Luca Christopher and Alain Duras walk on a pedestrian bridge specially designed for the space shuttle.

They are the first foreign astronauts to board the Tiangong space station and the first foreign astronauts to board the H2 series of large space shuttles.

On March 17, the Qixinyuan launch site packed up one of the three No. 2 rockets in preparation and took the time to launch the "Vienna" to the Tiangong space station and dock with the "Yungong" core module, as the two tourist modules that will be completely open to tourists in the future.

At the same time, according to the agreement made more than a year ago, two Italian and haired astronauts will also enter the Tiangong space station after the launch of "Vienna" to conduct scheduled space science experiments.

The space agency's Dawning spacecraft was scheduled for April, so Xinyuan simply added two seats to the Glory launched on the 21st, first sending two gringos to the Tiangong space station and then maneuvering to the Qianjian.

Although the H2M's passenger compartment is only a small part of the whole, it is also extremely large, and it was designed with additional seats in mind, and it can be expanded to a maximum capacity of 15 passengers with only minor changes, and only a negligible loss of uplink cargo capacity.

However, the maximum take-off mass of the H2M is more than 130 tons, and it is far from the limit when operating in low earth orbit, and the fuel is quite sufficient, so there is no problem with "stopping" halfway.

The Glory has been on for a long time, and has now launched a living module, and its cargo hold is equipped with a connecting passage and the corresponding part of the truss.

According to the design of the Qianjin space station, the six spoke modules are connected to the six service modules, and the six living modules are fixed by connecting channels and trusses, so the service modules should be launched first, but Xinyuan really can't wait and decides to launch the living modules one by one first.

The Glory and Pioneer can guarantee a launch interval of 20 days at full force at the launch site, and this is enough.

Even with a third, a fourth is unlikely to increase the speed, and the power of the two launch sites is limited.

With permission from Xinyuan, Lukka and Alain raised their phones to take a few selfies of themselves after entering the cabin.

Their seats are on the lower level, and although there are no portholes, the space is large, so even the temporary addition of seats does not seem rushed, and the chairs have a larger footprint than a common aviation sofa.

The flight process of the two of them was very smooth, and Lukka even felt that the Glorious, which had a low G value compared to the "Soyuz" spacecraft and entered the tilting state from takeoff, was too relaxed, and was in the mood to play on the radio the whole time.

Since the Xinyuan-2A rocket can only send the space shuttle into low orbit, it still has to fly for a while under its own power, and the weightless time before entering the rendezvous and docking is less than that of ordinary spacecraft.

For the Tiangong space station, the H2M is a giant weighing more than 100 tons, which is heavier than the two core modules, so both sides should be quite careful when docking, otherwise the collision may destroy the space station.

When the docking port inside the cargo compartment of the Glory successfully docked with the "Tianhe", more than a dozen astronauts from the two spacecraft warmly celebrated each other's meeting and spent an hour briefly visiting the door.

The crew of the Glorious with the mission took the lettuce, bean sprouts, tomatoes and other materials planted in the "Tiangong", and did not stay long before separating and closing the cargo hold, adjusting the direction and starting to ascend the orbit to prepare for docking with the "Advance".

The first thing Luca Christopher did after entering the space station was to enter "Vienna", and then opened the hatch with a symbolic small key during the online meeting of the board of directors of Orient International, indicating that Alenia Space officially delivered the luxury segment of the main operation to the space hotel.

NACA's white-gloved shareholder representatives applauded the most, even though they had less than 4% of the shares.

However, the Oriental International Space Hotel is about to promote the listing of NASDAQ, and with the exclusive and huge space assets of Oriental International, this small amount of equity can also leverage a large amount of capital, which can allow some big names of NACA to make a lot of money and worry about food and clothing for the rest of their lives.

……

"President Xie, this is indeed the limit of what we can do."

At the B-class base, an engineer from a technology company in the country was sweating profusely, and in front of him was a cylindrical machine slightly larger than a family car.

As a traditional industrial power, China also has unique advantages in some aspects, such as hydrogen and oxygen high-purity fuel production and container manufacturing, which is at the forefront of the world.

When Seryov set out to promote the lunar fuel production system, the first thing he thought about was whether he could knock out something good from ESA in addition to his own research.

The result is that these engineers participated in the manufacture of the core components of the electrolysis hydrogen and oxygen generator with their rich experience, and successfully controlled the quality of the equipment within six tons required by Serov, and the electrolysis capacity also successfully met the requirements.

The power consumption is 35 kilowatts of peak power of the whole equipment, which is almost the limit of the nuclear power vehicle.

Seryov was actually quite satisfied, but he kept putting pressure on the hair side in order to squeeze as much good stuff as possible, and now it seems that it is indeed possible to achieve this level with their skills.

Of course, this is only a prototype, and the version that is actually launched to the moon is still the version that Xinyuan has confirmed its reliability after optimization according to the Hipster Technology Utilization System Research Institute, but this does save a lot of money.

In the rest of the production system, there is no technical pressure on the compression storage equipment, the crushing and purification equipment needs a little money to get it, and the ice digging and transportation are finally divided into two parts, all OK.

The MTV transport rocket with an uplink fuel transport capacity of 13 tons is still a little difficult to study, and everything else is a minor problem.

Of course, along with the lunar surface fuel production/transportation system, there is also the long-pending lunar orbital space station.

The first two parts of the Artemis program's "Portal", PPE and HALO, have been in lunar orbit for almost a month, and now NACA is raving wildly every day about the advanced nature of the first lunar orbital space station "Portal".

For example, three 13KW "world's first" Hall thrusters on the PPE, a super-large capacity long-range communication system, etc., but in Serov's opinion, they are not worth mentioning.

For spacecraft, mass and volume are the representatives of capabilities.

The lunar orbit space station set by Seryov consists of two modules with a total weight of 67 tons.

One is used to store the fuel produced by the lunar table, which can store as much as 100 tons, and the other part is naturally a module that provides supplies of living materials and docking around the moon, with a mass of 50 tons, which can support the residence of eight people.

One launch of the No. 2 rocket and one launch of the No. 2A rocket can be done, and the cost is not high, and it has been reported to the Aviation Development Commission to be completed within this year, and it can easily take away the limelight of the "portal".

(End of chapter)