"Hole three, check the fuel gauge again."

"Yes!"

Two trailers in tandem have slowly towed the Tengyun to the start of the runway, and the four astronauts in the cabin are quickly conducting pre-flight inspections.

The "Tengyun" project was only a code name for an aerospace aircraft at the beginning, and the space agency began to brew other new-generation spacecraft as early as two years ago, which will be summed up as "five clouds and one vehicle" next year according to the original world line.

"Feiyun", "Kuaiyun", "Xingyun", "Hongyun", "Tengyun" and "Flying Car", the first four include low-earth orbit information networks including long-endurance UAVs, airships and satellites.

The latter two are a new generation of transportation, "Tengyun."

"It's an aerospace plane;" The "Flying Car" is a supersonic flying train with a speed of 4,000 kilometers per hour, which will use electromagnetic acceleration and vacuum pipe technology as a pre-research project for mass projectors.

Now that "Tengyun" has been jointly inherited by the Third Academy and Xinyuan, the "flying car" is still waiting for the prospect of electromagnetic technology to be completely determined, but this year is almost the same.

After the first six aircraft were named No. 001 "Tengyun", No. 002 "Ruiyun", No. 003 "Liuyun", No. 004 "Yiyun", No. 005 "Piaoyun", and No. 006 "Breaking Cloud";

Among them, "Tengyun" and "Ruiyun" were delivered to the Space Administration and Xinyuan Company respectively, and the No. 3 to No. 6 aircraft will be delivered to the army.

The next one to be manufactured is the No. 003 "Liuyun", which adopts the method of alternating military and civilian manufacturing and delivery, and the first three are the first to support two of the Aviation Development Commission.

Some of the parts of "Liuyun" have already started production, and the first batch of final manufacturing "Ruiyun" bases will be optimized by themselves, and more key parts will be produced in-house, which is faster and more reliable in quality.

However, although the Tengyun was delivered to the space agency, it actually served as a number of test and validation missions for the first aircraft, and all three parties would be closely involved.

For example, the four-pilot configuration of the 001 aircraft illustrates this: the commander and captain are military-trained active pilots, the co-pilot is the base astronaut, and the other two flight engineers are from the space agency and the military.

The two captains and flight engineers from the military both began to debate the issue of pilots within the military after the Tengyun Project was officially established as an aerospace aircraft last year.

This is the same as the establishment of the Aerospace Force by Ami and Lucia, which is not just a simple name change, but also represents the main military branch and development direction in the future.

Once the four military aerospace planes are delivered, the issue of a new branch of the armed forces will inevitably need to be discussed in China, and there are three main schools of opinion at present: the establishment of a separate space force, the reorganization of the space force by the air force, and the reorganization of the space force by the minority navy.

Needless to say, most of the supporters of the last one are fans of "The Three-Body Problem", and they all agree with the view that "space warfare is more similar to naval warfare", and although there are no warships and only aerospace planes in space warfare now, the navy also has aviation!

In terms of composition alone, the navy has air forces, marines, warships, and the navy, land, and air force, and how it looks like a space force.

This point of view was immediately violently refuted by the Air Force, and for a time the three opinions could not be settled, and finally the above decided to make peace with the mud first:

Last year, 12 elite pilots were each selected by the Naval Aviation Force and the Air Force to learn about aerospace aircraft piloting at the Space Administration and Xinyuan Company.

Commander Chang Lihai was a colonel of a certain naval aviation brigade before, although he was slightly older, his physical and mental qualities were extremely strong, and he overtook the first place in the air force in training, becoming the best of the 24 trainees, and won the position of commander.

Now he is directing Wang Yan, a flight engineer who lost to him, to check the fuel gauge — the fuel gauge to be exact, and whether the fuel lines and engines are in order.

The difficulty of designing an aerospace aircraft is not just a combination of a space shuttle and an ordinary aircraft, first of all, the fuel is the difficulty:

Unlike rockets and shuttles, space planes take off with a gradual climb and attitude change, which causes their stored fuel to dangle in their tanks.

Ordinary aviation fuel is fine, but the combination of liquid oxygen and methane cryogenic fuel is not, and the sudden change of the position of the cryogenic liquid fuel in the tank will cause the local pressure to break through the threshold instantly, making the fuel tank unable to withstand the pressure explosion.

This is the reason why the rocket exploded almost 100% at a large angle when it was launched, and the starship was blown up because of this, and in the end, this problem was solved by relying on the improvement of the base's zero-evaporation tank technology, which is self-evidently revolutionary.

There is also the design of its 10 engines, although it is acceptable for the rocket, but it is definitely worth questioning the reliability when placed on the aircraft, not to mention that in order to reduce weight and enhance performance, these 10 engines have also been connected by pipelines, and other parties involved in the base are a little worried that they will fail.

Aerospace planes do not have an ejection escape system, and skydiving is almost impossible, so be sure to check before taking off.

And on the ground, people huddled together for the first flight were also discussing fiercely.

The big guy who hurriedly flew over after getting the news looked at the aerospace plane that was parked alone after the trailer was withdrawn, and sent his own question to Zeng Hongwei:

"What about the auxiliary vehicles on the ground? How is it just a bare plane? ”

According to his understanding, the preparations for the take-off of such an aerospace plane must be very complicated, and there are many kinds of things that can be thought of alone, but there is only one plane on the scene that is there to inspect itself.

Zeng Hongwei: "Thanks to Tengyun's zero-evaporation storage technology, it directly helped us solve the problems of low-temperature icing and fuel pressure release.

Three APUs (auxiliary power units) can be opened on the ground to ensure the fuselage electricity, which can also save a lot of operating expenses, the original good flight cost of 1 million we can also include the ground assistance, not counting the money to buy the aircraft. ”

The big guy nodded approvingly, this can save a lot of money for the space agency.

"Tengyun has really done a very good job, but I still want to nitpick and say that the 2.8-ton volume of the freight version is still a little smaller, if it can do 6 to 10 tons, it can also be used for manned-related freight tasks in the future, saving at least 70% of the cost."

"There's a way to do this."

Seryov did not know when he was standing next to him, and he did not show great joy at the first flight of the aerospace plane, as if it were just a trivial thing.

"If I can replace all 10 engines with nuclear power, I can guarantee a 40% reduction in fuel on the basis of the existing capacity, and the free weight can easily reach 15 tons of capacity.

Is the Aviation Development Commission interested in making an investment? If I agree, I'll change 'Ruiyun' to something like this. ”

The big guy tactically took a step back and clearly refused:

"It's not necessary, you don't need such a high-end thing to go to space alone, we are already very satisfied with Tengyun!"

(End of chapter)