Chapter 731 Artemis

"Maybe I should wear a pair of sunglasses."

As soon as Robert entered the satellite assembly workshop, he was pierced by the reflected light and turned his head away immediately.

The assembly worker behind him quickly closed the door, and the light from the outside was immediately blocked. Under the indoor special diffuse lighting, the huge cylinder in the middle finally stopped shining.

The "artificial sun" without a concentrated light source looks like an oversized mirror, but its surface looks a little blurry at this time, not as smooth as imagined.

Robert approached and confirmed that its surface is actually not much different from ordinary aluminum. It was just that the outside sunlight was too bright and the reflection area was too large.

The outside brightness on a cloudy day is also tens of thousands of nits, which is much brighter than most artificial light sources.

"It looks like an oversized roll of aluminum foil."

This is Robert's first impression of "Artemis". This super cylinder is 52 meters high and more than 7 meters in diameter. It weighs 157 tons and is named after Artemis, the sister of the sun god Apollo, the god in charge of the night in ancient Greece.

Its reflective body is an aluminum foil with a thickness of less than 0.0045mm, but it is not a common ultra-thin aluminum foil. It is embedded with a synthetic fiber woven mesh during rolling, which has extraordinary toughness and is difficult to tear.

In order to develop this roll of aluminum foil, NACA invested 6 billion US dollars in 4 months, regardless of the cost to test the material combination. Converted to the amount used in "Artemis", each gram of woven aluminum foil is more than 46 US dollars, and the total cost exceeds 60 US dollars, which is equivalent to gold.

When John came to visit a few days ago, he joked that if the anchoring effect of gold was not considered, it might be more labor-saving to use gold foil directly as the material of Artemis.

However, this is not a joke for Robert. Softer gold is of course a more ideal material. Even if it is now linked to currency, gold has an irreplaceable and important role in aerospace and precision electronics.

Artemis is more expensive than gold, and the cost of using it is also quite high, but the voice supporting it is not small. All of Amei is looking forward to the launch of Artemis.

The fully unfolded diameter of Artemis exceeds 1,100 meters, and the available reflection area reaches 993,400 square meters, which is equivalent to 100 hectares or 247 acres. It is definitely the largest man-made object in human history.

This is equivalent to the total deck area of ​​54 nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, or the floor area of ​​5 Bird's Nest stadiums, which is larger than the Forbidden City.

According to calculations, the effective illumination area of ​​Artemis reaches 320,000 square kilometers, and the brightness level is 12 times that of the moon.

What does this mean? Except for Alaska, Texas, California, and Montana, the remaining 47 states of Ame are less than 320,000 square kilometers.

There are 129 countries in the world with an area smaller than this number. Even the island countries and Germany have an area of ​​more than 300,000 square kilometers. If the shape of the territory is not considered, Artemis can basically cover the entire territory.

When Artemis shines on the earth, a light spot with a diameter of 315 kilometers will be formed.

If the center of the light spot is placed in Harrisonburg, Virginia as planned, it will cover most of the six states including Washington DC, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Virginia, benefiting 17 million people.

This is a real macro project, so Robert's pressure is unimaginable.

Of course, Artemis is under greater pressure. The light pressure it receives when it is deployed is equivalent to 4,400 Newton thrust. If it is left alone, Artemis will fly over the orbit of Mars in more than 90 days...

According to NACA's calculations, at least $1.2 billion will be invested each year to maintain Artemis, which is 10% higher than its cost.

"Mr. Lightfoot, this is our control team."

The head of the assembly center introduced several young people. This is the control team specially formed by NACA for Artemis. After Artemis goes up to the sky, it will be responsible for watching its orbit.

Robert greeted them. The Artemis team will take on important tasks immediately after the launch next month.

As a giant of more than 150 tons, the SLS Block2 that launched it can only send it to a 400-kilometer orbit, which is still far from the 36,000-kilometer synchronous orbit.

At first, NACA planned to launch another thruster to raise its orbit, but as the research deepened, someone proposed a simpler plan: let Artemis fly up by itself.

