"Aerospace aircraft are stronger than rockets in terms of convenience and economy, and they are also very friendly to passengers, which must be the direction of development in the future."

National Security Adviser McMaster made a statement of the federal government's resolve, and all the businesses present immediately agreed.

Putting aside the terrifying pressure and mental devastation brought by the other side of the sea, these companies participating in the bidding are actually in a good mood.

Because the constant pressure means a steady stream of competition, the military-industrial complex, which had been reduced in scale year after year, suddenly received unprecedented project funding support, and in the past two years, there has been a faint trend of restoring its former glory.

Coupled with the fact that the military's budget is also easier to get approved, the stock market response of the entire Aramco military and aerospace industries has been quite good.

Of course, it's not a good thing to be too backward, what if the old man of the Congress lies flat? So it should be chased or it must be chased.

As for the SSTO plan, McMaster, who is more familiar with equipment technology, first threw out several directional questions, the first of which is: single-stage orbit entry or hierarchical orbit entry.

In addition to the fact that the hierarchical orbit entry scheme is not as high-end as the single-stage orbit entry, the biggest reason is that the difficulty of grading orbit entry is not low......

Grading into orbit also requires the following carrier aircraft to be able to fly above Mach 8, since Tengyun can achieve single-stage orbit entry at this speed, why do you want to engage in lower-end grading orbit?

The second question: what is the power used in the space flight segment?

This time, there was a slight difference of opinion, but in the end it was unified as liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen fuel, which was the highest and best in terms of specific impulse; As for the space engine's direct copy of Tengyun's leaked annular airtip engine, Aramco has a lot of technical reserves in this regard, and it is still somewhat confident;

And then there's the indicator: how quickly to start the space segment engine?

This time, there are two schools of thought, one side that believes that Mach 8 to 10 is needed, and the other side believes that Mach 3 or more is sufficient.

The aviation flight phase consumes very little fuel, and if you can fly as fast as possible, you can greatly reduce the fuel use in the space phase and increase the load factor.

This is the reason for those who support high speeds above Mach 8: Mach 3 is too slow and consumes a lot of fuel.

And Pratt & Whitney thinks that Mach 3 speed is enough, and the reason they insist on is that it takes a long time to support hypersonic ramjet engines, and if they fly Mach 3, they can immediately come up with a ready-made J58, which is a variable-cycle engine used by Blackbird.

As for the question of the load factor? Pratt & Whitney looked at Northrop Grumman.

Grumman's participating designers answered straightforwardly:

"The GEM63 solid booster, the kind used by the Cosmic God V, has a diameter of 1.6 meters, a length of 20 meters, a weight of 49 tons, and can provide a maximum thrust of 165 tons in 98 seconds, I think it is enough to put one or two GEM63s on the fuselage.

If you guys are too heavy, Grumman can reduce it a little more, which shouldn't be a problem. ”

Musk, who has been watching from the sidelines: ......

The military-industrial complex's housekeeping skills are firmly promoted by the Divine Cult, but I didn't expect that it could be brought to the aerospace plane.

But I have to say...... It's a method, and solid push is very suitable for this.

Due to urgent practical needs, the indicators of the SSTO were quickly determined: the speed of Mach 3 in the atmospheric flight phase, the maximum take-off mass of 280 tons (including two boosters of no more than 80 tons), the acceleration of the variable cycle engine, the acceleration of solid rockets, and the acceleration of the SSTO's own liquid hydrogen engine to complete the orbit three times, which can carry 20 people or 10 tons of payload.

McMaster went straight to the mix of all the most conservative options, and didn't take any risks at all.

It wasn't until the technical indicators were completely determined that he noticed that Musk didn't speak much throughout the whole process, which is not normal, and it is impossible to fly to Washington in person just to observe?

The others also realized this and looked at it.

Facing everyone's eyes, Musk first said something unexpected:

"Ladies and gentlemen, three minutes ago, the third combined launch of the starship failed, and the second-stage starship spacecraft had an abnormal attitude and was controlled by the computer to self-destruct after 15 seconds of separation."

Everyone didn't react a little, and then they all showed regretful expressions, only Robert thought for a moment and asked:

"What about the first level? How about level 1. ”

Musk: "The super-heavy booster B10 successfully separated as planned at an altitude of 82 km, and we tried to control the separation attitude, although it was not recovered, it can already be used for a one-time launch mission. ”

The expression of the head of Boeing, who was still expressing sympathy for Musk just now, was immediately difficult to look at, doesn't this mean that SLS has been completely cut off hope?

Robert smiled and said that at least two or three super-heavy boosters could be delivered this year at SpecaX's speed, and NACA was finally able to fly a mission to the moon again!

……

Class B base.

On October 3, the Tengyun spacecraft, which had been in orbit for 68 hours, landed on the runway inside the base.

The reason why I landed here is because of the logistical factors, Tengyun is not an ordinary aircraft after all, and aerospace qualifications are required for maintenance and overhaul, and it is okay to land at an ordinary airport, but it is more troublesome to transport it away for maintenance.

H1 and H2 can also be transported by air by transport aircraft, but Tengyun is really not as big as that, and temporary filling and maintenance is not what should be done in the prototype stage, so it is safer now.

The surface of the "Tengyun" fuselage using the base's latest generation of advanced heat insulation tile technology is still the same as when it took off, and there is no trace of ablation at all, and the naked eye can feel the huge improvement in technology.

A few minutes after the ground crew put the gangway up, the hatch opened from the inside, and then I saw Chang Lihai, who had opened the mask, walking down the gangway with his help.

They were wearing lightweight spacesuits, similar to high-pressure flight suits, and if it weren't for the difference in helmet design, it would have been impossible to tell that they were astronauts.

Chang Lihai walked up to the chief who greeted him and saluted, and then hurriedly took him down with the other three astronauts to rest.

Compared to the current greeting lineup at the time of takeoff, the surrounding ground crew is putting on trailers to pull the plane back to the hangar for preparation, which is not much different from an ordinary flight.

Zhu Bingguang and Yang Xinjun took a few people to get closer to observe the details of Tengyun's surface, and kept looking up and down.

As the two contenders for the Moon Highway project, the core R&D team led by them has been trained for several months, and their training plan was changed just after the first flight of Tengyun: they directly took Tengyun and grew the fastest in practice.

And the date is set for the end of October, and there will be a lot of people with them.

Due to Tengyun's extremely good performance, the Aviation Development Commission plans to arrange three more flight missions in October, with an interval of more than seven days each time, counting one or two days in flight, and about five days for ground maintenance is more than enough.

If the five-day maintenance cycle in October is qualified, we can try to compress it to three days, and perhaps one aerospace plane will take off every day after next year.

(End of chapter)