This star is going to the moon

Chapter 464 The US Re-implements a "National System," and the X-33 Demonstrator Finally Makes its Maiden Flight
Australian local history, major space events throughout the ages... (bald man with accent)

Despite Australia sounding like a desolate place, it has a real connection with space exploration.

This place was bombarded by colonies from numerous Gundam anime series.

It was also hit by meteorites from space, as seen in various disaster movies.

When "The Wandering Earth 2" is released, we'll get hit by the space elevator in it.

While Chinese and American netizens were discussing things like kilometer-class spacecraft, space shuttles, and single-unit atmospheric reentry, the Wanchai "Flying Squirrel One" company announced that it would not attempt to launch "Flying Squirrel One" again in Australia.

Netizens don't care about this "roadside" at all; they're looking at much more impressive things, like the sci-fi-level aerospace technology of Chinese and Americans.

In fact, Lu Yun knew about the company's future because it had gone to collaborate with Xiao Rizi, who shared the same interests.

After failing to launch in Wan Chai and Australia, it developed a new rocket to launch on a small day, but that also failed.

After that, Lu Yun lost track of the company, because it really was just a roadside stall.

Of course, Lu Yun isn't paying attention to it right now; he's focused on X-33.

After all, he died before he saw the X-33 make its maiden flight in his previous life, but after the timeline was drastically altered in this life, the Americans actually managed to bring the X-33 out.

The main reason is that the version has been updated, which has greatly enhanced China's space capabilities. So the Americans had to dig through old documents and find a project that had some progress and could be completed in a short time to compete.

Even if the performance and technology are slightly inferior, as long as the difference is not significant and most ordinary people feel that the two are at the same level, it's fine.

"So, Mr. Lu, do you think the American X-33 will have a successful maiden flight?"

"That's hard to say..."

Lu Yun came to the Beijing Flight Control Center but didn't leave in a hurry. He happened to be attending an important aerospace conference nearby the next day, which coincided with the US announcing the maiden flight date of the X-33.

The spacecraft, which should have taken off twenty years ago, is finally about to make its maiden flight. It's truly a remarkable achievement.

However, Lu Yun found it difficult to answer her colleague's question.

The US is definitely not Taiwan; its space technology is far superior to Taiwan's. However, the US is currently in a quantum superposition state of "doing or not doing".

The commercial "new spaceflight" represented by Elon Musk is constantly innovating in the field of spaceflight. If we exclude Lu Yun, their progress in the field of "space transportation" is very rapid.

Meanwhile, the "older aerospace" companies, led by Boeing and Lockheed Martin, have been relatively ineffective in the field of "space transportation."

Putting aside Lockheed Martin's X-33 technology demonstrator, which has been sitting idle for twenty years, Boeing's next-generation Starliner manned spacecraft is absolutely a disaster.

Since the retirement of the Space Shuttle a decade ago, NASA has lost the ability to send astronauts to the International Space Station and has had to lease the Big Bear manned spacecraft at a high price.

To overcome its predicament, NASA launched the Commercial Crew Program, which involves commercial companies developing a new generation of crewed spacecraft capable of traveling to and from the International Space Station.

However, the plan was met with widespread skepticism, and Congress was also skeptical, repeatedly cutting NASA's related funding.

It wasn't until aerospace giant Boeing stepped in and said, "I will step in," that Congress was persuaded to approve the funding.

In 2014, after several years of selection, NASA signed an agreement with Boeing and SpaceX to develop a new spacecraft.

Boeing, which contributed the most to the project, received a contract worth $42 billion.

The fledgling Space Fork was only a backup plan, with a contract value of $26 billion.

After all, Boeing is the undisputed long-established manufacturer of manned spacecraft under the United States flag, and the spacecraft it produces are truly top-notch!
From McDonnell Aircraft Corporation, the earliest contractor for the Mercury and Gemini spacecraft, to North American Aviation, the contractor for the Apollo spacecraft, and then to Rockwell, the contractor for the Space Shuttle orbiters, all of them were eventually merged into Boeing.

It can be said that when NASA launched the Commercial Crew Development Program, Boeing was the only manufacturer with experience in developing manned spacecraft.

Boeing even confidently announced that the new spacecraft would be ready for commercial crewed missions by 2015 and named it "Starliner"!
however……

The project's implementation process repeatedly exposed design and manufacturing flaws, leading to continuous delays in the spacecraft's progress.

In March 2019, the manned Dragon, which served as a "backup" in the contract, successfully completed its maiden unmanned flight.

Then, more than half a year later, in December 2019, the Starliner spacecraft finally carried out its first unmanned orbital test flight mission.