Artemis can be deployed directly in low-Earth orbit, obtain thrust by receiving the light pressure of the sun, adjust the reflective surface to adjust the thrust, and can be raised to orbit by itself in 5 to 7 days, without much fuel consumption.

This process is very important. Once a mistake is made, a large amount of fuel will be lost at the least, and Artemis will directly start wandering without knowing where it is flying, and it will be impossible to catch it.

It is now September 4th, and Artemis will be transported to the launch site in 20 days. Robert does not want any more accidents.

…

"What, what the hell is this!"

In the presidential office, Robert, who had just flown over, looked at the documents in front of him and couldn't believe his eyes.

He suddenly received a notice in the afternoon and flew to Washington. He thought it was information related to alien civilization, but the result was unexpected. However, he was shocked no less than the aliens.

"It is hard for us to believe it, but radar will not deceive us. There is a lot of public information. This is true."

Colonel Anthony in the air intelligence room pulled out the key documents to prove the authenticity of the news to Robert.

There were two generals with him, which shows the shocking power of this information.

"It took off at 10 o'clock in the morning, starting from the northwest to the south, and finally broke through the atmosphere in the South Pacific. The ascent rate was not high, it was slower than the aerospace plane, and the speed was much slower.

Nothing was abandoned during the entire flight. It was a single-stage orbiting vehicle. We currently speculate that it is nuclear-powered. "

"Of course it can only be nuclear powered!"

Robert's full attention was already on the document, scanning each line of information and the blurry photos taken bit by bit.

Unbelievable, unbelievable!

It was the Enterprise, the third shuttle. Originally, NACA and the Air Force thought it was the same as the Jiuzhang and Zhurong, but it turned out to be a big joke.

It is absolutely impossible for the Jiuzhang and Zhurong to take off on their own and escape the gravity of the earth and enter space. Although SSTO has appeared in the form of a space plane, the angular and boxy appearance of the Enterprise still makes it difficult to believe that it has such capabilities. performance.

Robert simply couldn't imagine how much fuel could be packed into such a body, and what kind of engine could provide the power to launch it into space. Even nuclear power was too exaggerated.

Neither does the A100. That kind of engine cannot be used in an atmospheric environment, and it is also very heavy and bulky.

Moreover, according to the data from the Air Force's emergency take-off radiation collection machine, no radiation-filled clouds were detected near the flight trajectory. The sample radiation value was slightly higher than normal, but that was a normal value for a nuclear reactor passing by, so there was not much in the ejecta. of pollutants.

For a moment, Robert even thought of UFOs, feeling that this method of propulsion was more like some fantasy anti-gravity engine.

"We are also deeply shocked. The Air Force is temporarily unable to judge its propeller performance, and we are already wondering whether it used some unknown means."

Anthony continued to describe the analysis of the Air Force Intelligence Room:

"The Enterprise's body is roughly similar to the previous two. It is impossible to hold all the fuel inside. If the necessary cargo hold is left, it can only carry more than a hundred tons of fuel at most. This is... very amazing."

"I even suspect that the Chinese have obtained alien technology from some source."

Former NACA Director Claire stood up, and his current attitude was no joke:

"It's too advanced. Although it's not the route of the A100, if we want to do this with our current technology, we can only stay in theory. This is already too advanced to belong to humans.

Gentlemen, it is true that there are no flying saucers in Area 51, but there may be some in the northwest desert. "

"..."

Perhaps it was the Enterprise's astonishing performance, or perhaps it was Claire's astonishing words, but the office of more than a dozen people was silent without making any sound.

After a while, John waved his hand to break the silence:

"Okay, we won't discuss technical matters here. We don't have many technical experts among us. NACA and the Air Force can do their own analysis.

This is just part of the discussion today, David, tell them. "

David Usnow stood up. He just returned to China two weeks ago and stayed in China for more than half a month, trying to get more information from the other party.

He pushed over a whiteboard from the other side, with a real photo of Mars pinned on it, and an enlarged image of the area below, which was marked with a marker.

