Chapter 1097 Preparing to Return

When O'Keefe spoke of his plan, the rest of the people had basically the same idea -

Is he crazy?

The space administration agencies of various countries, no matter how "civilian" they appear on the surface and in organization, are actually inextricably linked to their own military.

After all, there is often only a thin layer of window paper between launch vehicles and ballistic missiles.

NASA is no exception.

In fact, the US space tracking and control network is jointly built by NASA and the Department of Defense.

Therefore, it is not difficult for O'Keefe to mobilize a reconnaissance aircraft.

Even the priority of the reconnaissance request he issued may be ranked ahead of the first-level military units in the theater.

But the problem is...

The object of the reconnaissance is really too wild.

The predecessor of Dongfeng Space City was the 20th base of the former General Armament Department and the first missile test base in China.

But later, with the continuous improvement of technology, a fixed place was no longer needed to test missile performance.

So it was changed to a place dedicated to manned space projects.

Sending reconnaissance planes to scout such places always seems to give people a sense of nostalgia.

If the history of USAF aerial reconnaissance is written into a book, it would probably be thicker than the history of the United States itself.

Of course, there are many brilliant parts in it.

But reconnaissance against China is definitely the most difficult chapter.

From P2V "Neptune" to U2 "Dragon Lady", to BQM-34 "Firebee"...

Various new equipment, in short, a lot of them were sent.

Although most of the missions are not carried out by the Americans themselves, it is definitely not a face-saving thing.

Besides, this is the 21st century.

At least on the surface, peace and development have become the theme of the times.

It is impossible for the higher-ups to agree to the request to enter the inland of China to cause trouble.

Looking at the strange eyes cast around him, O'Keefe also realized that his previous statement was somewhat ambiguous.

"There is no need to scout their entire western region...just include the tracking and control station in Shule in the surveillance range."

The atmosphere in the conference room eased a little.

After all, the Shule area is only about 300 kilometers away from Kyrgyzstan.

Such reconnaissance can be conducted outside the country.

However, the problem still has not completely disappeared.

As subordinates, others may not be able to directly object at this time.

But Malville's qualifications in NASA are already very high, and as a consultant, he is considered an old friend and personal consultant of O'Keefe, so he needs to pull back at this time:

"Xiao, even if you don't enter the other party's airspace, the reconnaissance behavior itself is a very strong signal of provocation... At present, our relationship with China is still relatively relaxed, you see..."

In this timeline, the two sides have not had a very direct conflict since 1996, especially the few years at the turn of the century are considered a smooth transition, so Malville's "easing" is not a lie.

Moreover, this sentence has a deeper meaning.

That is, when we launched a large-scale military advance into Central Asia, we still received support from China, and we also used their airports to transfer materials and personnel.

Now, we use this place as a base to deal with others. Although it is not impossible, at least we should act cleanly...

O'Keefe heard this and lowered his head to think for a while.

But in the end, he still chose to stick to his own opinion:

"In any case, the relay communication must be fed back to the ground station in the end, and this kind of signal, no matter how high the directional accuracy is, will be presented on the ground in a radius of hundreds of kilometers."

"We send a reconnaissance plane over, keep silent throughout the whole process, use passive reconnaissance means to only receive but not send, and withdraw after capturing their signals. Even if we can't decode and decipher their specific communication content, we can at least use the signal characteristics to distinguish which satellite is the final signal transmission between the ground and the ground."

That's right.

In the eyes of Americans, passive reconnaissance rather than active reconnaissance is already the greatest sincerity.

Of course, objectively speaking, this is indeed a perfect edge ball.

Even if the whole world knows what a reconnaissance plane hovering near the border is going to do, the airspace of Aiwuhan and Kyrgyzstan is completely open to the US Air Force, and there is no problem.

On the contrary, it is not convenient for China to interfere.

There is no way to drive them away by accompanying interference as in the southeast direction.

Therefore, Malville didn't say anything else.

In this way, O'Keefe's request was quickly conveyed to the Central Command responsible for the affairs of the Central and Far East through special channels.

But the latter was unprepared for this-

Shenzhou V was launched at 9 am on the 15th, Beijing time, and the mission lasted only 21 hours in total.

In other words, it will land around 5:40 am on the 16th.

And now it is the evening of the 15th, Beijing time.

