Chapter 1395: Standards of a Saint
Technically speaking, this article had existed for many years, but it was dug up recently.
Lu Zhou stood in the Mars environment training room. He was sitting on a small bench with his phone. Professor Vernal, who sent the article to him, looked at him and joked.
“It seems that doing scientific research in China is not easy.”
After closing the article, the expression on Lu Zhou’s face did not change. He spoke casually.
“After all, it only took us a hundred years from the feudal era to modernization. This is a leap in the history of civilization. Like how you guys don’t require scholars to be religious, but many of us still habitually label scholars as saints.
“In fact, what I mean is that the academic environment at Oxford University is more relaxed.
“But what does that have to do with me?”
“Fine.” Professor Vernal shrugged and said, “I was just saying, don’t take it to heart.”
Sitting opposite Lu Zhou was Professor Pansy Vernal from the Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art of Oxford University.
Although he was only thirty-five years old, judging from his spa.r.s.e hair and wrinkles on his forehead, one could not help but wonder if he were cursed by the pharaohs in Egypt.
As for the article he was talking about, it was a commentary article by a Chinese-American journalist Xu Jing that was widely spread on Facebook.
Although this article was originally posted on Facebook, it quickly spread to China and became a popular article on WeChat by taking advantage of people’s expectations for the future.
The t.i.tle of the article was very similar to the article “Please Slow Down and Wait for Your People” that was popular in major forums many years ago. It even included many quotes from the previous article, but the main idea was the criticism of the lack of morality in the course of economic development, and how it was a shame that “rapid advancement” in science and technology had destroyed the pastoral life. As well as a criticism of the rapid social development itself.
The article created, or fictionalized, three characters with different ident.i.ties; a deliveryman who was forced to leave the Shenzhen market because of drone logistics technology, a coal miner who lost his source of income because of controllable fusion technology, and a doctor who was forced to separate from his family and head to the Moon, eventually separating with his wife.
The ident.i.ties of these characters covered the three groups of underprivileged, middle-cla.s.s, and elite groups. It provided an in-depth a.n.a.lysis of the tragic fate of these people with different education levels and different social statuses.
When Lu Zhou read this, he made up his mind.
As expected, this is nonsense.
It was not that he didn’t have sympathy, but he didn’t understand how the doctor was “forced to separate” from his family.
After all, the PhD program at the lunar scientific research station was notoriously difficult to enter. International students applied for a limited number of places. Without a n.o.bel Prize winner-level recommendation letter and n.o.bel Prize-level research, there was no hope of being selected.
Forced to separate?
Wife abandoned?
Bullsh*t.
I’ll eat my phone if this isn’t made up!
“Of course I won’t take it to heart.” Lu Zhou just shrugged and said, “I believe that keyboard warriors aren’t just a Chinese specialty. I also believe that history will give a correct evaluation. Do you think that this kind of concocted article is convincing? If it is, I’m worried about your professionalism.”
Vernal laughed twice and concealed his embarra.s.sment.
“Of course not… I’m just showing this to you. That’s it.”
“Good.” Lu Zhou nodded. He suddenly turned around and said, “By the way, I forgot to tell you just now. According to the coach, your training results in the past few days are very bad. In order to avoid dragging everyone down in s.p.a.ce, I hope you can stay in the high-gravity environment training room for longer. In the future, your training will end at 8 o’clock instead of 5 o’clock.”
When Vernal heard that he would stay in the training room like a gym junkie, his face turned pale.
“Don’t do this, friend, I was just kidding…”
“Kidding? It has nothing to do with your joke.” Lu Zhou said seriously, “This is for your safety.”
After that, Lu Zhou gave him a look that said “work hard”. He then turned around and left…
…
The days quickly went by, and the day of departure was getting closer and closer.
People at the s.p.a.ce launch site could clearly feel that the atmosphere in the entire launch center had gradually become tense as the end of May approached.
Perhaps because Academician Lu himself was about to embark on the flight to Mars, the safety issues that were already taken seriously had become the overriding top priority.
Not only did they add two more safety inspections on top of the three original ones, from the ground crew to the cleaning lady, everyone was doing safety training every few days. They tried to eliminate the probability of failure by two more decimal places.
The logistics staff weren’t the only ones who were busy.
The training pace was gradually accelerating for the expedition personnel who were about to go to Mars.
Lu Zhou not only learned how to drive the Mars rover and operate various equipment on the s.p.a.cecraft, but he also learned how to operate professional equipment in low gravity and high gravity environments, as well as exploring underground tunnels with the a.s.sistance of other personnel…
“There is a flight to Mars in mid-October that will be responsible for delivering supplies to our colonial outpost on Mars. You can take that flight back then.”
Inside the chief designer’s office at the launch site, Director Chang Hezhi, who was in charge of the next launch plan, reported to Lu Zhou on the preparations for the launch. He then continued to report the arrangements for the return trip.
After listening to this report, Lu Zhou nodded and spoke.
“No problem, is there anything else?”
Director Chang: “There is indeed one other thing.”
Lu Zhou said, “What?”
“The final press conference before the launch will be held soon. Many details about the launch plan will be made public at this press conference. If you are okay with it, we all agree that it’s best for you to host it.”
The details here included the engineering equipment and new colonization units that would be sent to the surface of Mars for deployment, as well as the list of scientific expedition teams to Mars and the “diplomatic missions” responsible for contact with the extraterrestrial civilization. All of these concerns would be answered at the press conference.
Mainstream media from all over the world would arrive in Jinling to conduct a global live broadcast of this press conference.
This historic moment would definitely be recorded in world history!
Due to the importance of this matter, a normal spokesperson’s level of understanding for the Mars landing plan was obviously not sufficient.
In contrast, as the chief designer of the Mars landing plan, no one was more suitable to be the spokesperson than Lu Zhou.
Faced with Director Chang’s proposal, Lu Zhou thought about it for a while and simply agreed.
“Okay then.
“I can be the spokesperson.
“But you guys will have to prepare the speech and PowerPoint.”
Seeing that Lu Zhou had agreed, Director Chang was overjoyed.
“No problem, we’ll handle that.
“The press conference is in three days!”