Chapter 678: Funding Approved!
Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations
The s.p.a.ce shuttle had a long history behind it.
Ever since the completion of the Apollo program in the United States during the 1960s, the focus of s.p.a.ce shuttle R&D had been on easy maintenance and multiple launches. The Soviet Union followed the United States closely in this s.p.a.ce battle. They successfully launched three s.p.a.ce shuttles, such as the Snowstorm and the Little Bird.
Therefore, China didn’t want to fall behind either, and they also made their own plans.
Like the 863-204 project. The so-called “world-wide round-trip transportation system”. During the early stages of the project bidding, Chinese s.p.a.ce experts heavily debated the s.p.a.ce shuttle. The people supporting the s.p.a.ce shuttle had the upper hand.
However, once the arguments were settled, the report was given to Qian Xuesen, who was near retirement.
After Qian Xuesen read the report, he only wrote one line in reply. That line completely changed the technical route of the s.p.a.ce shuttle, and it also changed China’s aeros.p.a.ce industry.
“This is a terrible idea.”
Looking back at it now, this decision was undoubtedly correct.
s.p.a.ce shuttles weren’t actually as glamorous as it seemed. Even the two super-nations couldn’t achieve their dreams of achieving convenient s.p.a.ce travel.
Using the United States as an example, the design life of the s.p.a.ce Shuttle Columbia was 20 years/100 launches, but the total number of launches across all five of the United States’ s.p.a.ce shuttles was barely a hundred times. The launch costs and maintenance costs were also copious, always exceeding their estimated budgets.
On the other hand, the Soviet Union was even worse. Their three s.p.a.ce shuttles had only been launched once each. After the 90s, the s.p.a.ce shuttles couldn’t even be launched to s.p.a.ce. One of them was bought by a museum in Germany.
Rather than going through all of this again, it might be better to just research how to recover the second-stage launch rockets. That would cost around the same as maturing s.p.a.ce shuttle technology.
However, the times were always changing.
One had to look at the problem from another perspective, and any problem had a solution.
s.p.a.ce shuttle a.s.sembly center…
Lu Zhou was standing next to an industrial robot. With gloves on his hand, from a plastic box, he picked up a metal tube around the size of a water bottle. He then placed the metal tube near a metal port and began to carefully look at the surface.
“Why do I feel like it’s too big?”
A series of texts popped up on the control screen of the machine tool.
Xiao Ai: [Sorry, Master! This is the best Xiao Ai can do…]
Lu Zhou: “It’s fine, I’m not blaming you… You did a good job.”
Xiao Ai: [Really? 0.0]
“Yeah.”
Xiao Ai: [Happy! Φ(≧ω≦*)♪]
Lu Zhou: “…”
In his hand was the enlarged version of the Hall-effect thruster from the Debris No.3. This component was at the upper manufacturing limit of the CNC machine.
Lu Zhou tried to ask Xiao Ai to make this thing smaller without sacrificing performance. However, the diameter of the propulsion unit was only reduced by 1 mm, and yet the overall processing difficulty increased exponentially. This also affected the stability of the propulsion unit.
However, even though it was difficult to reverse engineer the technology behind Debris No.3, this copy was quite good.
The engine port that had a diameter of 1.32 meters could be filled with 200 Hall-propulsion units. By supercharging and rectifying the plasma xenon in the ionization chamber, the plasma plume could accelerate to one-thousandth of the speed of light and be injected backward. This would result in a maximum thrust of 200KN.
A single engine had a thrust of 200 kN, so five engines would have a total of 1,000 kN.
Even with a load of 50 tons, it would be able to achieve 1G of acceleration. Even though it was slower than traditional chemical rockets, it had the advantage of not having to carry heavy fuel.
The only problem now was that the 100 MW fusion battery had to meet the requirements of 1 X-type Hall-effect thruster.
If he wanted to have enough energy output, he had to upgrade the power of the fusion battery.
“It looks like we have to increase the power of the fusion battery to 500 MW… Ideally, 1,000 MW.” Lu Zhou stared at the propulsion unit in his hand and said, “The power control system also has to be improved… Is there a way to integrate the ionization chamber with the five engines? Or get a bigger Hall-effect thruster with more propulsion units.”
Lu Zhou placed the propulsion unit back into the plastic box and walked away from the factory. He went into the main office at the building next door and found the technical director of the Star Sky Technology’s s.p.a.ce shuttle a.s.sembly center, Hou Guang.
Speaking of which, this guy was also a nutty person.
This old professor had partic.i.p.ated in the 836-204 project. Even though he was only an intern for the s.p.a.ce shuttle design, he had a wealth of experience in the aeros.p.a.ce field. After that, he worked as an aeros.p.a.ce professor at Beihang University.
Normally speaking, it would be difficult to hire a big name like this. However, once the old professor heard that Lu Zhou was leading the team to build a s.p.a.ce shuttle, he immediately accepted Star Sky Technology’s offer. He flew to Jinling the next day.
It had been more than a month since he had worked here as a technical director.
Lu Zhou was satisfied with his work.
After all, designing the s.p.a.ce shuttle wasn’t Lu Zhou’s cup of tea, and it would be better for him to let the professionals handle it.
“I’ve carefully researched the s.p.a.ce shuttle design. Because of the size of the power supply components, the ion thrusters, and the propulsion units, we have to design more than 40% of the s.p.a.ce shuttle.”
Lu Zhou: “What does more than 40% mean?”
Hou Guang thought for a bit and gave a clearer answer.
“We probably have to completely redesign from the shuttle wing backward.”
Lu Zhou nodded.
“Since you’re a s.p.a.ce shuttle expert, I’ll do what you say. Also, based on your experience, I want you to give me a simple a.s.sessment of how much the entire project will cost?”
Hou Guang thought for a bit before replying, “A conservative estimate is a billion USD… Of course, before the new design comes out, no one knows how much it’ll cost.”
A billion USD…
For a s.p.a.ce shuttle project, this price wasn’t high at all. After all, the Columbia s.p.a.ce shuttle cost the Americans more than US$2.5 billion, and that was decades ago. Being able to build this with only a billion USD was largely due to the fact that most of the design was completed in the 1990s. Since the a.s.sembly center could process most of the components, they only needed the raw materials.
However, even though Lu Zhou was prepared to spend money…
This US$1 billion price tag was out of his budget.
Lu Zhou couldn’t help but start to worry about money.
Should I sell some of East Asia Energy’s shares?
Even though it wasn’t a public company, he could easily sell his shares. After all, everyone knew the potential of this giant fusion company. However, the work at Daya Bay had only just begun, and the Southeast Asian power grid was in its first stage. It would be a shame to sell now.
Should I borrow money from the bank?
But this is an aeros.p.a.ce project. The ROI will take too long, plus there are no profit forecasts. It’ll be difficult to get a loan.
While Lu Zhou was worrying about it, he suddenly heard a door knock.
Lu Zhou looked at the door and said, “Come in.”
When the door was pushed open, the secretary of the a.s.sembly center was at the door.
The secretary didn’t expect to see Lu Zhou here. She paused for a second and looked pleasantly surprised.
“Professor Lu!”
Lu Zhou said, “What?”
She spoke with excitement, “The research funding that we applied for at the China National s.p.a.ce Administration was approved!”