"Dawn, please make sure the fairing hatch is closed."

"Dawn understands!"

Zhang Zhiguang answered on the radio, then turned his head and gave Fang Lin a look.

The latter was still looking at the moon in the sky through the external camera of the fairing, and immediately closed the fairing hatch after hearing the command.

The Dawning Spacecraft's command module has a 25 cm diameter hard glass window, and although it is designed to support ablation directly into the atmosphere, it has been added with a layer of protection to be safe, which can be opened and closed manually or electrically.

He could have seen the sky directly, but the lunar mission required a fairing, which didn't have a large area of glass.

Zhang Zhiguang has completed the ship-arrow joint self-test, staring at the parameters calmly and waiting for the launch command.

Now there are 15 minutes left before launch.

The trestle connecting the entrance to the fairing was disconnected, contracted and moved to the side by the action of the hydraulic mechanism, and the hatch on the fairing slowly closed.

The three astronauts folded their legs and tightened slightly, and fine-tuned their positions to make their backs fit more closely in the seats.

Although it is supplied by the same manufacturer, they still feel that the electric seat of the Dawning spacecraft is not as comfortable as the space shuttle, and there is no sense of inclusiveness that is integrated.

In the launch center, Lin Ju confirmed that the Tuanjie at the Xinyuan launch site was also in good condition, maintaining a state of rapid fuel refueling and launch within 6 hours.

The Apollo spacecraft did not have a rescue backup, but the Aurora spacecraft did.

Progress and Determination are still on the Tiangong space station, and only Tuanjie is on the ground, which is now mounted on a Xinyuan-2 rocket, and some seats and other facilities are removed from the cabin to reduce weight, and the 19-ton empty weight is enough to hit the lunar orbit with the capacity of the Xinyuan-2 rocket.

This is the only space shuttle that can be used now, and the Storm is still resting at the base, and the long voyage of nuclear power still exposes some minor problems, and the base needs to be slightly modified in mid-July; The Pioneer and Glory returned on June 14 and 15 respectively and are also under refurbishment, with all three H2s not returning to service until mid-July.

Fortunately, H1 is also enough, if the situation is too bad, at least there is a space shuttle that can come in handy, plus the "Black Rabbit" space station, the preparation means are already perfect.

In contrast, Artemis II only has a "gateway" that provides temporary shelter: 4 cubic meters, one cubic meter per person, which is fair.

At least Lin Ju really couldn't figure out what the use of the "portal" space station with only 8 cubic meters of space in its complete state was, so it was only easier to change it to a bathroom.

"One minute!"

The announcer's voice woke him up from his thoughts, and his attention returned to the big screen.

The three astronauts had clenched their fists and leaned their necks back slightly to find a solid pillow.

Although it was not the first time he had carried out a launch mission, now Zhang Zhiguang felt that the voice on the radio was gradually becoming hollow, his mind had flown out of his body, and his eyes were just a window to record the picture, faithfully performing the parameter check that had almost become muscle memory.

The two YF130s in the central core stage were the first to start, and the speed at which the throttle valve opened was relatively gentle, but strong vibrations could still be felt when the command cabin was conducted at an altitude of 100 meters.

Four seconds later, the 8 engines of the four boosters also began to ignite, and then it took 5 seconds for 10 engines and 20 nozzles to enter 100% working condition, and 25 tons of fuel were lost from the various tanks every second, providing more than 5100 tons of thrust for the entire rocket, and the four support points at the bottom of the rocket began to detach from the launch pad.

A few kilometres away on the beach, people first saw bright orange light emerging from the gap in the launch pad, then silently covered the rocket and launch stations with a large cloud of smoke, until the spire of the escape tower emerged from above the smoke, and people who had already felt the ground shook to hear the sound waves in the air.

More than a hundred islanders gathered around Yamamoto Kazuki were frantically shouting something with bright red flags, but it was all muffled by the sound waves in the air, and it looked like a mime on a surprising scale against the backdrop of rockets.

The camera that set the target to follow the shooting was very intelligent, but he still corrected it very carefully, and the contrast of the picture was automatically and constantly reduced, because the brightness of the tail flame formed by the 20 vents was so high that he could only shoot a large cloud of white light without reducing the exposure.

When he looked up, the moon could still see a little bit of outline, and from its current angle it looked almost as tall as a rocket.

"Long live Huaguo! *@% Viva"

Serizawa Tamoo's voice finally reached his ears, and the former was dancing the flag and jumping and roaring loudly with excitement.

The Apollo mission to the moon has given NACA a half-century of standing proudly in the world from a bird's-eye posture, and now, their pride is coming to an end, Yamamoto thought.

……

The sun is rising in Qiongzhou, but Florida is still going dark.

I don't know when the starry sky has been obscured by clouds, and Claire can only see the faint yellowish moonlight behind the clouds.

At 21.09, after he pulled down again to refresh Twitter, CADC finally updated a tweet:

"Dawning-3 Successfully Launched"

The accompanying picture is a photograph of the overlapping silhouette of the rocket and the moon taken from the ground, and when zoomed in, you can even see the insulation foam falling off the surface of the rocket body.

He didn't watch the live broadcast, and at the same time blocked the news as quickly as possible, and the control room basically didn't know that the Dawn 3 was launched early, only that Director Claire asked for another 30 minutes of the launch time, on the grounds of "preventing thunder and lightning after the dark clouds gathered".

It's a bit rushed, but it's still within the scope of adjustment, so it's not difficult to do.

At 28 minutes and 20 seconds, the deflector began to spray water into the core-level engine, and the four RS25 engines swayed slightly, and finally confirmed that the control was normal.

“ten、nine、eight、seven、six…… four engin start.”

Four liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen engines started, and four seconds later, two SRB boosters ignited.

The crowd, who had been anxious outside the launch site for half an hour, burst into cheers when they saw the numbers on the huge timer.

The solid boosters work in an extremely violent way, much more so than the thrust of the liquid engines, that in the darkness the whole earth trembles, and the balls of light that are growing at the launch pad are like monsters emerging from cracks in the earth, screaming to get out of the cage of gravity.

The two SRBs and core-stage RS25s steadily pushed the rocket away from the launch pad, and the wake generated by the solid boosters quickly merged into a column of smoke more than ten meters wide, glowing all over the body under the light of the fire, like a wound that was artificially cut through the sky in the night, or reminiscent of the mythical Tower of Babel.

In the past 30 minutes, two rockets carrying the lunar spacecraft have lifted off from the eastern and western hemispheres, and two small points of light have appeared in the light and dark sides, and have entered orbit one after the other.

They will each accelerate around low Earth orbit for 2 to 3 times before embarking on a journey to the moon together.

CBS quickly sent out the first report after the launch of Artemis II, titled Susanna, who was still in Qiongzhou:

"Two rockets, two skies, and the only moon"

Today and Monday and Tuesday are busy......

(End of chapter)