Chapter 475 The Road to Flashing

The first year of Xinghe is October 5th.

A spacecraft orbiting the moon - Huozhi 107.

Quickly use the gravitational slingshot of the moon to fly towards the orbit of Mars.

The Huozhi 107 spacecraft, which weighs 2,864 tons, is flying in deep space about 70,000 kilometers away from the moon and about 480,000 kilometers away from the earth.

At this time, the flight speed of Huozhong 107 was 8.5 kilometers per second.

Right now.

Huozhong 107 suddenly adjusted its flight attitude. The nozzle of the methane liquid oxygen engine became the flying head, and the head became the flying tail. The spacecraft temporarily relied on the previous inertia to fly.

After the head turned into a tail, the new tail began to deform. To be precise, it opened the fairing.

The fairing unfolds like a flower, forming a cover with a diameter of 20 meters. There is also a special nozzle with a diameter of 9.8 meters in the center of the cover.

After re-adjusting the direction.

A ball the size of a fist suddenly spewed out from the center of the tail nozzle of Fire No. 107.

The next second, the ball emitted a burst of dazzling light.

In this dark, deep sky, a small sun seemed to appear.

In the bright light of the little sun, the speed of Huozhong No. 107 suddenly increased a lot.

The next second.

Another little sun flickered behind Huozhong No. 107.

After about a few seconds.

NASA's ground command center.

The satellite responsible for monitoring the direction of the moon suddenly detected a burst of gamma rays and photons, and then gamma rays and strong light signals appeared every 60 seconds on average.

Even without satellite monitoring, many observatories that are observing the moon at this time can see a series of light spots near the moon through astronomical telescopes.

Then Bill, who was still sleeping, was hurriedly woken up by his subordinates.

A sleepy-eyed Bill came to the office with an espresso.

"What happened again?" He took a sip of espresso to refresh himself.

Deputy Director Davis said with a tangled look on his face: "Homo sapiens company just carried out a nuclear explosion."

"Nuclear explosion test? You should notify the Pentagon instead of waking me up." Bill rubbed his temples speechlessly, and then took another sip of espresso.

"The problem is that the location of this nuclear explosion experiment is in orbit near the moon."

"Isn't it the moon...? Wait a minute, where did you say it is?" Bill's eyes widened.

Davis replied bravely: "Moon orbit."

"Wang Defa?! You said that the Homo sapiens company is conducting nuclear tests on the moon?" Bill jumped up from his seat.

"To be more precise, they are conducting a nuclear explosion propulsion test. A Homo Sapien Company's Pyrotype spacecraft is accelerating towards Mars under the propulsion of a nuclear explosion." Davis quickly explained.

"Give me the details!" Bill's whole body felt bad.

Davis took the document from the assistant and handed it to Bill.

Bill quickly looked through it.

A total of 50 micro-nuclear explosions were detected before and after. Calculated from the 60 seconds between explosions, it means that the speed of the Spark spacecraft has been increased to about 50 kilometers per second.

Calculated at a speed of 50 kilometers per second, the spacecraft can fly 4.32 million kilometers in a day.

At this time, Mars is about 110 million kilometers away from the earth, and the distance between the two planets is approaching at a rate of 500,000 kilometers per day.

In other words, it only takes about 26 Earth days for the Spark to reach Mars orbit.

Of course, Bill knew that 26 days was impossible.

The reason is that the speed of the Spark is too fast and exceeds the capture limit of Mars' gravity, so the Spark must take a period of time to slow down.

But even so, this speed is already amazing.

NASA has launched three Falcon launch vehicles in succession in the past few days, and all of them were successful, making many people forgetful.

Now the Homo sapiens company directly uses hard power to tell the world that your uncle is still your uncle.

Are you still playing Little Rocket?

I have already driven a nuclear-powered spaceship to Mars.

Bill took a deep breath: "Notify the Pentagon and the Council!"

"I have informed you." Davis scratched his head.

Bill glanced at the other party meaningfully, and then changed the topic: "Then let me inform the other partners that I want to hold a video conference with Dilian."

"OK." Davis, a little guilty, hurriedly called.

Although he was a little angry about Davis going beyond him, he knew very well that the current council would not easily change the generals on the spot. At least when the space competition was still in the early stages of burning money, his position was simply a chore.

What he was more concerned about at this time was actually the use of nuclear explosive thrusters by the Homo sapiens company.

The Homo sapiens company put too much pressure on him. Compared with NASA and the other party, the two are not opponents at the same level at all.

There are huge gaps in technology, resources, talents, and organizations.

This made Bill feel a little frustrated.

Although he hopes to force the Council to pay attention to NASA through the pressure of Homo sapiens, it is obvious that the pressure from Homo sapiens on NASA is almost overwhelming, which makes him not know how to deal with and catch up.

Soon, Davis, who returned again, interrupted his thinking.

"Director, the security conference room is ready."

"Then let's go!"

The two arrived at the secure conference room, and several assistants had already opened the video conferencing software.

Conde, president of the Terrestrial Association, Matthew Duke, the new head of the space agency of the Europa Consortium, and the head of the Lucia Space Department, etc., appeared in the video one after another.

The four people participating in the video conference obviously already knew about the moon's orbit.

Comte looked solemn: "The Homo sapiens company is really scary! It has even built a nuclear-powered spaceship."

"Now we must follow up. Although there is no way to build a Daedalus spacecraft, we must have a nuclear-powered spaceship." Bill clenched his fists.

Conde hesitated: "Bill, wouldn't it be too dangerous to go directly to nuclear power?"

"Then what can you do? There is no way to catch up. We simply cannot keep up with the development speed of Homo sapiens. Even if there are risks, I will promote the nuclear-powered launch vehicle project." Bill was very tough.

The person in charge of Lucia also nodded: "Nuclear-powered launch vehicles are indeed one of the few effective means for us to compete with Homo sapiens companies. There are definitely risks, but this is not the reason for us to reject nuclear-powered launch vehicles."

Obviously, faced with this huge pressure and gap, they finally planned to adjust their flexible bottom line.

After a heated discussion, although the Ground Alliance agreed to the proposal to develop a nuclear-powered launch vehicle, it required that it not be used in the atmosphere, and that it would not use a nuclear explosion solution, but a nuclear thermal-nuclear power solution.

However, this plan is actually more difficult than the nuclear explosion plan.

The reason why it is difficult is that the focus is on heat dissipation.

Nuclear explosion propulsion solutions do not need to consider heat dissipation issues.

However, the nuclear heat-nuclear power solution must consider heat dissipation. Otherwise, the nuclear battery or nuclear reactor will inevitably suffer from thermal meltdown due to the inability to dissipate heat, causing equipment failure and even directly scrapping the entire spacecraft.

The Homo sapiens company showed them the way, but they thought they were right.

If you don't have the gold-based electrothermal materials from Homo Sapiens Company, it's not just difficult but very difficult to use nuclear thermal-nuclear electric propulsion.

Of course, the nuclear explosion propulsion scheme also has thresholds. For example, nuclear protection materials must be able to withstand micro-nuclear explosions at close range, which has very high requirements for materials.

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