As a mage, I just want to pursue the truth

Chapter 314 Directly from the Moon to Mars
The launch cost of a Starlink satellite is so low that it is hard for outsiders to imagine.

Through repeated launches of Falcon 9, the launch cost of each Starlink satellite can be reduced to only yuan.

(This really becomes 500,000)
But this does not mean that the cost of Starlink is low.

In addition to the launch cost, there is also a manufacturing cost for 15,000 Starlink satellites.

Another key issue is that due to the low production cost of Starlink satellites, its normal service life is only five years.

If affected by a magnetic storm, Starlink satellites will be destroyed in batches.

Previously, a G1-class magnetic storm was triggered by an M-class solar flare.

The magnetic storm lasted for more than four hours and was accompanied by a coronal mass ejection toward the blue planet.

The solar flare directly caused the destruction of forty newly launched Starlink satellites.

The combined effect of various factors has resulted in the cost of the Starlink satellite array remaining high.

From a civilian perspective, Starlink is much faster than previous satellite communications, and the rate is more stable.

Currently, some flights on the blue planet can access the Internet, most of which are through Starlink satellites.

Except for flights to China.

Starlink can render China’s GFW ineffective.

This is unacceptable to China, so no Chinese airline has purchased Starlink services.

Because Starlink is very expensive to use and requires the purchase of hardware equipment.

It is easy to intercept Starlink's hardware equipment at the customs stage.

Even if someone is truly capable of obtaining Starlink equipment within China, they cannot stop him from using the scientific Internet.

Musk is not an ideological fighter. He has a certain degree of interest in China.

It is impossible for Musk to offend China for something illusory and insist on allowing Starlink to enter China through private channels.

The cost of Starlink in the civilian sector is unaffordable for most families.

Even American families would find the cost a bit high, let alone Chinese families.

Spending more than 10,000 yuan a year on network fees is enough to buy N Shadowrocket nodes.

This thing is not as serious as it is hyped up on the Internet. If we just want to restrain GFW, there is not much need for it.

Those who can really handle Starlink will not lack similar means even within China.

Starlink's biggest impact is in the military, greatly increasing the communication capabilities of any location in the world under extreme conditions.

Because Starlink is used for civilian purposes, governments, especially China and Russia, cannot use military means to prevent the launch of Starlink satellites.

Even though everyone knows that Starlink's purpose is not simple, SpaceX receives a large number of researchers from NASA and the American military every year.

SpaceX is determined to push forward Starlink even though it is losing money, and it has the support of America behind it.

The reason why Starlink satellites are easily damaged and can only operate in the orbit of the Blue Planet for a few years before being scrapped is very important to avoid arousing the vigilance of other countries.

These are just civilian satellites, but there are just a lot of them.

If the satellite used is better and has remote sensing capabilities, this will absolutely not be acceptable to other countries.

The lunar space station occupied the orbit that America had built as part of its plan to build a lunar base.

The launch of the Starlink satellite constellation also occupies a large number of satellite orbits and frequency bands.

The impact of this on China is far more serious than the so-called restraint of GFW.

Another very important point is the integration of the industrial chain.

The large-scale deployment of Starlink has enabled SpaceX to realize the manufacturing capabilities of the entire industry chain in the space field, including launch, satellite manufacturing, satellite operation and terminal manufacturing.

With this success, SpaceX has created a closed loop of the industrial chain and has achieved a break-even.

Of course, this balance of payments is only a superficial balance of payments, and in fact it is still some distance away from a balance of payments.

What this means on the surface is that, backed by the will of the American government, American airlines, fire protection companies, and other companies and SpaceX pay much higher prices for Starlink Internet than the normal price.

They can use normal ground communication services, and will also adopt Starlink in order to support SpaceX.

Similar administrative support plays a key role in SpaceX's balance of payments on the Starlink project.

Because America can influence not only its own country, but also many younger brothers, among which Neon and Korea, two rich and obedient younger brothers, are typical.

China is temporarily ahead of America in the lunar space station and lunar base, but it still has a long way to go in the overall aerospace field.

