Chapter 710 Luxury
Unlike other first spacecrafts of Xinyuan, the Enterprise was directly purchased by the military for a large sum of money and became a shuttle in service of the Space Force.
For round-trip transportation near the Earth, the Enterprise has limited significance. The Jiuzhang is now sufficient for the moon. The biggest application prospect of the Enterprise in the future is to follow the Progress to explore everywhere.
The current Progress has only completed the design goals. Various subsystems and overall performance are still to be tested. If it really wants to perform missions in deep space, it still needs a lot of transformation and testing. There is no strong mission demand in the short term.
Another point is that the Enterprise has a full 6 nuclear reactors. Although power generation is only a secondary function, it can also provide unimaginable abundant power on a platform of this size.
The Enterprise has enough space and power for placing weapons. With the help of plasma mirror reflection technology, the available laser power can even exceed the Qianjun Rod No. 1.
In the future, when astronauts land on Titan or Mars and encounter danger, the Enterprise can at least provide a certain degree of defense.
However, for the time being, the Enterprise will not conduct long-term docking exercises with the Progress. After docking with the Progress, it will cause an imbalance in the center of gravity, which will make the Progress offset the offset of the change in the center of gravity.
It will take at least two years to wait for the second phase of the Progress transformation to be completed, and the axis to be installed with a slip ring docking interface, so that the overall rotation will be changed to partial rotation, and the axis part will remain stationary before it can perform long-distance missions.
During this period, the main activity places of the Enterprise will still be the Earth and the Moon, and it will train qualified soldiers for the Space Force to perform missions hundreds of millions of kilometers away.
If we want to say what the most obvious benefit of the "Black Stone" operation is for the base, it must be the abundant financial support. The base does not need to worry about funds at all now and can carry out research plans at will.
However, Lin Ju only misappropriated a "small part" of the funds to accelerate the project advancement, and did not intend to invest hundreds of billions of funds in the system to forcibly break through the technical barriers. The consequences of such a move are completely unpredictable.
The Enterprise was originally scheduled to leave the factory at the end of July. Now it is moved out to prepare for engine testing in advance and prepare for the transfer of the test site.
The base is not far from the densely populated area. The military plans to transform a ready-made test site in the northwest, hundreds of kilometers away in a straight line. The Enterprise will be disguised as a sister model of the Jiuzhang and transferred there for intensive testing.
In fact, due to the location restrictions of the base at the beginning, this place is not suitable as a test site for aircraft, and the surrounding terrain is difficult to continue to expand, which is somewhat unfavorable for future development.
The base has demolished a section of the wall near the runway and temporarily repaired a road leading to the river. The Enterprise will be towed to the temporary site there for pre-takeoff testing, and then transferred to the test site in the northwest by itself. There is no worry about being discovered in this process.
Although it will reveal its extraordinaryness sooner or later, the country obviously does not intend to send a "big gift" to stimulate the other party as soon as John leaves.
...
"I dare say this is the best meal I have ever had in space."
Roy skillfully used chopsticks to pick up the food on the plate, and communicated with Deng Lei in fluent Beijing dialect.
He is now in the cab of Jiuzhang. The area behind the driver's seat is very spacious. The cantilevered metal plate unfolded from the bulkhead is used as a long tabletop, making it a restaurant.
The tabletop is large enough to accommodate 10 people, but there are only 5 people in the cab now, and another 4 people are sleeping in the lounge below, all of whom are experts on the Wutu space station.
After a few months, the payload experts who performed the second long-term lunar mission have become elite astronauts, and their adaptability to the moon is definitely better than the three members of Artemis VI.
Artemis VI successfully landed in the Yushu mining area a day ago, bringing a full 3 million-ton hydrogen bombs and three Aramco astronauts.
Unlike any previous lunar mission, the Artemis VI crew only has 3 people, and no one stayed at the "Gateway" space station, all descended to the lunar surface.
This is partly due to trust in automated control, and partly because of the existence of Jiuzhang and Wutu space station.
Perhaps NACA also thought that with such a strong group of colleagues, even if Artemis VI had problems, there would not be any particularly big trouble.
The fact was similar. The three astronauts only spent one night in the "Origin" lander. The next day, Deng Lei, Fu Xiangjie and three payload experts descended to the moon on the Jiuzhang and successfully reunited with Artemis VI.
The two sides successfully joined forces, and then according to the agreement made in advance by NACA and the Aerospace Development Commission, the Jiuzhang had enough space to accommodate 8 astronauts, and all of them used Jiuzhang as a base during the lunar mission.
There was no need to worry about communication problems. Not to mention that the Chinese astronauts had a decent level of English, there were also payload experts who had mastered Chinese. Roy, a member of Artemis VI, was an excellent translator.
Roy's mother was a second-generation Chinese. She learned bilingualism at a very young age and learned a lot of Chinese habits. There was no communication barrier, which was his biggest advantage in being selected for this mission.
After successfully joining forces with the members of the Sky Curtain Project, the astronauts of Artemis VI truly saw what the future era was like:
In front of the Jiuzhang, their lander was like a crude bucket. This spacecraft had a complete transition cabin to clean the moon dust on the surface of the space suit. Although the space for personnel to live was not much larger than that of the "Origin", the flat design brought higher utilization efficiency and could accommodate more personnel.
There was sufficient drinking water supply and rich menus, but the most luxurious thing was the supply of fresh vegetables. The expansion plan of the Wutu Space Station was also completed by more than half, and one of the two newly added 50-ton compartments was dedicated to planting.
These have become part of daily life for the members of the Sky Curtain Project, but they completely refreshed the Artemis VI crew's understanding of space missions.
Deng Lei entertained them with a more common C-level meal during the mission, which was equipped when the number of diners was greater than 4. There were 12 dishes and pre-prepared vegetables. The more advanced B and A meals needed to be cooked on the spot and were generally provided during non-mission periods.
The C-meal standard was also continuously upgraded with the progress of lunar construction. There was nothing new to these old people, but it had already made Roy and the other two astronauts madly complain about the luxury of the Chinese in their hearts.
Space food pays great attention to the energy ratio. Generally, it is required that the same mass provides as much energy as possible, and most of it can be eaten. Therefore, foods that can be basically eaten completely and without waste, such as Kung Pao Chicken, Minced Meat Eggplant, and Curry, are very popular.
However, the C meal they ate included braised bones, a whole fish, and lamb chops, which are more complicated to eat and have more waste, which are processed dishes that violate the principle of convenience and speed in space.
But as long as you patiently observe the expressions of others, you will know that these are nothing to them, that is, the Chinese can fully afford such "waste" just to slightly improve the life experience of astronauts.