Chapter 232 Technical Support

Gao Qitao's matter is only a small matter for Lin Ju, but uncontrolled airspace and free flight have indeed caused a lot of trouble to the cities and counties around Xinyuan.

Although Aramco is more open than China, and the number of small private aircraft owners is dozens or hundreds of times, the difference is still very large.

Aramco is a large plain terrain with a small population. Most of the area is large farms, and the flight density is not very high, so the impact is just average.

But the surrounding areas of Xinyuan are different. The population is concentrated, and there are many planes at Hushan Airport. In just a few months, the number of small and medium-sized sports aircraft stationed at Hushan Airport has exceeded 1,300.

With so many planes, especially the thousands of students at Xinyuan Flight School, rookies often fly blindly over the city. Every day when the air traffic control opens his eyes, there is a densely packed area on the radar, and there are so many planes that people are confused.

Although there has been no major accident, nearly a thousand flights of planes are flying around every day. While bringing huge supporting facilities and tourism income to the surrounding areas, it also has a significant impact on daily life.

In July, several colleges and universities cooperating with Xinyuan had a holiday. Among the nearly 3,800 students, 87% chose to stay here to learn to fly. Then the instructors took the opportunity to bring the first few batches of graduates to show their flying skills.

There was nothing fancy, just a formation flying over the three surrounding counties and two cities. The number... 470 planes.

The residents around really felt the scene of a thousand planes bombing. Nearly 500 planes flew densely at low altitude. It felt that the whole city was shrouded in the sound of aircraft engines. The black mass was really shocking, but it was too damn noisy!

Now even the higher-ups are a little regretful. Originally, they wanted to grant some free airspace to companies like Xinyuan for test flights of aircraft, which was also a reward, but flight schools...

This loophole was too skillful to drill, and it is not easy to take it back now. What about Xinyuan's more than 2,000 planes? What about Hushan Airport, an extremely important economic growth point for the local area? What about the supporting industries established in more than half a year?

The superiors are also having a headache, and Xinyuan is in an important position now. If there is a change rashly, they will definitely not be happy. We must be cautious.

As for Lin Ju himself, he only thinks that the Gao Qitao incident means that the talent pool built by Xinyuan has finally paid off. The new employees in the future will be all-round talents who can bury their heads in building rockets and dig helium-3 on the moon.

Speaking of the moon, Lin Ju is now in Beijing, watching an experiment at a test base.

In a wasteland, a lander-like thing is tied to the iron chains fixed to the pillars around it, and then the engine below it starts, spewing out a light blue tail flame to bring the lander to the air and hover for more than ten seconds, and then reducing the thrust and smashing it to the ground.

"This is the 8-ton liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen rocket engine we are preparing to use for the moon landing. It was modified from the YF75D and is now called the YF75M."

The person in charge here introduced that because it works in a vacuum, the nozzle of this YF75M engine is particularly large, but because the test conditions on the ground are different, it is a little different from the actual situation.

In the current Dawn Plan, the lunar lander has a mass of about 25 tons, and the landing engine is this YF75M, with a thrust of 8 tons, which is completely sufficient for the moon, where the gravity is only one-sixth of that of the earth.

The lunar landing plan has also been determined. The spacecraft carries 3 astronauts, 1 stays in the low-Earth orbit, and 2 land on the moon.

One thing to mention here is that after the Dawn Plan was implemented, the Aerospace Development Commission believed that since the country was ready to carry out extraterrestrial landing missions, the title of astronaut could be abandoned, and it would be more appropriate to use "astronaut" instead.

Although there is no official document, the number of astronauts in official use has increased.

Lin Ju also knows that if the YF90, a 220-ton hydrogen-oxygen engine with a rich-fuel regenerative cycle is successful before 2020, then the second stage of the Long March 10 will be replaced with this engine, and the lunar orbit capacity will be increased to 50 tons. At that time, it will be able to carry four astronauts and try to land three to four people on the moon.

However, the prospects of the YF90 are obviously not optimistic.

Accompanying Lin Ju here is Academician She, the general manager of the Shuguang Project.

Academician She: "The test results of YF77 are out, with 12 production defects and 7 design defects. The Sixth Academy guarantees that they will be resolved within 6 months, but I still feel a little troublesome."

More than a little troublesome!

Lin Ju knows that YF77 had a malfunction during testing in 2019 in the original world line, and it was not until this year that it was completely stabilized, and then the old Long March 5 ushered in a high-frequency launch period.

It can be said that in the previous world line, if YF77 had not dragged its feet, the space station should have been built before 2020.

So although YF77 has certainly increased its personnel and technical investment scale due to the high investment in the Shuguang Project, it is really hard to say whether it can become reliable three years ahead of schedule.

The hydrogen-oxygen engine seems to be a bit incompatible with the Space Administration. The three major indicators of YF77 specific impulse, thrust-to-weight ratio, and thrust are all a bit backward in terms of directness, but it is still stumbling, and I don’t know where it is stuck.

But Academician She obviously foresaw this, so a few days ago the First Institute placed an order to purchase one H240 and one H80.

Obviously, if the YF77 is not reliable enough, one H240 and one H80 will be used to replace the engines of the second and third stages of the Long March 10, but this is a helpless move. It can only be used for the second launch at most. The subsequent launch, especially the official moon landing, will definitely use the YF77.

The greatest significance of the Long March 10 is that the space agency uses its own rocket to send astronauts to the lunar surface. Every word is important.

Lin Ju: "Xinyuan will fully support the Shuguang Project. As long as we have it, we can provide it to the Long March 10. Let's put it this way. If the design and materials of the YF77 encounter some difficulties, Xinyuan may be able to provide technical support."

"Technical support?" Academician She was a little surprised.

Since K120, Xinyuan has not conducted any aerospace engine technology exchanges with the outside world, nor does it need to. Their engine technology is so high that they have never seen failure!

But the space agency has a very high evaluation of K120. It has high specific impulse, high thrust, high thrust-to-weight ratio, and small size. It is simply an exquisite work.

K120 also has great potential. After evaluation, the Sixth Academy believes that if the combustion chamber pressure continues to increase and the nozzle diameter is slightly enlarged, a 200-ton single-combustion chamber high-thrust kerosene engine can be developed. However, this plan has been replaced by the more powerful YF135.

But even YF130 and YF135 still have the bloodline of K120, which can be said to be a family heirloom.

As for the technical support of the Space Administration, Lin Ju did not attach much importance to it. The Space Administration is not without strength, and the YF90 and YF79 developed for the Long March 9 in their plan, especially the latter's closed expansion cycle hydrogen-oxygen engine, can be said to be the most advanced in the world at the same level.

Traditional technology, just push CASA.