They only have less than 8 hours left to operate.

However, it must be admitted that at the beginning of the 21st century, the efficiency shown by the US military is still quite good.

After receiving the mission requirements, John Abizaid, commander of the Central Command, quickly pulled himself out of the already chaotic military affairs and allocated resources that met O'Keefe's requirements...

...

Later that day.

Dongfeng Space City.

The leaders who watched the launch mission here in the morning had already left by this time, so Chang Haonan also had the opportunity to sit in the guest seats and enjoy the best view in the entire command and control hall.

About an hour ago, he and dozens of other comrades here watched the entire content of the 48-minute call between heaven and earth——

It's about ten minutes longer than what TV viewers see.

It can be said that the effect far exceeded expectations.

In addition, the spacecraft has entered the second half of its eighth orbit around the earth and is about to begin its ninth cycle.

It happens to be the time when the operation is at its most stable.

Therefore, the atmosphere in the entire hall was much more relaxed than in the past dozen hours.

Especially for Chang Haonan.

Although the communication verification task is not over yet, the longest lasting connection has been completed, and there are just some routine finishing work behind it.

Of course, it is impossible to sleep until the excitement of directly participating in the manned spaceflight project has passed.

At this time, Shen Junrong, wearing a light blue overalls, also walked quickly from a short distance away.

He didn't look like a 60-year-old comrade who had stayed up for almost 24 hours.

"Comrade Haonan, you're done!"

The corner of his grinning mouth couldn't be suppressed at all. Before he could stop moving his feet, he had already placed a few pages of the report in front of Chang Haonan:

"The maximum communication delay is 327ms, the average communication capacity is 6.2Mbps, and the maximum communication capacity is 12.7Mbps... It is indeed much better than the performance of geostationary satellites..."

The latter had received the results from Tanzhou as early as the end of the previous communication, so he did not read the specific content of the report in front of him. He just adjusted his posture slightly and leaned on the backrest:

"You can't say that...after all, the communication coverage is relatively limited, and the satellite attitude is specially adjusted for a single target..."

"If you want to achieve this effect for any spacecraft, I'm afraid you will need at least 40-60 satellites, and the number of channels and antenna coverage of each satellite will have to be doubled... There is still a long way to go! "

Although his words were very modest, judging from his tone and expression, he was obviously satisfied with the result.

Of course Shen Junrong could see this, so he happily sat next to him:

"Don't be fooled by those lies. This test is not only technically perfect, but also very influential from a publicity level... Although the scale of 40-60 satellites is definitely a dream, but with today's Come out, it will definitely not be a problem to arrange a group of scientific exploration and technology test satellites for you..."

"I guess this was your initial goal, Comrade Haonan, right?"

All I can say is that he is indeed an experienced expert.

That's a good guess.

The Qingluan satellite group is an attempt to serve as a front station for the practice series of satellites.

However, Chang Haonan was no longer a newbie now. He was not embarrassed at all when his idea was dispelled. Instead, he calmly changed the topic:

"This program has only been aired for less than an hour, and Mr. Shen already knows the influence?"

"Of course!"

Unexpectedly, when faced with this half-joking topic, Shen Junrong became very serious:

"Do you know how many foreign cooperation projects our country's aerospace industry has been disrupted by Americans either directly threatening it or secretly stumbling upon it?"

"It's not because after the Cold War, the world can only rely heavily on the United States for aerospace infrastructure. Others are worried that cooperation with us will cut off the support they get... The live broadcast you just proposed is likely to promote a breakthrough in the entire industry blockade!"

Regarding aerospace matters, Chang Haonan probably knew some well-known events, but after all, he was not in his field, and his knowledge was not as detailed as aviation.

But according to Shen Junrong, it’s because the West has been closed off for a long time.

Although there have been much fewer restrictions on specific technologies in recent years, at the project level, the situation has obviously not improved much.

So, he followed what he had just said and asked the other party to continue talking about what happened before.

And in such a peaceful and peaceful atmosphere, time soon came to the second half of the night.

According to the plan, Shenzhou 5 was about to enter the preparation stage for return, so everyone in the control hall began to get busy.

But at this moment, someone suddenly reported a breaking news——

About 400 kilometers west of Shule Measurement and Control Station, an unidentified aircraft operating at an altitude of 17,000 meters was discovered!