And they only carried out the task, but did not complete it!
Because a basic error was discovered as soon as it took off—the clock on the spacecraft was not synchronized with the ground, and the two were 11 hours apart!

Therefore, based on incorrect timing calculations during the spacecraft's flight, it concluded that the spacecraft had deviated from its orbit and thus activated its engines in an attempt to correct it...

As a result, the limited fuel supply was quickly exhausted.

Because it failed to reach the planned flight altitude, the docking with the International Space Station was cancelled, but fortunately the return to Earth went relatively smoothly.

But the most important task was not completed, and NASA described the mission as a "catastrophic failure."

Two years have passed, and the Crew Dragon spacecraft, which served as a "backup" in the contract, has already completed four manned missions. Recently, the improved "Starliner" was mounted on a rocket in preparation for its second unmanned test flight.

The result was that multiple valves on the spacecraft were corroded and clogged, forcing the cancellation of the second unmanned test flight and a complete overhaul.

In this life, Lu Yun doesn't know when it will be able to conduct a second unmanned test flight, but in the previous life, Boeing barely managed to complete the first unmanned test flight of the "Starliner" in May 2022.

Yes, it was barely completed, not perfectly completed.

Two of the spacecraft's twelve orbital maneuvering engines failed to ignite correctly, but thanks to its redundant design, it successfully docked with the International Space Station.

Afterwards, the astronauts on the space station opened the hatch and entered the cabin. In addition to checking the status of the spacecraft, they unloaded 200 kilograms of supplies brought by the "Starliner" and then packed more than 200 kilograms of supplies to return to Earth.

After that, under Boeing's management, although the Starliner spacecraft still had many "flaws" during the orbital ignition phase, industry insiders assessed that the mission was successful and the Starliner spacecraft could start subsequent manned test flight missions.

But NASA doesn't think so.

Subsequent inspections revealed a series of new problems with the spacecraft, such as the protective tape wrapped around the wire insulation being made of flammable material, and the parachute system potentially being more fragile than expected; all of these issues required redesign and retesting.

This led to repeated delays in the first manned flight mission.

Many suspect that the reason why aerospace giant Boeing is being "made difficult" is because another "procrastinating" project it was in charge of failed to satisfy NASA.

That is, the SLS lunar rocket, which has also been delayed for a long time.

That thing is even more heavyweight.

However, the previous "Starliner" took two or four years to finally conduct its first manned flight. But the first manned flight was not smooth either, and it was delayed several times before it finally flew to the International Space Station with two astronauts.

As a result, after the spacecraft reached space, it experienced a thruster malfunction and a helium leak, and NASA immediately halted the spacecraft's approach to the International Space Station.

There's no way around it, Americans have PTSD from "aircraft crashing into tall buildings".

If the Starliner spacecraft were to crash into the International Space Station, which is already plagued by minor problems due to its age, it would be rendered useless.

Fortunately, after several hours of inspection, the experts determined that there were no major problems and allowed the spacecraft to dock with the International Space Station.

But after careful inspection following the docking, they discovered that the problem was bigger than they had imagined!

They were not comfortable with the two astronauts returning to Earth in this contraption.

Don't fucking cremate it directly in the atmosphere.

So... three months later, the technicians still couldn't completely solve the problem with the "Starliner" spacecraft, so they decided to return the spacecraft empty and leave the astronauts on the space station.

This is not the most embarrassing thing for Boeing. The most embarrassing thing is that Boeing cannot repair the spacecraft or send another spacecraft to pick up the astronauts who have been stranded on the space station for three months and bring them back to Earth in a short period of time.

It either seeks help from Big Bear's spaceship or from its rival Space Fork's spaceship.

Forget about it, the docking port of the Tiangong space station is not compatible with the docking port of the International Space Station, so the Shenzhou spacecraft that is compatible with Tiangong will naturally be unable to pick up people.

The reason NASA is pursuing a commercial crew program is to get rid of the "space rip-off" tactics employed by the US space agency, so it will definitely not buy tickets from the US to send people to the space station again.

Boeing then had no choice but to turn to its competitors for help, specifically the "backup" spacecraft in the previous contract—the Crew Dragon spacecraft.

Ma Yilong's lips curled into a smirk: "√"

The two astronauts grinned and said, "An eight-day mission turned into eight months, what a win!"

They are professional astronauts, and for astronauts whose dream is to go to space, Boeing's Day of Suffering is their lucky day.

Of course, they also took on a great deal of risk.

If the Starliners had more than just minor problems, but major ones, they might have made their way into history books in a different way.

