase the relationship.

However, how did they know that Lin Ju had already discovered that something was wrong, and recently as long as he left the base, he could meet young and good-looking little girls everywhere, and the positions that often needed to be contacted were changed one by one.

It turns out that Assistant Zhang is very good, can fight and do things, and if you change a female secretary, you can't help but be more restrained when you walk together, which is really terrible.

The society is too complicated, and it is still the safest in the base.

(End of chapter)