Chapter 1085 The East Wind Overwhelms the West Wind

Fan Jimin's request was not excessive.

After all, the core airborne equipment, especially the radar system, is provided by China.

Including the current cooperation between Elta Electronic Industries and General Dynamics, Gulfstream also delivered four G550 platforms and provided necessary technical support, but the entire modification process was completely completed by the former in the Kingdom of David.

Coupled with the previous foreshadowing, Kasore could not think of any reason to refuse.

But if we just give in like this, the situation will really not look good.

Therefore, he in turn made his own demands.

After the prototype testing phase is completed, the mass production phase must be carried out on Dassault's final assembly line.

And this happens to be one of the conditions that China has determined in advance and is acceptable.

In fact, Chang Haonan first thought of cooperating with the French. In addition to being familiar with the Falcon 8Z platform, another important consideration was that the two parties had different core pursuits in this project.

China already has its main model, the Air Police 2000, which meets the requirements in terms of cost and performance and is basically fully autonomous and controllable. Some of the remaining gaps can be filled with the Air Police 200. There is no real urgent need to equip a model with a long range. But it is a light early warning aircraft with limited performance.

Therefore, the current main goal is to verify the entire optically controlled phased array technology route.

As long as the testing process is completed in China and all the data is available, it will be fine.

The rest are secondary purposes.

Dassault is exactly the opposite.

They are really planning to use this thing to bid for the French Air Force's new generation early warning aircraft project, and then use this name to enter the international market.

Although the apparent size is far inferior to that of the E3F, the cost is almost as high as that of the E3F. Moreover, relying on the advantage of being a latecomer, there is no generational difference in performance.

Moreover, the combat pressure faced by the French army is relatively small. If the range is sufficient, it may not really need a difficult-to-serve strategic early warning aircraft.

And since our own Air Force is the target user, there will naturally be plenty of time to obtain data later, and there is no rush at this moment.

The most important thing is to keep the entire project running smoothly.

After all, E3F is considered existing equipment. Although the price of upgrading based on it is high, there is basically no risk.

The time window left for you to get a new model is not long.

If one or two major delays occur during the pilot phase, it will basically be missed.

Secondly, it is necessary to ensure that the final assembly and most of the production work are completed within the country.

This is a very important bargaining chip at the equipment level.

As a result, the two parties hit it off immediately.

Of course, this is only at the level of intention.

No one present had the authority to make a decision on the spot.

If you want to formally sign the contract, you have to wait until everyone returns and reports the situation to the decision-making level.

Moreover, the "Gaoming" project is said to be a cooperation between two parties, but the two parties refer to two countries.

To be more specific, there are three major players in China alone, while France, in addition to Dassault, also needs the participation of Thales Group to complete the integration of data links and command systems.

Fortunately, Chang Haonan had made arrangements for this project before.

Liu Yongquan and Liang Shaoxiu completed most of the procedures on their side within a few days.

However, at the Electronic Technology Group, the progress is slightly slower.

Because Fan Jimin's appearance at the previous meeting was just a temporary replacement.

And Guo Lin, who is actually the person in charge, is currently dealing with a more urgent project...

…

Beijing, China National Space Administration.

The large-scale reorganization from the Science and Industry Committee to the Industry and Construction Committee a few months ago did not seem to have much impact here.

Compared with the beginning of the year, the only visible change was the removal of the already infrequently used brand name "System Engineering Division 1", while the rest remained as usual.

Even the main leaders have been retained.

Therefore, when Guo Lin walked in here, for a moment he even felt like he was back half a year ago...

"Lao Guo!"

However, a voice soon woke him up from his thoughts.

Guo Lin looked around and saw Zhang Weiyong, dressed in casual clothes, running down the stairs not far away.

Lin Senming was followed behind.

So he quickly stepped forward to greet him.

In fact, there was no direct overlap between the three people's businesses, but Chang Haonan put part of the test of the relay communication system on the Air Police 2000 last year, and later became the sales manager, and he was stunned by Guo Lin and the 14th Institute of Electrical Engineering. Also involved.

Of course, the latter just enjoys it himself.

"It seems like... nothing has changed for you, right?"

As Guo Lin went upstairs, he randomly found a topic.

Not just for pleasantries.

It is also necessary to divert attention to relieve some inner tension...

"Hey... Our unit has been a non-military organization since its establishment. We don't have to go through the same trouble as other brother departments."

Zhang Weiyong explained:

"Furthermore, this is the most critical juncture of the 921 Project. Business stability is the absolute first priority. It is impossible to make large-scale organizational structure adjustments to our supervisory units..."

"..."

