Technology invades the modern world

Chapter 225 Immortals, Countless as Hemp

Do you want to know the meaning of life? Do you want to truly live?

However, this time, besides that sentence, there was also a phone call:
"***"

And another passage:

"Let's restart the moon landing in 60 years."

"Hey, this is Aldrin. Who are you?"

Without the slightest hesitation, I made a phone call.

"I am Randolph, Randolph Lin. If you don't know who I am, you can Google me later."

To make a long story short, come to China, and we'll restart our lunar landing program. You could become the first person to set foot on the moon in the 21st century, and also the only person to have set foot on the moon in two centuries.

To make up for the regrets of this life, instead of living such a muddled existence, don't you want to truly live?
"Dr. Rendezvous, it's time to go."

How could they possibly offer to pay money right away?

Once I'm in China, I'll slowly accumulate gold coins.

Lin Ran was confident that as long as Aldrin took this step...

He'll eventually lose all the gold coins he has.

When Aldrin heard the final "Dr. Rendezvous," a voice that was both kind and stern yet commanding, he felt as if his soul had been cleansed.

Because no one has called him that for many years.

Back when he was still at NASA, astronauts liked to call him that, and he felt that this way of addressing him was both respectful and ironic.

Hearing it again after so many years brought a unique feeling to my heart.

Aldrin took a deep breath: "So who exactly are you? What do you want?"

“Randolph Lin, restart the Apollo program. The moon is there, and we’re going there,” Lin Ran said, silently thinking to himself, “I prefer you to call me Professor rather than Randolph Lin. Your doubts will be answered after you come to China.”

To be honest, making such a decision required a tremendous amount of determination.

Fortunately, Aldrin is already 90 years old, and all three of his wives have fallen out with him, dividing his assets in divorces time and time again. His children have also moved on to their own lives.

Making this decision wasn't that difficult.

After only a moment's hesitation, he murmured, "Where in China?"

Lin Ran said, "Meet at the Chinese Consulate in Houston, and someone will arrange your follow-up work."

Aldrin asked doubtfully, "Work for China?"

He is not opposed to working for China.

On the contrary, if he could return to the moon in his lifetime, he would be more than happy to have the Chinese government backing him.

After all, this means greater support and a greater possibility.

"Let's talk about everything after we get to China."

"No, what does he want to do? Is he really going to go to the moon?" Lin Zhongqing was stunned by the list.

Lin Ran's request has already been made.

We hope Shenhai can help these people get visas. There are 27 people in total, all of them are white Americans. The youngest is 81 years old and the oldest is 90 years old.

It was because of a familiar name on this list: Buzz Aldrin.

Therefore, Lin Zhongqing specifically asked his secretary to check each name on the list when he saw it.

Goodness, every single one of them, as long as their names can be found on the internet, are former NASA employees.

Moreover, they were not ordinary employees; they were employees who were deeply involved in the Apollo program.

From Ebenezer Haines, who manually calculated the correction value of Earth's oblateness to the orbital tilt angle of spacecraft, to Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon.

Only five people could not be found, but based on the publicly available information of the other 22 people.

Is there any doubt about that?

They were all NASA employees from the golden age of space exploration during the Cold War, and the most elite of them.

No.

At first, Li Congming told him that Lin Ran wanted to go to the moon.

Lin Zhongqing thought it was a joke.

Young people, after achieving great results, always feel like they can fly and do anything.

That's normal. When you're young, you also feel like you can change the world.

Later, you are constantly taught a lesson by reality, and then you accept reality and make some achievements to change reality little by little. Life is like this, moving forward in a cycle.

Anyway, Lin Ran doesn't need the school to invest money, he just wants resources and help connect with suppliers, which is fine.

These resources are more than enough for the school.

If you pay for it yourself, let alone going to the moon, you could even go to a Mars school and no one would stop you.

Musk can go to Mars, and you can swindle money from investors, so no one will stop you from going to a school on Mars.

We will only provide strong support.

Lin Zhongqing originally planned that if Lin Ran still had similar ideas when he arrived, the school would act as a go-between to connect Lin Ran with miHoYo, since miHoYo had a lot of money lying in their account that they hadn't used up.

Or perhaps Bilibili (B站).

Please sponsor the moon landing project of our Fields Medal winners at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

If Musk can launch Falcon, it's not unreasonable for Lin Ran to replicate the Apollo moon landing.

As for how to persuade these entrepreneurs, that's Lin Ran's own business.

The school has already paved the way for you, and if you can't even convince them, then don't talk about going to the moon. Just come back and do your academic research.

Lin Zhongqing's idea is very good.

Lin Zhongqing just didn't expect that the resources Lin Ran wanted were these kinds of resources.

The first time Lin Ran asked the school to help him get work visas for these 27 people.

No, the youngest are all 81-year-old men who come to China to work.

Lin Zhongqing felt like he was suffocating when he saw the list.

It's impossible for him not to suffocate.

