Freeman couldn't believe that Professor Robert could make such a fallacy, so he immediately found a chair and sat down to reanalyze the information obtained by the Hexagon.

The Hexagon's detection method is mainly satellite, and there is also a part of the X37B collected ray analysis, and the information that can be inferred is very limited.

But Freeman looked closely, and Anthony poured each of them a cup of coffee, and began to wait patiently.

An hour later, Freeman put down his pen, removed his glasses and rubbed his sore eyeballs.

"Yes, that's right, judging by the location of the heat source, one end of its NX-17, if it is a closed Brayton cycle, it should be arranged in the center, so now there are two possibilities."

Anthony: "What are the two possibilities?" ”

"First, XAP installed a huge heat dissipation mechanism or counterweight for the remaining space, or both, and that launch was a single-stage orbit test, and 22 tons was exactly the limit load of a single-stage orbit, which makes sense.

The second possibility......"

Freman sat up straight with his hands crossed with ten fingers crossed.

"The remaining two-thirds of the space and mass are equipped with other equipment, some kind of extremely energy-intensive device that consumes more than 200 kilowatts; And it must be required to maintain high power with or without sunlight, so nuclear power is needed, and that's it. ”

Anthony: "So...... What kind of secret weapons test is this most likely? ”

Freman shook his head frantically: "You AAF have been under too much pressure lately, you will think badly when you see everything, where there are so many conspiracies, don't always hype up conspiracy theories."

Moreover, the NX-17 has a large volume and a low orbit, and if it does not consume fuel to maintain the orbit, there will be a significant orbital drop for about a year, which shows that it is indeed not an important secret weapon test carrier, and on the contrary, it shows that there is a ghost. ”

Anthony: "I see, thank you anyway, Dr., I think the Air Force has another project team that can apply for funding." ”

Freeman was relieved to hear Anthony's apparently relaxed tone in the second half of his sentence.

He doesn't want to be an evil scientist who hypes conspiracy theories, and he's involved in nuclear propulsion for space exploration rather than Earth Brawl, he's a vegetarian and a pacifist!

……

To the southeast of the outer surface of Qombe's impact crater, where the Dawning-2 Full Moon lander is located.

In order to protect the painstaking samples from being lost, the two Explorer II robots slowed down a little bit along the way, but fortunately, the samples they carried were large blocks of moon rock and ice, which were relatively easy to hold.

On the ground, an appeal has been on the top of the hot search:

"It is highly recommended to provide packing bags for the detectors"

The topic came from a photo sent back by Explorer Six, which looked very awkward as it clutched a block of ice placed on its back with its four legs at its head and tail.

As a result, I don't know which platform suggested that explorers should be equipped with bags of samples, and it was also speculated that they could be made of metal foil, woven net, and other materials.

When the camera of the "Full Moon" lander photographed two large spiders each carrying samples and gathering around the lander, the topic quickly became hot.

At the same time, someone made a meme at breakneck speed, with the text:

"Poor relatives in the countryside of the moon are coming to see you with souvenirs"

Needless to say, it seems to be the case.

The "full moon" only stays for two or three days, and is a visitor to the moon, and these robots will obviously stay on the moon until they are scrapped, so it makes sense to send a little "souvenir" to the guests!

However, the climax of the lunar live broadcast was the footage captured by the camera in the ascender cabin, after the ground issued a command to unlock the hatch, Yutu-3 put down the lunar rock sample and climbed from the ladder for humans to climb to the hatch, and then hooked the handle with two forefeet to open the hatch of the ascender.

Imagine the inside of the ascender where the hatch is opened by a half-erected eight-legged robot outside, which is "cyberpunk" in the buzzword of the moment.

The Jade Rabbit 3 climbed into the ascender that could accommodate up to three people, but the extremely high-definition eight-legged robot unfolding screen under normal conditions still makes people think that some alien creature has crawled in.

Yutu 3 easily grabbed the cylindrical storage tank, carefully inserted its forefeet into the dedicated fixed port, and carefully retreated its six hind feet to the hatch, once again bringing great shock to the global audience.

