Chapter 1541: The way of posterity

This piece of equipment, which can be regarded as the most important equipment of the country, is the 60,000-ton die forging hydraulic press that Tan Zhenhua reached an agreement with the Ministry of Metallurgy that year, and was constructed by Professor Yan Yongnian, deputy director of the Department of Mechanical Engineering of Huaqing University, and coordinated by Academician Shen Hong!
With this machine, although the 10-meter-diameter rocket built by the Americans may not be able to be built, the 5-meter diameter is completely conceivable, and the "921 Rocket" is the basic parameter based on this objective reality.
In the most preferred plan of the Expert Committee on the Space-Earth Shuttle System, two "921 rockets" will be launched successively to launch a payload of about 45 tons into the TLI orbit, where they will be assembled, and then a manned moon landing and returning will be carried out. task.
This kind of plan is obviously more risky than the American plan of using a "Saturn V" to transport all the loads. However, with China's current technical reserves and foreseeable future research and development capabilities, it is almost the only feasible plan.
After all, the development of a huge super-heavy launch vehicle like the "Saturn V" or the former Soviet Russian "Energy" is still too far away for China.
Within the Ministry of Aeronautics and Astronautics, consensus has been reached on the basic performance of the "921 rocket", but there is still a most critical issue that has not yet reached a consensus-the technical route of the core-level rocket.
As mentioned in the previous article, China’s existing rockets and core-stage rockets are all so-called "poisonous rockets", using unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine propellant and nitrous oxide oxidant, compared with the more mature "Long March 2" The newly successfully developed "Long March 3" added a third stage of hydrogen and oxygen to undertake the launch mission in geosynchronous orbit. In other words, China Xia has relatively rich development and practical experience in these two rocket engines.
Therefore, including Ren Xinming himself, the development ideas proposed for the "921 Rocket" are to use hydrogen-oxygen fuel as the core first-stage power of the rocket, and the goal is to develop a high-thrust hydrogen-oxygen rocket engine to fill the first-stage core. The main engine.
Objectively speaking, the hydrogen-oxygen rocket engine has the characteristics of large thrust and specific impulse, and high thrust-to-mass ratio, which is more suitable for the requirements of space launch. However, due to the technical difficulty of its realization, the fuel needs to be stored at low temperature and the support work at the launch site is complicated. The reason is that the cost of its development and use is very expensive. It is precisely for this reason that within the expert group, some people have suggested another technical route, that is, the development of liquid oxygen kerosene engines.
However, this kind of opinion is not the mainstream at present. The reason is that China has never engaged in this type of engine. If you start from the beginning, there will be big doubts about its success in the end, and the progress of the development is completely uncertain.
But now, there has been an unexpected change in the development of things that may affect the overall situation-Tan Zhenhua, who obtained a complete set of liquid oxygen kerosene engine data from the Wukelan Southern Design Bureau. There are also three types of liquid oxygen kerosene engines with large, medium and small thrust!
Then, if he is allowed to participate in the project and invest in the "921 Rocket", he will undoubtedly push the liquid oxygen kerosene, a new rocket power system, because only in this way can he maximize his resource advantage!
This made Ren Xinming quite hesitating-because he felt that this was a serious scientific and technological route dispute, mixed with some less rigorous commercial factors, which he did not like and did not want.
Tan Zhenhua clearly saw this. He explained: "Old Ren, although I don't know anything about spaceflight, I still have some opinions in my throat.
Ren Xinming nodded and said, "Dr. Tan, you say."
"According to my understanding, the main mission of the "921 Rocket" in the future is to perform a series of our China's space exploration missions, which should include the construction of space stations, moon exploration and even deep space exploration. In my opinion, these missions are all civilians. Yes, it is the basic research done for mankind to go deep into deep space. Although this field is one of the main battlefields for the great powers in the future, it does not involve the question of survival between countries, right?"
"Well, what do you want to explain?"
"What I want to say is, first, since it is a civilian project, we should encourage more people to participate in this cause. Our goal is to get out of the earth and even out of the solar system. This is not only the cause of our astronauts, but also ours. The cause of the entire Chinese nation; secondly, any civilian project will put a lot of emphasis on the cost issue. Investing the least resources to achieve the goal is the foundation for the survival and development of civilian projects. "Star" is fundamentally different. Aerospace is a business with huge investment, slow return, and extremely high technical threshold. Before we have enough leading capabilities, we can learn from the successful experience of others. Any good teacher is also Step by step from a good student."
Tan Zhenhua's words are over. To understand it literally, his meaning is very simple. It is nothing more than hope that the country will let him enter the field of rocket research and allow him to build a rocket with a liquid oxygen kerosene power system. However, Ren Xinming heard from it. Another meaning-he knows the mainstream opinions in the Ministry of Aeronautics and Astronautics, but his suggestion is to re-discuss the key research direction of core-level rocket engines, not necessarily to pursue technological leadership, but to consider technology and cost comprehensively. , Ability and many other factors.
If you think deeper, Tan Zhenhua might even know that Ren Xinming himself is the promoter of the core-level hydrogen-oxygen engine solution, and he is expressing his disapproval in a very subtle way!
In all fairness, Tan Zhenhua doesn’t even know a little about space technology, but he still knows some things. For example, the
Long March 5
heavy-duty carrier rocket, which is affectionately called
Fat Five
by the majority of military fans, has gone through some twists and turns. The development path of the hydrogen-oxygen core first-level program is not smooth. Even if the successful launch is finally achieved, it has been oscillating between the two indicators of "guarantee success rate" and "guarantee capacity". In fact, the final "fat 5" Although the core level 1 of "Long March 5" insists on the hydrogen-oxygen engine, its booster still uses the liquid oxygen kerosene-powered YF100 engine, and the "Long March 5" series of up to 8 tons of TLI capacity also makes it unable to bear manned boarding at all. The important task of the month, the mission will be carried out by the "Long March 9" super-heavy launch vehicle-but until the year he was reborn, the "Long March 9" was still just a model.
For another example, at the time before his rebirth, Musk and his recyclable "Falcon" series of carrier rockets are probably unknown to everyone, and the largest "Heavy Falcon" rocket, LEO capacity reached 63.8 tons, geosynchronous The transfer orbital capacity reached 26.7 tons, and the Mars orbital capacity reached an astonishing 16.8 tons, which was the crown of the spacecraft currently in service by humans at that time. This type of rocket did not use particularly advanced engines, but used 27 "old-fashioned" "" Merlin-1D" liquid oxygen kerosene engine is connected in parallel as the power of the core first stage and booster!
Recyclable and reusable, cheap rocket engines and fuel, the final result is that "Falcon" has become the world's cheapest launch rocket!
All this proves that this path is correct and the goal can be achieved. In that case, why can't he copy a handful of "descendants" ideas in advance?
Anyway, since he was reborn, the method is very clear: follow the path of future generations, leaving future generations with nowhere to go.