For example, the distance between space fuel and aircraft engines can be clearly seen.

It took only 75 hours for Apollo to travel from the blue planet to the moon. Fifty years later, it took about eleven days for the Chang'e probe to travel from the blue planet to the moon.

"According to the news just released by NASA's official spokesperson at a press conference, America will make its first attempt to land on Mars next year.

And it’s a real landing on Mars, not a simulated landing.”

"The Americans are anxious. Currently, traditional international space station partners such as the Europa League, Russia, Japan, and the United States are all talking to us about cooperation on the lunar base.

They are used to the aerospace industry revolving around them and would like to be ahead of us in the aerospace field again.

It is not the technological lead, but the obvious lead seen by the outside world.

It's like we have a moon base now and America doesn't."

The main participants in the International Space Station program are the countries and alliances mentioned above.

However, Russia withdrew from the International Space Station project as early as 2022.

Russia first proposed withdrawing from the International Space Station in 2021.

It was mainly because of America's sanctions on Russia's Progress Rocket and Space Center and the Central Institute of Machine Building that Russia proposed to withdraw from the International Space Station.

Anyway, China’s Tiangong series of space stations have been built, so Russia is thinking of cooperating with China.

The two sides have already carried out effective cooperation in the fields of biological storage and large-scale quantum accelerators.

The subsequent developments occurred even faster than Russia’s own rhetoric.

Russia said it would withdraw from the International Space Station program in 2025, but they actually withdrew from the International Space Station in 2022 and then reached a cooperation with CNSA at the end of 2022.

Once China's lunar base is built, not only Russia, but other countries with astronauts will want to join in the fun.

It would be a good idea to send someone to the moon to experience it and learn from China's advanced experience.

It was no exaggeration to say that CNSA was packed with people for a while.

“Haha I also wish NASA would act so emotionally.

Unfortunately, it is unlikely that they will be because of us.

In other words, the successful opening of our Laurel Base led to Washington allocating additional funds to NASA in the middle of the year.

With a financial strength of nearly 100 billion US dollars, he can hire more people to do this.

I guess NASA should have done sufficient preparation and feasibility verification work.”

Inside CNSA, two key members were discussing NASA's latest press conference. CNSA and NASA regard each other as their biggest rival.

NASA will use CNSA's progress and achievements to motivate its researchers, and CNSA will do something similar.

“Landing on Mars is not that easy, but it’s about the same time-wise.

The original schedule released by NASA in 2020 showed that the landing on Mars would be completed in 2035.

It is reasonable to move it forward to mid-2027 now.

If NASA misses the window next year, it will have to wait until about two years later, which is 2029.”

Due to the limitations of aviation fuel and aircraft engine power, if Blue Planet wants to go to Mars, the best time is when Blue Planet and Mars are closest to each other.

It is difficult to achieve otherwise.

“I just don’t know how NASA solves the EDL risk.”

EDL is the abbreviation of Entry, Descent, Landing, and is considered to be the most difficult and dangerous stage in the process of human landing on Mars.

"It's probably still an ejection seat, a separate parachute and small thrusters."

"The problem lies in the accuracy of the Mars landing. Based on our deduction of the technology previously disclosed by NASA, the opponent's optical navigation and guidance can only achieve an accuracy of 5-10 kilometers.

If the American astronauts cannot find the landing capsule after landing and before they run out of energy, they will be doomed. "

Landing via a separate ejection seat and parachute is the safest way.

It is equivalent to people landing on Mars with only the minimum equipment, and then the lander detaches and lands on Mars.

After landing on Mars, the astronauts went back to look for the lunar module.

This plan is the safest one for landing, but the difficulty lies in whether the landing capsule can be found successfully afterwards.

Due to Mars' thin atmosphere, communications are difficult to ensure.

Not to mention positioning.

"So this plan has higher requirements for landing accuracy. If NASA can achieve an accuracy of about 100 meters, then this plan will definitely be fine."

“It is very difficult to achieve an accuracy of 100 meters.

Currently, our combined navigation solutions can only achieve an accuracy of about two kilometers.

