"Nine top scientists went into space, the oldest being over 95 years old."

"Frank Young became the oldest astronaut, and his wife expressed support for his decision."

"Foreign media commented: This is the most serious flight mission in history."

"She Xingjie, chief engineer of the First Academy of Astronautics, took an aerospace plane into space, and said in the live broadcast that the popularization of space is expected to be popularized around 2020."

"Stephen Hawking has 'stood' in space."

"The Royal Society of Physics congratulates a number of physicists on their entry into space and hopes to strengthen collaboration."

"Former NACA Director: Artemis III Mission May Be Executed in the Near Future."

“……”

"I am She Xingjie, chief engineer of launch vehicle design of the First Academy of the China Space Administration, and I am in space to say hello to the aerospace industry practitioners all over the world!"

Robert looked at Academician She, who was smiling with wrinkles in the TikTok live broadcast room, and his eyebrows were tightly squeezed.

Behind the camera are a few other passengers, all of whom are well-known physicists with high prestige on Earth, and are now busy experiencing space and have no intention of coming over to broadcast live.

Hawking, who had a hard time changing his posture on Earth, managed to "stand" up straight with the help of others, and deliberately put on a neat suit, and after getting used to his appearance in a wheelchair, he looked unexpectedly slender.

The number of people in the live broadcast room Robert only saw a string of 9s together, which was also the first time people saw the internal structure of an aerospace aircraft.

It doesn't seem to be much different from ordinary passenger planes, but the seats are fewer and more empty, and it looks much more "close to the people" to the naked eye, as if it can afford to spend.

Robert thought of the SSTO plan, which had just been approved, and now that the plan had just been finalized and entered the airframe design stage, Lockheed's Skunk Works was rummaging through the liquid hydrogen storage technology of the 50s, and Pratt & Whitney was trying to find a way to resume production of the J58 engine - an improved version of the product, which had certainly not been produced half a century ago for so many years.

This sense of disparity is a bit unacceptable for the entire NACA, not to mention the Advance, which was completed a week ago, and has become the object of night search for space enthusiasts, with the shape of the circular space station often seen on social networking sites.

That's a whole more than 1,600 tons of creation, and the mass of other spacecraft in orbit may not be that much.

For the past two months, NACA staff have been working frantically under this silent oppression, and it has had a very good effect.

The first SL-X rocket had already been assembled and tested in Florida, eight days earlier than expected, which was a surprise to NACA, who was used to bouncing tickets.

The last SLS rocket was even the same, perhaps to free up its hands to develop the Saturn VII that could compete with Starship, and Boeing continued to increase the number of SLS personnel, promising to launch a third Orion spacecraft before Thanksgiving, and it was absolutely guaranteed to be reliable.

The Mars program for the coming year is also important, but now NACA's full focus is on how to figure out how to complete a successful manned landing on the moon before the end of 2017, otherwise Congress will be very faceless when the new year is concluded.

Other than that was the Gravity Dragon spacecraft, which needed to cooperate with the service module, and it didn't make much sense for the Gravity Dragon's command module to separate and return to Earth, so NACA decided to let it stay there.

The second Dragon spacecraft is also about to be able to be launched, and this time it will take two crew members to plan for human experiments, which is also ready to be completed before the arrival of 2018.

However, this is mainly to win the title of the first artificial gravity device to be in operation before the Advance, and it will definitely be some time before the former is in operation.

Robert wrote down all the launch missions crammed into the last forty days of the year in his notebook, and was thinking about how to adjust the schedule of each plan, when he saw Deputy Director Jim walk in with a sigh.

"What's going on, Jim?"

"It's terrible."

Jim stretched out his hands at him:

"You must know that Tengyun just flew another mission."

"Of course."

Robert pointed to his phone, where he was still playing a TikTok livestream.

"At that time, the Pacific Fleet's radar station in Luzon first detected a signal of more than Mach 10, and after more than an hour, it detected again, all of which were hypersonic vehicles of more than Mach 10.

The second is the clouds, the first one has only sound and light signatures but is almost hidden from radar, and the Hexagon believes that it is the 'thunderstorm' of August, and it has reappeared.

This time, they flew around the entire island nation, and then flew over most of the Pacific Ocean to approach Luzon and Annam and then return, and the military was already going crazy.

They are urging the SR91 again and raising the speed requirements to at least Mach 8 and the range not less than 20,000 km. ”

Robert is embarrassed, NACA is in charge of both aerospace and aerospace, whether it is the SSTO or the SR91 project benchmarked against the Snow Bird, but the correlation between the two is not small.

SR91 is much more urgent than the SSTO needs, and this kind of real military threat will only drive Congress crazy, and will not be as lenient and encouraging as aerospace can be.

"But we lacked ramjet technology...... Damn, we still have to rush Pratt & Whitney and General Electric. ”

Jim nodded, but something suddenly came to mind when he heard General Electric:

"By the way, a Chinese airline has approached Boeing and General Motors, and it is said that it intends to promote supersonic passenger aircraft again, hoping to establish transoceanic supersonic routes."

Robert: "Boeing won't say yes, it's not a technical issue. ”

Boeing had a supersonic airliner program in the late 60s, codenamed Boeing 2707, capable of cruising at Mach 2.7 and received strong support from the Meiting sect, declaring that "we will donate $1 each to make this plan happen."

However, at that time, a large number of people strongly protested against the sonic boom of supersonic flight, and the opposition faction advocated that the budget should be shifted from supersonic flight to improve people's livelihood, which led to Congress voting on whether to continue the supersonic passenger aircraft project with 215 votes against and 204 votes in favor, resulting in the disappearance of the 2707 passenger plane and Boeing had to lay off 60,000 employees.

So in Robert's view, the situation is more favorable to the opposing side now than it was back then, and Boeing will certainly not repeat the mistakes of the past.

Jim, however, shook his head slightly, and said something that surprised him a little:

But Boeing seems to be taking them seriously, and the airline, which is said to be a wholly owned subsidiary of XAP, has spun off the aviation business.

I've heard some gossip that the airline said that if it can connect the Pacific and Atlantic routes, their domestic airlines will be willing to order at least 200 planes, and the revenue per flight can be more than 300% higher than it is now, which is very tempting for civil aviation today. ”

(End of chapter)