“I have communicated a lot with Chinese people, and although we all found signals, they may actually have collected more information:

They determined that the source of the signal was on the surface of Mars, in the area around the South Pole. "

David placed his hand around Plain Zero, and everyone's attention immediately focused here, trying to find some clues from this unremarkable place.

David: "Our Mars orbiter is not professional. The Chinese probe was equipped with very powerful radio transmission equipment because its working distance was much farther. It happened to be facing the emission source at that time, so it roughly determined the direction of the signal.

According to the position of Mars at that time, the signal was sent from the South Pole, with an error of no more than 15%.

Tianwen-1, Tianwen-3, and Tianwen-5, also known as Zhurong, will land in the surrounding area and carry out large-scale detection. The landing is expected to be completed in November. "

"Too far!"

Claire immediately discovered the problem:

"Our Mars rovers are all concentrated in the Utopia Planitia in the north of Mars, and they can't get there at all!"

"That's the problem. I don't think the Chinese will joke about their massive investment, but the problem is that we only have satellites, and the Chinese have shuttles that can go back and forth, robots, nuclear-powered detectors, they have everything.

If the Chinese discover anything, we have absolutely no way to intervene. "

David spread his hands and looked at the two astronaut administrators with wide eyes.

"Gentlemen, we cannot do nothing."

John knocked on the table hard:

"All the compromises I make have a premise: Ami must be able to participate in controlling the future of mankind, instead of being reduced to a spectator at the mercy of others."

Robert: "In such a large place, satellite observations have not found any abnormalities. It will be difficult for just a few detectors to find anything. They may land there for several months and find nothing."

"But we all know that if there is an eventuality, alien civilization is there, and the Chinese will always find it."

John stopped talking here, tilted his chair and half-lying down, and gave an order in an unquestionable tone:

"Think of a way, the Chinese will land on Mars as early as 2020, we can't be later, start building the Mars spacecraft now, select the landing astronauts, every second I need to see your progress.

Don't leave any chance for delay, think of a plan, and then do it."

David whispered in Robert's ear appropriately:

"No one wants to wait, something unexpected has happened recently, Amei needs to be prepared."

Although he knew it was inappropriate, Robert Special still subconsciously asked:

"What accident?"

"One of our agents was caught. He tried to steal the information of Steki-DM to accelerate our laser weapons, but Lucia's defense against it was beyond imagination."

Robert was stunned for a moment, then said with emotion:

"That is the most precious and most hidden treasure of the poor family. Of course, it must be hidden tightly.

I know what you are worried about, but please continue to expand the power of NACA. I need countless employees and funds."

...

On September 9, the back of the moon ushered in the third nuclear explosion.

A total of more than 60 million tons of equivalent were released. Due to the temporary lack of necessary equipment, the burial depth of the hydrogen bomb this time was only 10 meters, and it was still a surface explosion.

The four nuclear bombs expanded the maximum depth of the explosion crater to 890 meters in one fell swoop. The expected steel-rich ore has been completely exposed, and a gap hundreds of meters deep has been blown open. After that is the rare earth layer that the United Mining Institute has been thinking about.

Now they are preparing a large number of professional mining equipment. The fourth operation will be a large-yield blast below 300 meters deep, directly touching the rare earth layer.

But the fourth operation will take much longer than the previous ones. The timetable disclosed by Xinyuan is already in 2019, which is at least three or four months later.

Of course, this period will not be idle. United Mining will make every effort to build the Yushu base during this period, start preparing for ore smelting, and prepare to build a lunar highway.

At the same time, a message began to circulate in the aerospace industry: the country plans to build a super spaceport weighing tens of thousands of tons. Because of its large scale, it is ready to solicit proposals from private aerospace and the whole society, and select partners. The name is likely to be "Nantianmen".

This news immediately caused a heated discussion, but most people suspected that this was a hype rumor such as "artificial moon". After all, the more than 2,000 tons of the Forward have cost a lot of energy, and it is still under intensive testing. The idea of ​​a spaceport is not realistic.

Moreover, Xinyuan and the Space Administration have not made any statement on this news, which makes people doubt its reliability.

However, in contrast to them, the response from foreign aerospace agencies is quite positive.