"Are Yankees crazy!"

"Isn't even Mars enough to satisfy these people, so they have to go to those hellish places with only rocks and ice?"

"Damn, hopefully it's just a bluff......"

“……”

Hair belongs to Guyana, Kunu Launch Center.

A group of ESA experts stood not far from the launch tower, talking enthusiastically, not even paying much attention to the scorching tropical sun.

Even the Veneto 1 rocket, which was about to be launched and carried all the hopes of ESA's future, was temporarily left out in the cold, unable to catch up with the big melon they had just heard.

With a very high development base and the use of mature subsystems for the engine and recovery systems, the Veneto 1 rocket finally made its first flight before February 2018 as planned.

However, Veneto 1 is an innovation in the rocket industry, and for the first time, two different types of engines are used in the core stage, which is still a test of the design team's skills.

In addition, Veneto 1 is also the strongest rocket that the entire European space has ever had, although the thrust is slightly smaller than that of the Ariane V, which is on the verge of retirement, but the capacity is much higher, as high as 32 tons when it is recovered, and it is close to 40 tons when it is not recovered, and there has never been such a rocket in Europe.

After bundling two solid boosters, the capacity was later increased to more than 60 tons, which could carry the Europeans' dream of an independent moon landing.

But for most of the ESA design team, they are not very proud, except for the key subsystems from outsiders, the main reason is that there are still too many demons in the space industry in the past year......

The Long March 18 was launched just over a month ago, and its terrifying capacity is enough to launch even a refueled Veneto 1 into space, so much so that astronauts find it difficult to classify this super monster, after all, Saturn V is not as heavy as it.

And the success rate of the first launch of the Veneto 1 does not have to worry about the problem, this rocket from the design of the whole process by the Huaguo team to supervise, each improvement must be sent to the Shuchuan wind tunnel and simulation test, the Huaguo expert nodded to continue, otherwise the insurance company will not sell commercial insurance, technical support will also be limited.

However, the advantage of this is that reliability is unquestionable, and the indirect technical guidance also brings the design team a lot of valuable experience in the design of heavy rockets, which is barely acceptable.

Design experts were busy complaining about John's anniversary speech, and the rest of ESA's senior officials were talking about the same thing, only at a higher level.

"I have a hunch that John won't let us do nothing."

"I think so too, they have always wanted the Selene Project to give Artemis a hand, and they have asked us to take on more ISS maintenance tasks, they want to get rid of the mess!"

Together, Batis and Antoine complained about NACA's inhuman behavior, the most of which was dumping the pot everywhere.

With most of its focus on extraterrestrial objects, NACA had no time to focus on ISS maintenance and expansion tasks, and simply dumped ESA and Lucia all the time.

At first, NACA's intention was to wait for their hands to free up their hands to do these "minutiae", but then they put less and less energy into the ISS, and ESA smelled something wrong.

Especially after the frequent testing of Musk's Gravity Dragon spacecraft, there are gradually rumors that NACA will build a rotating space station like Enforward that can be used as both a space station and an expeditionary spacecraft, and some look down on ISS with limited potential.

The ESA, who had just heard this rumor, scoffed, and no one knows better than them how much effort the ISS has put into it, not to mention how many giant rockets are needed to build a new space station? Does NACA have this launch capability?

But when the first SL-X was launched, the situation became bad, and ESA, after many inquiries, found that the price of the SL-X was not much higher than that of Veneto 1!

Although the goal of the Veneto-1 project was not more than $300 million for a single launch, the current situation is that the cost of the rocket is indeed controlled at $280 million, but with other expenses such as support and fuel, it will cost about $450 million at a time.

In comparison, the SL-X's public launch budget is only more than 600 million US dollars, which is completely capable of launching with deep pockets for NACA, and SpecaX has also proved that it has sufficient production capacity and theoretically has the ability to build a rotating space station.

If NACA really ignores ISS, ESA can't afford its operation and maintenance, and Lucia can't afford it.

The suppliers who provide maintenance spare parts for ISS are all big profiteers, and almost all of the spare parts are unique products that are specially developed and supplied, and the price is sky-high.

If the concept of auto parts is moved to the whole ratio, the accumulated maintenance operation and upgrade costs over the years have accounted for almost half of the cost of ISS.

Whether to take over ISS or not is a question.

If not, how much wool will be scavenged for joining NACA's new space station program?

As for the possibility of staying out of the situation, most people have wisely chosen to ignore it.

The two men were worried about how to avoid being bald by NACA, and finally were interrupted by the staff to be invited to safety, where the Veneto 1 had already begun to refuel and was ready for its first shot.

This time the payload was a full-scale technical demonstration prototype of the Space Shuttle Hermes, with no reentry and re-entry capabilities, no engines, and the main role was to be used as a counterweight.

Dassault, who is in charge of the power part, hopes to imitate H1 and use hydrogen and oxygen power, but it is very troublesome for fuel storage, so it can only abandon the more conservative poison hair.

ESA has set a date for the first flight of the space shuttle Hermes before October, with at least one successful test mission until at least 2019.

“ten、nine……”

In a treacherous atmosphere, the nine engines of the Veneto 1 rocket ignited one after another, and under the watchful eyes of the domestic experts stationed there, they dragged a long flame into the air under the strong South American sun.

For them, the first flight of Veneto 1 did not deserve any special attention, the rocket carried out the separation procedure as if in a supercomputer, and while the upper stage continued to send the simulated payload into space, the first stage of the rocket broke away and entered the return course.

Due to Guyana's proximity to the equator, there is no need to build a special offshore recovery platform for recovery, and the recovery site for Veneto 1 is still on land, just a few kilometres from the launch tower.

A few minutes after the full-scale prototype of the Hermes entered orbit, the Veneto 1, whose rocket body had been ablated in a large area, returned smoothly and reappeared in people's field of vision.

Antoine joined the others in celebrating, and suddenly had a flash of inspiration and grabbed Batis's arm:

"I know, I know who can take over...... It's time to contribute more to the ISS. ”

"Who?"

"Indians, maybe they need it!"

(End of chapter)