It is still a laboratory theoretical accuracy and has not been verified in a real environment.”

In order to address the problems of unknown disturbances and measurement anomalies during the Mars landing phase, they mainly developed three combined navigation schemes that conform to the partitioned differential filter.

The best results are obtained by the combined navigation scheme based on Huber first-order de-differentiation filter, adaptive Huber first-order de-differentiation filter and adaptive Huber second-order de-differentiation filter.

The cost function of the standard Kalman filter is modified by using a function of the predicted state estimation error covariance and the measurement noise covariance Huber case.

Specifically, a first-order divided difference filter is obtained by embedding the latest error covariance and measurement noise covariance into a general first-order divided difference filter.

To more specifically improve the performance of the filter under significant deviations, an adaptive forgetting factor is introduced in the first-order divided difference filter.

On this basis, the first-order de-interpolation filter is derived. Similarly, the adaptive Huber second-order de-interpolation filter is generated.

(The above solution comes from the International Journal of Adaptive Control and Signal Processing, which was published in February this year. I forgot the exact issue. I read it several months ago.)
"If America broadcasts the entire process live, we can get some clues from their live broadcast."

CNSA is not shy about learning from NASA's good experience.

Walk the path others have walked and avoid pitfalls.

"If we continue at the current pace, we may be able to catch up with the next window between the Blue Planet and Mars."

That means landing on Mars in 2029.

“There’s still not enough time. If you’re not in a hurry, take your time and build the lunar base first.

In the future, it would be nice to launch rockets directly from the moon to Mars.”

"There is no way, even Boss Ouyang can't resist the will of the higher-ups."

The proposal to go from the moon to Mars was made a long time ago.

According to a public interview with CNSA, one of the leaders who thought this plan was very good was Academician Ouyang Ziyuan.

He is not only an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, but also the chief scientist of China's lunar exploration project, that is, the big brother Ouyang mentioned above.

This is the advice from the most relevant academicians.

When he was interviewed, he said that the moon has a small gravitational pull, and the energy required to launch a rocket from the moon to Mars is only one-sixth of that required to launch a rocket from the moon to Mars. At the same time, the distance between the moon and the blue planet is close, so it is very convenient to transport supplies.

This is what he said in an interview in 2022.

In 2026, after China has its own lunar space station and lunar base, it will internally discuss building a rocket launch base on the moon.

There has been no end to the rumors about going directly from the moon to Mars.

Everyone thought this plan was feasible, the only problem was that it would take a long time to build.

From the early stage of project demonstration to construction and then to launch, it is optimistically estimated to take more than five years but less than ten years.

However, the advantage of going from the moon to Mars is that there is no need to worry about the window period. It only requires one-sixth of the energy of the Blue Planet, so the window period becomes less important.

"I personally think that going from the moon to Mars is the best option. Blindly pursuing a competition with NASA on Mars landing is actually meaningless."

As middle-level staff members of the R&D team, the two of them do not have access to the Magic Brain.

Therefore, they do not fully understand the urgency of landing on Mars.

"Okay, that's enough, there are other considerations.

And they didn’t say they wouldn’t build a lunar rocket launch base.

Aren’t both legs running in parallel now?

While preparing for the next window of Mars landing launch, we are also preparing for the construction of the lunar rocket launch base. "

"A lunar rocket launch base? We are currently working on a feasibility report and formulating a plan. There is still a long way to go before we can actually build one."

“In fact, it may not be as long as you think, and we can directly use the resources of the moon.

Chemical propulsion using liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen.”

Musk had mentioned the issue of fuel shortage a long time ago.

It is by relying on SpaceX's ultra-low launch cost that reusable spacecraft are launched into designated orbits.

There is excess fuel in the spacecraft to dock with spacecraft passing through orbit and to refuel.

It is equivalent to the concept of a gas station in space.

When the spacecraft runs out of fuel, it will return to the blue planet, refuel and return to its designated orbit.

This is only possible with ultra-low-cost launches and reusable spacecraft.

Of course, there are still many problems to be overcome before this can be achieved.

(End of this chapter)