Chapter 279 Following Closely

December 11, Qiongzhou, level 3 wind.

Deng Lei and Zhang Zhiguang wore the special new generation space suits for H2, smiled and waved to the media, then strode onto the transfer vehicle in the site and headed for the launch tower.

On the same day that the Pioneer returned, the Glory completed the assembly of the aircraft and rocket at the No. 1 station of the Xinyuan Launch Site and was ready for launch.

The weather this year is very good, with much less rainfall than in previous years, but it also increases the time suitable for rocket launches.

It is now 10 o'clock in the morning, and the strong sun makes Deng Lei unable to open his eyes, but he still enjoys the sun bath.

"Boom!"

With a muffled sound of the steel structure, the elevator stopped.

The two walked through the long corridor and got into the belly of the Glory.

The two were already very familiar with the structure inside. The Glory had carried out a lot of flight training with jet engines, but now it has been dismantled.

Unlike the H1 series, the H2M is much taller and larger, so the hatch cannot be opened so low. The hatch of the H1 can be opened with caution and the astronauts can get down directly, but the H2M must have a boarding ladder.

The space inside is also quite large. The outer fuselage is 10.8 meters wide, which is enough to accommodate three rows on each side, or even four rows on each side. It is already larger than the XS-62 series space station.

The interior space of the Glory is divided into two parts. The front is the crew cabin of the conical nose part. The internal height is more than 6 meters and is divided into two layers. The upper layer is the cockpit and toilet, and the lower layer is a 12-square-meter living room. Five astronauts can live very comfortably in it. The space is much larger than that of Tiangong-2.

15 meters of the 50-meter-long trapezoidal cross-section fuselage behind the nose is allocated to the fuel storage tank, and the rest is a super-large cargo hold with a length of 35 meters and a maximum width of 8.4 meters.

How can the crew cabin enter the cargo hold and conduct outbound operations through the airlock and the circular docking port with a diameter of 1.5 meters?

If you want to dock with the space station, you can put a transfer cabin in the cargo hold and connect it to the 1.5-meter circular port, and then use the 2.5-meter circular port of the transfer cabin to dock with the space station.

The reason why there is no docking port directly on the outer surface of the fuselage like H1 is that the smooth surface is given to the cargo hold, and the crew cabin is complicated in shape and difficult to design in the nose part, so it is simply designed inside the fuselage.

Another advantage of designing it inside the fuselage is that you can add cabins through the docking port in the cargo hold to accommodate more people for longer, and it can be adjusted flexibly.

The future nuclear-powered version can add a living cabin, and the remaining space in the cargo hold can be used to place the lunar lander to complete the moon landing.

However, Deng Lei feels that he may still prefer to drive the XN90 more, although the latter will only officially determine the basic design and enter the manufacturing stage next year.

Climb into the seat and fasten the seat belt. The wide chair immediately adjusts the posture intelligently, and adjusts the field of vision to the best position by tracking the crew's eyeballs.

Zhang Zhiguang enjoyed this process very much. Because the width of the Glory is almost the same as that of the An-1250, the cockpit is also particularly spacious, and the ergonomics is perfect. It is a pleasure to drive such a space shuttle.

"01, 02, the hatch is about to close. Please manually open the internal air circulation system to confirm that the system is working properly!"

"Yes!"

In the command center, Italian and French astronauts, Luca Christopher and Alain Duras, also looked at the images sent back from the interior of the Glory with envy.

The two are part of the three countries' lunar and space station cooperation plan. France and Italy each sent an astronaut to China for training. According to the plan, they may be launched into space around 2017 after the space hotel of Italy's Alenia Space Company docks with the Tiangong Space Station.

The three countries' lunar scientific research station cooperation plan has not been affected. Although the European Space Agency has launched the Selene plan, there must be a backup plan, right?

The cost of sending one astronaut from Italy and France to space is the exchange of patents and technologies in some fields, and the two countries will each build a lunar scientific experiment and exploration cabin.

Both parties were very receptive to this deal, and the purpose of the space agency was not to strengthen its control over Europe through the Artemis program like Amy, but to try to win it over. It would be great if they could get some good stuff.

However, Luca and Alan didn't think too much about it. They were just drooling over the Glory.

Luca: "According to the plan, we should enter space with Alenia's space station around June next year. I really want to ride a behemoth like H2."

Alan: "It would be nice if we have one ourselves. The Hermes of the country of Hai will not be able to fly until at least 2018. It is much more beautiful than the Glory."

Luca: "It should be the ESA's. Maybe we will fly to the moon on it?"

Alan: "Then I will find Armstrong's footprints and step on mine next to his."

Luca: "I would rather try to lie down. A human print is much more interesting than a footprint."

...

"The world's largest space shuttle is launched."

"The intelligent unloading chair on the Glory has 10 functions, and the weight is so high."

"The Artemis 1 mission is about to be launched."

After the successful launch of the Glory, the two seats of the main and co-pilots attracted much attention.

These two seats integrate some control functions, and because the cockpit space is very large, the design is also very comfortable, like a single sofa, which looks very comfortable.

In addition, the HUD display function of the new space suit can directly project data onto the mask with laser during the driving phase. This is a small achievement of the base's laser laboratory. It has now been authorized to Xin'an Automobile for use on the windshield.

After the Glory entered orbit, Deng Lei and Zhang Zhiguang told the ground that the biggest feeling of this flight was "very comfortable".

The H2, which has a slower ascent rate, has a maximum overload of only slightly more than 3G in the atmosphere, and most of the time it is above 2G. It is simply no pressure for astronauts. With the unloading chair and pressurized space suit, the overload is almost unnoticeable.

Even the overload of civil airliners may exceed this number when they take off and land violently, which is enough to show that H2M has reduced the physical requirements of astronauts to an extremely low level.

For ordinary people, there is no need for overload resistance training. They only need to learn the essentials of action in a weightless state to easily go to space, and the barrier of physical factors has also been broken.

The Glory will operate in orbit for about 2 days, mainly to test the space shuttle itself, without docking with the space station, and then return to the ground to fully prepare for the launch and installation mission of the Fram component next year.

However, the launch date of the Glory is quite coincidental, or December is also a month of intensive space launches.

Kennedy Space Center, Launch Pad 39B, the SLS rocket carrying the Orion spacecraft for the Artemis 1 mission is ready, and there are still 19 hours to launch.

I didn't write much today because I had too many things to do... I will try to make up two updates during the day