Washington.

"We need to carry out an intensive program of exploration of deep space beyond Mars, mainly Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus or Neptune, including a possible manned landing operation."

Robert's first words made Musk open his mouth in surprise and look at the others uncertainly.

Representatives of the military-industrial complex such as Boeing, Loma, and Grumman are all executives above the vice president level, and their expressions are equally wonderful.

They were originally here because NACA had made a bid to expand the Mars program, but the people had just arrived and heard the explosive news.

They all looked at Robert in front of them, not seeing the meaning of the joke.

When it comes to deep space exploration, NACA is still far ahead of the curve, as a result of the fact that most of its exploration programs have been axed since the turn of the millennium.

The last plan that came close to success was the 2005 expedition to Jupiter, which was proposed at the same time as the "constellation" plan to return to the moon and even land on Mars, but was also canceled in 2006.

From the Voyager program to the Galileo program to Cassini, all the giant planets in the solar system outside the asteroid belt have been detected by NACA to varying degrees, and it is not difficult to carry out follow-up planning.

But the manned landing is worth pondering, landing on these extremely distant celestial bodies is much more difficult than landing on Mars, the cycle is long and the benefits are extremely low, and there is no need at all.

But even if they don't understand it, no one asks why, after all, whether it succeeds or not, they need to carry out research with the huge budget of the federal government.

The silence of the crowd was entirely expected by Robert, who quickly added, as if not giving them a chance to refuse:

"The Chinese are going to land on the moon, so we race with them to go to the moon; The Chinese are preparing to land on Mars, so we have Ares, the god of war.

This is a serious violation of NACA's pioneering and adventurous spirit that we should do better than anyone we can even compete, rather than saying: we can.

Like the Apollo Plan for the East, we have to do those great things that no one has had time to do, which really means a super plan to conquer the universe.

The President has prepared a draft for manned exploration of Europa and Titan, the other planets in the solar system that are highly likely to host life, as well as a probe on Neptune, the farthest planet in the solar system, and a possible satellite captured from the Kuiper belt.

The three programs are named after Europa, Titan, and Trident, collectively known as the 'Constellation' program, and the entire Constellation program will be powered by nuclear propulsion, and will complete three major sub-programs within ten years, complete the task of finding life in the solar system, and give mankind full solar system navigation capabilities! ”

“……”

Musk looked left and right, saw that the others were still silent, thought about it, raised his hand, and raised his own question:

"With all due respect, if the president intends to announce this plan on television, as Kennedy did, the budget for the 10-year plan would have to at least double."

It has been five months since the 10-year Space Systems Construction Plan was released at the end of July, and NACA has a planned budget of $49.8 billion for fiscal year 2018 (October 2017 to October 2018 under federal rules), with an annual increase of 2.5% from the previous year.

NACA has only just spent its FY2017 budget so far, and although there are a lot of projects, it has only taken up less than half of the FY2018 budget, and after excluding the old SLS rockets that have reached more than $5 billion, it really feels like I don't know how to spend this amount of money.

Of course, this is mainly because many plans have just been launched, and the most expensive middle and late stages have not yet arrived, and the remaining money may even be tight until the next fiscal year.

The engineering difficulty of the two manned landing programs of Saturn and Jupiter is even more unimaginable, and at least all the current technological innovations can be carried out, otherwise the astronauts will not even be able to fly there in 10 years.

Nuclear propulsion is only a basic requirement for the entire program, which also means a terrible cost spike.

A nuclear reactor capable of propagating a large ship is no less valuable than an aircraft carrier reactor, and the combined cost may be slightly more than that of a nuclear aircraft carrier.

Previously, the Aramco space community was generally optimistic that the total budget of $550 billion for the Ten-Year Plan was very adequate, but if the constellation program is added, it may only be enough to get started.

Even Musk thinks that a trillion dollars in ten years is a bit troublesome, and the difficulty of this is desperately difficult to estimate.

However, NACA's determination proved to be more than expected, and Robert only replied briefly to his questioning:

"The Ten-Year Plan, which is about to remove budget constraints, will go beyond the Apollo program and become the main task of the federal government for the next 10 years, and if necessary, we will even reduce military spending to do so."

This is almost a clear way to tell everyone that the federal government will fully support NACA, and to be able to say that even military spending has to give way, either Robert is crazy or the government is really determined.

Even if it is true or false, this sentence is worth Musk's emotion, and he already knows the reason why NACA increased the number of Starship boosters to 15, not to prepare for the landing on Mars as imagined, but for the Centauri project.

The latter imitates the Gemini program to carry out lunar missions every two months, and the current internal information is that there are six times, from Centauri 1 to Centauri 6 need to send at least 18 astronauts to the moon.

Originally, he thought it was a shift in focus to the moon, but now it seems to represent only more crazy ambitions on the part of the space agency.

……

At the same time, John and his staff in the presidential palace were watching Robert's meetings with a number of aerospace companies.

"In ten years' time, through manned exploration of Jupiter and several other celestial bodies beyond, we will gain experience in long-term survival and construction in deep space.

With the technology accumulated through the construction of the moon, NACA will be able to build a shelter in the Kuiper Belt by 2028. ”

Claire was still gesturing on the map of the solar system hanging on the wall of John's office, the original world map had long since been removed.

"At that time, we relied on the resources of the Moon and Mars to build transit bases for Jupiter and Saturn, and built space ports based on them, preferably with Triton as an outpost, and then spent 10 to 15 years to build shelters in the Kuiper Belt, and the total plan took no more than 30 years.

This is a road that stretches from Earth to Neptune, and through the continuous relay of resources from six planets, it creates an escape route that can survive the fire of civilization. ”

John watched in amazement at Claire's white lines that ran through almost half of the star map, and could already imagine how hard humanity had to make its way across galaxies.

It was as if he had seen ants coming out of the nest and dying on the way to the end, and as the ant closest to the queen, he couldn't even see the day when he finally succeeded.

A beam of signals requires humans to struggle for survival with three generations of youth, so how powerful will its owner be?

(End of chapter)