One-sixth of gravity makes the heavy machinery on Earth seem extremely flexible at this time, and with the smooth images brought by the ultra-large bandwidth of the relay satellite, Yutu-3 seems to come to life.

Next, in a camera outside the lander, Yutu-3 and Explorer-6 open the tank and stuff the samples they have collected into it, before starting their final job: digging.

The Explorer II was designed with it in mind to collect a large number of samples, so the ground brought a shovel that could be mounted with the Explorer's forefeet in preparation for the Aurora 2 mission.

Explorer 6 held down the lying tank, and Yutu 3 shoveled lunar soil into the tank.

Researchers from JPL and MIT's AI Labs are also tuning in to the live stream.

Boris Rockwell opened his mouth slightly, touched his chin and turned the swivel chair to look at the crowd who were also silent.

"Robotic arms, the more robotic arms, the more flexible they are, right? There are so many uses for a good robotic arm. ”

"But the lifespan of the joints is too low." Objections were raised:

"The Explorer II has a maximum of one year of joint life, and their Explorer I satellite has already photographed a much slower rate of activity, and we designed a rover where there are also storms and extremely metallic sand, and the joints wear out very quickly.

Rubber sleeves on earth can't be used either, and it won't take long for the friction of low temperatures and fine dust to wear it out, and we can't just make consumables. ”

Boris: "It shows that we need newer and better sealing technology, and besides, who says spacecraft can't be consumables?"

In the past ten years, we have only launched one detector, but ADC has launched more than a dozen detectors in the last two years, and even if they can only be used for one year, the effect is stronger than one that can last for more than ten years.

And, Thomas, is MIT a writhing maggot that can give us? ”

Thomas: "That's a snake robot!" ”

Boris: "I don't want maggots or snakes, JPL gave you $150 million from NACA, but look at this thing, it's not even a hundredth of an explorer!" ”

Boris said as he picked up the laser pointer and pressed the switch, and the thing in the corner that looked like a mass of mechanical garbage suddenly began to squirm, only to see a snake-like robot about 1.5 meters long twisting sharply on the smooth floor, and then moved strangely near the point of light.

This is the research result of MIT, they envision an underground exploration robot, which can autonomously carry out deep geological exploration tasks, ultra-long standby and super obstacle crossing ability, in fact, the technical difficulty is even slightly higher than that of Explorer II.

But no one is going to look at a snake with a hole in it, and taxpayers don't pay for such a strange thing.

Boris: "You should be pragmatic, Google is much better than you, their humanoid robots can already pour coffee!" Put it on the moon, at least you can pick up a shovel and dig up some soil for us to bring back. ”

As he spoke, the two big spiders had worked together to complete the filling process, and there were about 50 to 70 kilograms of samples in the tank, and its outer surface was covered with moon dust due to static adsorption, which was not something that the big spider could clean, but it was not a big problem, it would be put into the metal woven bag that had been opened in advance by the ascender, and it would not get the moon dust everywhere after being put into the return capsule.

Explorer Six took over the task of putting the tank back in, lifting it like an ant holding a grain of rice and placing it for half an hour, then exited without the slightest hesitation, nudging the outer hatch and closing it.

Before leaving the lander completely, the two large spiders each raised one forefoot and waved, and then slowly climbed to a distance of about 100 meters.

After 110 minutes, the ascender took advantage of the docking window of the Dawning-2 spacecraft to start its engine and leave the lander to take off, ready to rendezvous and dock with the spacecraft.

The process was also fully automated, and it took only 40 minutes to dock successfully, and it transported the storage tank that the space agency had been thinking about with the bag to the command module through the interface, and then left gently.

The ascent had nothing of value in it, it would slow down with what little fuel it had left, crashing into the lunar surface as a pile of debris after dozens of hours.

The command module, which has been overstayed for more than ten days, will also be pushed forward by the service module to start its three-day return journey, and finally re-enter the atmosphere with lunar soil and dummies, and bring back the first sample obtained by the space agency itself.

(End of chapter)