Chapter 588: The Shortcut for Overtaking
Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations
The control terminal for the industrial robots was connected to Xiao Ai’s server. After Lu Zhou told Xiao Ai not to mess around with the underground laboratory without permission, he left the laboratory.
The list that Xiao Ai gave him didn’t contain materials that were difficult to get; Lu Zhou didn’t even have to search online for them.
After Lu Zhou placed an order in the name of the Inst.i.tute of Computational Materials, he moved the materials to the underground laboratory.
Xiao Ai didn’t even say thanks. It immediately began to start tinkering with its new toys.
Lu Zhou was standing on the side, and he watched Xiao Ai operate the six-axis mechanical arm skillfully. It opened the toolbox and pulled out a hammer, then the arm picked up an aluminum alloy plate that was sent from an automated guided vehicle(AGV). After that, it began to start banging on the aluminum plate with the hammer.
Lu Zhou looked at the mindless operation and didn’t know what Xiao Ai was doing.
His eyebrows twitched when he heard the banging sound, but after a bit of thinking, he decided to let it be. After he told Xiao Ai not to break anything, he turned around and left the laboratory.
He had to go to a meeting in Beijing in a couple of days, and he didn’t have time to bother with this.
Lu Zhou just hoped that when he was back, Xiao Ai wouldn’t turn his laboratory upside down…
…
Morning of the 6th of March.
A red banner was hung at the entrance of the Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, welcoming the attendees of the moon landing seminar.
The organizers and partic.i.p.ants of this conference all came from special backgrounds, so the topics discussed at the seminar was bound to be important. Security measurements had been taken; all the way from the school gate to the school auditorium.
Two young ladies curiously looked at the explosion-resistant police car parked on the asphalt road as they chatted while walking past the library.
“Is there someone important surveying the campus?”
“I don’t think so, apparently it’s a manned moon landing conference or something.”
“Manned moon landing?” The tall girl was confused, and she asked, “When are we able to put people on the moon?”
“I don’t know… Maybe because we can’t, so that’s why they’re having a meeting about how to send someone up there.”
Suddenly, they heard a gentle voice.
“h.e.l.lo, how do I get to the school auditorium?”
The two ladies stopped walking.
The taller girl looked at the guy and asked, “Are you attending the conference?”
Lu Zhou nodded and said, “Yeah, I guess so.”
The taller girl pointed to the road on the right and said, “Go straight along this road and turn right at the second intersection.”
Lu Zhou looked toward the direction she pointed and said thank you. The more pet.i.te girl suddenly asked, “Wait a second, are you… G.o.d Lu?!”
Lu Zhou was a little shocked at her excitement, and he awkwardly smiled.
“Just call me Lu Zhou or Professor Lu.”
He didn’t expect to meet his Weibo fans in real life, what a coincidence.
The pet.i.te girl stared at him excitedly and said, “The auditorium is quite far from here, you might not be able to find it. How about I take you there!”
Seeing how enthusiastic she was, Lu Zhou couldn’t help but say, “There’s no need for that, I can just walk there myself.”
He thanked the two people and turned around, walking along the road the girl had previously pointed.
The pet.i.te girl looked at Lu Zhou walking away and said with emotion, “It’s actually G.o.d Lu!”
Suddenly, she had a look of regret on her face. “Ah! I forgot to ask for his signature!”
The tall girl was speechless. “What’s the point of having his signature?”
“Do you really need to ask this? It’s so that I won’t fail my cla.s.ses!”
“…”
…
Lu Zhou walked along the road and quickly found the auditorium without much effort.
He presented his conference card and pa.s.sed through the security check. He then walked into the venue.
He looked at the logos in the venue and saw the China Aeros.p.a.ce Science and Industry Corporation and the China Aeros.p.a.ce Science and Technology Corporation, two major state-owned aeros.p.a.ce companies. He also saw the three giant tech companies—Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent—and various other private high-tech enterprises.
The once unpopular private aeros.p.a.ce companies were affected by s.p.a.ce-X. It became more popular than ever.
Even though aeros.p.a.ce-related technologies were basically monopolized by the two major state-owned enterprises, the promotion of military-civilian integration had become a national strategy over the past few years. The government had also created relevant policies to support this strategy.
For example, the first Chinese private s.p.a.ce company, Ones.p.a.ce, or Penguin’s Satellogic, or the “Tmall international” communication satellite and “Candy Pot” mini s.p.a.ce station that Alibaba was expected to launch. The aeros.p.a.ce exploration of private enterprises was gradually becoming more and more important.
For innovating technologies in an advanced field, the performance of private enterprises was indeed better than that of state-owned enterprises.