I originally wanted to talk about other topics to relax, but ended up going back to the manned space project.

On the contrary, it made Guo Lin even more anxious.

Naturally, such obvious changes in emotions could not escape Zhang Weiyong's eyes.

"I'm talking about Lao Guo."

He deliberately added a hint of joking in his tone:

"You should have a lot of projects passing through your hands. This is a normal battle today, so the reaction shouldn't be so big, right?"

"That's different..."

Guo Lin said as he rubbed his swollen forehead, but for a moment he didn't know how to describe his inner feeling.

After all, manned spaceflight is not an ordinary project.

It cannot be judged based on the general level.

Seeing this, Lin Senming, who had never spoken next to him, suddenly interrupted:

"Lao Guo spent half his life thinking about how to send people to heaven. Now he suddenly wants to send people to heaven safely... I guess he has a burden on his heart..."

One sentence almost made Zhang Weiyong unable to hold back.

Of course, this is just a casual comment.

In fact, the part of Project 921 involving sending people to heaven was completed as early as early 2001.

From Shenzhou 2 to Shenzhou 4, they are all full-state verification spacecraft with full manned capabilities.

The reason why the test was repeated three times was just to ensure that it was as foolproof as possible.

As for the part they are responsible for, it has nothing to do with sending people to heaven.

Rather, it is just a matter of borrowing from each other with Project 921 to maximize the use of resources.

However, this sudden cold joke made Guo Lin feel a lot better.

At this time, the three people came outside the director's office.

The door was open, obviously waiting for them.

It wasn't until he walked in that Guo Lin noticed that besides Luan Wenjie himself behind the desk, there was another person sitting on the sofa next to him.

He quickly recognized that the other party was Shen Junrong, the deputy commander-in-chief of the manned space project and the person in charge of the measurement and control communication system.

"Sit down."

Luan Wenjie put down the document in his hand and gestured towards the single-row sofa on the other side:

"I heard Comrade Zhang Weiyong report that you plan to launch a satellite group consisting of four small satellites to solve the problem of real-time communication between the spacecraft and the ground?"

Zhang Weiyong and Lin Senming were originally employees of the space agency, so this question was obviously aimed mainly at Guo Lin.

"There is no way to talk about a solution..."

The latter took a deep breath and replied:

"However, using four satellites with communication relay functions and operating in MEO orbit to form a non-central communication network can indeed effectively expand the time window for high-throughput data transmission between the spacecraft and the ground."

"For example, for a target spacecraft operating in a typical low-Earth orbit, it can be guaranteed to maintain a round-trip delay of less than 350ms with the ground for up to 50% of the operating time, and a communication capability with an available capacity of no less than 15Mbps..."

"..."

In fact, this relay satellite group was originally designed to serve reconnaissance satellites like Ocean 1 that operate in sun-synchronous orbits.

However, the span of going directly to the practical series in one step is indeed a bit too large, and the development cycle and investment cost are also relatively high.

Therefore, Chang Haonan and Zhang Weiyong finally decided to do the next best thing and launch four small satellites weighing 100 kilograms to verify the feasibility at the technical level.

In this way, the test window happened to coincide with Shenzhou 5...

On the other side, after hearing Guo Lin's targeted examples, Shen Junrong's originally calm face couldn't help but have some waves.

The manned space project itself already has a measurement and control communication system including domestic and overseas ground stations and ocean survey ships, which is used to ensure that the operating status of the spacecraft in key stages is under ground control.

However, due to the limitations of the hardware conditions during development, this system only guaranteed the most basic functions, focusing on transmitting control signals and feedback signals.

Secondly, the coverage of ground measurement and control stations is really limited and very irregular.

If you want to achieve continuous communication for a long period of time, you can only wait for the period of time when the spacecraft passes over the mainland.

Specifically for Shenzhou 5, it was probably just over 10% of the time in orbit.

Calculated based on the one and a half hour operation period of the spacecraft orbit, it is about 10 minutes.

After excluding some necessary work communications that cannot be fully disclosed, there is very little space left.

We can only arrange a few typical sessions such as displaying the national flag and talking to family members.

In other words, it just doesn’t make much of a film.

Of course, as China's first manned space mission, even a few symbolic images have an immeasurable influence.

But if, as Guo Lin said, this number can be increased to 50%.

Even if it's only 50% of one lap.

It also means that for 40 consecutive minutes within an hour and a half, the cabin of the spacecraft can be directly observed.

Both in terms of technical verification and publicity, it is a qualitative leap.

Especially at this time point in 2003.

A successful manned space promotion has a very special significance for China and even the whole world...