Lockheed Martin, which is now confidently announcing the first flight date of the X-33, is also a representative of the old space industry. Its most famous spacecraft, the Orion lunar probe, has not yet circled the moon. After it does, many problems will emerge.

For example, communication problems may occur during lunar orbit. After returning from the moon at high speed, it may be found that the spacecraft's heat shield has a problem. After landing and careful inspection, it may also be found that the spacecraft's life support system has a design flaw and the battery has a problem.

So no matter how glorious their history was, they now have a lot of problems as "old spacefarers".

The X-33 never even had its maiden flight in the previous life. In this life, Lockheed Martin picked up the technology from more than 20 years ago, added some new technologies, and finally created the X-33 "assembled ship". Lu Yun really couldn't say whether it would have a successful maiden flight.

As the X-33's maiden flight approaches, the world's attention is focused on the United States, with everyone curious whether the "world's second space shuttle," which the US claims to be, can successfully complete its maiden flight. NASA and Lockheed Martin have also released some information in a timely manner.

Wow, this is a real investment!

[The US has actually mobilized people from all over the country, from various companies and schools, to work together on technologies that were previously unfinished before the X-33. Is this really just a Lockheed Martin project?]

Indeed, I simply don't believe that even Boeing voluntarily contributed its own engineers to the X-33 project.

[Exactly, it's already a miracle these two companies aren't fighting amongst themselves; why would they contribute to each other's efforts?]

"They must have received a helping hand from an unseen force."

[This looks familiar. Isn't this what many colonialists have been talking about as "mobilizing the entire nation's resources"? They say that the research and development capabilities of any single foreign aerospace company surpass those of our entire nation, so we only know how to mobilize the entire nation's resources, while a single foreign company can handle it?]

This is utterly absurd. It's as if the US has never used a national system for large-scale national projects. During the US's hegemonic era, many projects were massive, nationally-driven initiatives. Why isn't the US doing that anymore? Not because they don't want to, but because they can't afford to anymore!

That's right. A national system can only work well for countries that are rapidly rising. Once a country declines, all sorts of other thoughts emerge, and it becomes impossible to use a national system to integrate resources for mega-projects.

[That's right. The Manhattan Project involved the US mobilizing over 10 people and spending $20 billion—that's a huge amount of money back then—before they were able to develop the atomic bomb. That's the extent of their national mobilization back then.]

The most classic example of a massive, nationally-driven project in the United States is the Apollo manned lunar landing program. At its peak, the program involved 2 companies, over 200 universities, and more than 80 research institutions, with a total workforce exceeding 30 people. It cost over $255 billion, approximately 0.57% of the US GDP at the time, which translates to $1.3 trillion today!

[Wow, no wonder the Americans stopped after a few moon landings; who could afford that kind of spending?]

Therefore, the US's current return-to-the-moon program prioritizes low cost, and Elon Musk's Lunar Eagle spacecraft was selected because of its low cost. The head of Blue Origin is currently in a lawsuit with NASA and Musk over this.

It is said that the US's return to the moon program will ultimately cost $1000 billion, which is indeed much cheaper than the Apollo moon landings.

Given the current state of the US, I feel that $1000 billion is unlikely to be enough.

How much will our manned lunar landing program cost? Will it cost 1000 billion RMB?

Wow, you're planning to set the exchange rate at 1:1 with the US dollar?

No, many of our products are indeed cheaper, and with Lu Yun involved—he's known for saving money, time, and effort—our expenses are definitely much lower than those of the Americans.

This matter will probably have to wait until it's declassified later. Let's just wait and see what happens with the X-33. Based on this analysis, it seems its maiden flight was a "mini version of a national effort."

It definitely is; let's see if it can successfully complete its maiden flight...

On September 30th, the new movies "The Battle at Lake Changjin" and "My Father and I" were released in China and Laos, but netizens were waiting for the live broadcast of the maiden flight of the American X-33 that evening.

While it was late at night in China, it was broad daylight in the US, and the X-33, which was erected and leaning against the launch pad, was being fueled.

(This is a network simulation diagram. The orientation is a bit off, but there's nothing I can do about it since this thing has never actually been launched.)
Once it was fully fueled and all conditions were suitable, the command center issued the ignition command.

In the eyes of tens of thousands of on-site and live viewers, huge amounts of white water vapor surged up from both sides of the deflector, and then the X-33 flew up with scorching flames!
(Network simulation diagram)

Then the comments started!

[Wow, awesome!]

The technology of the Beacon of Freedom is still advanced!

A beacon of humanity!

(End of this chapter)