Because this was clearly the case, the higher-ups had been progressively freeing the aeros.p.a.ce market, allowing private enterprises to partic.i.p.ate.
Lu Zhou was about to find a place to sit down when he suddenly heard someone shout his name.
Lu Zhou stopped his footsteps and looked behind him. He saw a man in his fifties wearing a suit while walking toward him with a smile.
Lu Zhou looked at him for a while and remembered his name.
Xu Yuanming, second-in-command at the Ministry of Science and Technology.
He talked to this person before, at the controllable fusion commendation ceremony.
“Secretary Xu?” Lu Zhou smiled and shook his hand as he said, “I haven’t seen you in a long time.”
“Haha, it’s only been two months.” Xu Yuanming enthusiastically shook Lu Zhou’s hand and smiled. He then said, “The conference is about to begin, let’s head on over there first.”
Lu Zhou walked with Xu Yuanming toward the auditorium.
Through talking with Secretary Xu, Lu Zhou gained a rudimentary understanding of the current Chinese aeros.p.a.ce situation.
The part he cared the most was the budget.
Overall, the situation didn’t look good.
At present, the Chinese Aeros.p.a.ce budget was only about US$2 billion per year, and this was the budget aggregate of the Long March, Beidou, Sui, Shenzhou, Tianzhou, and other domestic rocket projects.
Back in the day, the total cost of the United States Apollo program reached a staggering US$22.5 billion, accounting for 0.57% of the US GDP at that time! It wasn’t easy to calculate how much the US$22.5 billion would be worth in today’s dollars, but back then, US$22 billion would be more than enough to build a fleet of aircraft carriers.
This was how expensive aeros.p.a.ce programs were.
Not to mention, there were other underlying aspects that money couldn’t solve, like various technical problems…
Secretary Xu sat next to Lu Zhou.
After they sat down, he slowly said, “We are not inferior to the west in terms of small rockets, but there’s still a big gap between us and the United States and Russia, in terms of the carrying capacity for large rockets.
“The long-range orbit carrying capacity of the Long March 5 is 25 tons, only 18 tons for the synchronous...o...b..t, and only about 8 tons for the earth-moon transfer orbit. The take-off weight of our Shenzhou 11 manned s.p.a.cecraft is already 8 tons. Considering the fact that the moon landing s.p.a.cecraft must be redesigned for the moon’s magnetic field environment, it must carry at least an additional 3 tons of components and more than 5 tons of living s.p.a.ce. The final weight of the entire moon landing s.p.a.cecraft will exceed 20 tons.
“With our current rocket technology, it would be impossible to complete a manned moon landing.”
Lu Zhou nodded thoughtfully.
Rocket engines were a whole different field, it wasn’t something that could be solved overnight.
He suddenly had an idea.
“Why don’t you consider ion thrusters?”
“Ion thruster?” Xu Yuanming paused for a second and shook his head as he said, “The ion thruster barely has any power. It might be able to change the orbit path, but there’s no way it can launch a s.p.a.cecraft into orbit.”
Lu Zhou said, “We can build an electromagnetically accelerated land-based ma.s.s transmitter on the ground, and use that to send unmanned parts to low-Earth orbit. Then, we push it to the moon using a plasma engine.”
Because the controllable fusion power generator was already built, the cost of electricity wouldn’t be too high. Even though this sounded like science fiction, it was technically possible.
After all, the United States was even thinking about using a cannon to shoot satellites into s.p.a.ce…
Xu Yuanming: “Then how will astronauts go up?”
Lu Zhou: “They can get on board from the s.p.a.ce station.”
Even though China didn’t have the ability to send people on the moon, they could send people into the s.p.a.ce station with no problem.
Xu Yuanming was shocked by this proposal. He went silent for a while before saying, “This sounds interesting, but it’s also a bit too ridiculous.”
Lu Zhou smiled and didn’t deny his claim.
“How can we achieve anything without some imagination?”
Xu Yuanming wasn’t a professional engineer. He only knew a little about aeros.p.a.ce engineering due to his job. Therefore, he didn’t discuss the technical side with Lu Zhou.
He paused for a second before he continued, “As of now, our strategic focus is still on the construction of cross-regional power grids and controllable fusion generators. The upper management thinks it’s more important to be down to earth and focus on the current problems rather than the problems of a distant future.
“A lot of people have proposed to postpone the moon landing project until 2030. However, the leaders.h.i.+p team values your opinion. Therefore, they decided to come up with a compromised plan.”
Lu Zhou asked, “Compromised plan?”
Secretary Xu smirked and didn’t explain anything. He looked at the stage and said, “The conference is about to begin, they will discuss the matter in a moment. Just keep your ears open.”