Now, when the virus is rampant, why send these eighty-year-old men to China? What if they get sick and die?
Aldrin died in China because of [illegible], which caused immense public pressure.

I can't even think about it.

In addition to Aldrin, there was also a group of former NASA employees.

What will foreign media say?
Did Shanghai Jiao Tong University lure people in en masse and then deliberately murder them?

Kiyomitsu Hayashi was suffocating just thinking about what might happen.

Because it is a special period now, it is difficult for foreigners to apply to come to China through normal channels.

Lin Ran couldn't wait.

Lin Zhongqing originally wanted to refuse, but it was really hard to refuse the first request from a potential Fields Medal winner.

Furthermore, all 27 of them are very influential.

If someone wants to come, will he be blocking their way?
The contract hasn't been signed yet, so Lin Ran turns to Peking University and asks them to handle it.
Do Fields Medal winners even want to keep their awards?

The message has already been sent.

Invitations to the media for the signing ceremony have already been sent out.

Lin Zhongqing was caught in a dilemma.

Furthermore, Lin Zhongqing was really unsure what Lin Ran was up to.

Judging from the list alone, it does indeed seem like a replica of the Apollo program. However, an even bigger question arose in Lin Zhongqing's mind: On what basis?
Why do all these people have to listen to Lin Ran and come to China? What kind of spell has been cast on them?
They're all in their eighties or nineties, practically buried in the earth, yet they still travel thousands of miles to work in China.
Who else at 80 years old has such a high level of enthusiasm for work?

This is no joke.

Of these 27 people, Lin Zhongqing had met one in real life, and that was Buzz Aldrin.

That was in 2017, when the World Space Congress was held in Yanjing.

He attended the event in his capacity as the vice president of Shanghai Jiao Tong University and exchanged a few words with the other party.

He also learned that the other party had completely fallen to the point of being greedy for money, and even when attending the aerospace conference, they wanted to extort a large sum of money from the organizers.

This includes constantly reminiscing about the glorious past and its sorrows.

In Lin Zhongqing's view, it was nothing more than a ghost that lived in the past.

They are simply waiting for the call of another world.

In other words, Lin Ran could use money to get Aldrin to appear in movies, since many Hong Kong films have paid him to be a special guest.

What about the rest?

Could it be that the other 26 people were all hired at a high price?

At your age, do you still want to earn extra money?
Lin Zhongqing was completely baffled.

However, Shanghai Jiao Tong University still has a certain influence in Shanghai and can mobilize certain resources.

He first reported to his superiors, who then reported to Beijing. Beijing then made the decision to let them come, as long as these old men were willing to stay in the hotel for the full 14 days.

Xiao Liu is an ordinary administrative staff member at the Consulate General in Houston.

Although he's called Xiao Liu, he's actually not young anymore. He was transferred to Houston five years after graduating from university and has been working there for almost ten years.

This was the first time he had ever received such a strange request.

Work visas were issued to a group of people, the youngest of whom were born in the 40s.

An 80-year-old American man still wants to go to China to work.

What kind of work ethic is this?

Who says Americans are lazy!
However, one name on the list caught his attention: "Buz Aldrin".

Houston, the space city, is not now, but in the past, the entire city's industries were closely related to the space industry.

Xiao Liu has been here for ten years, how could he not know who Aldrin is?
Ordinary Chinese people may not know this, but here, you can see Aldrin in all kinds of space-related museums and exhibitions.

"Aldrin is getting a work visa to China?" Xiao Liu waited for the next day with this question in mind.

The next day, the same arrangements were made.

A group of elderly white men arrived one after another, and could barely be considered to be still agile.

Being able to come means that you don't have Alzheimer's yet.

To add a point here, Aldrin's ex-wife and children accused him of having dementia in court, which was entirely a ploy to get a larger share of the inheritance and to prove that Aldrin was incapable of financial independence.

"Hello, could you help me apply for a work visa to go to China?"

It really was Aldrin, Xiao Liu thought in surprise.

When he got home that night, he checked all of these people one by one and found that they were all former NASA employees who had gone to work in China.

This strange scene left Xiao Liu with endless doubts, which remained unanswered for a long time.

Similarly, the group that boarded the special plane bound for China also began chatting in small groups on the plane.

"Haines, how did you manage to be persuaded by that Randolph guy?" Aldrin asked in a strong voice.

Haines said with a wry smile, "He sent me letters for a week straight, and they were all my old manuscripts."

I have no idea how this guy got it.

I also have my old manuscripts from when I derived the formulas for orbital calibration. Back in 60, I had just become a mid-level engineer at NASA and was helping von Blaine calculate the Newtonian gravitational perturbation correction formula.

Even in the blank spaces of the manuscript, where I cursed Rudolf as a damned executioner, the words I used to pretend to be a good person remain unchanged.

Oh my god, I admit this trick really works.

Randolph, well, that name sounds so similar to Rudolph, anyway, he convinced me.

I also want to know how he got those manuscripts, and what his purpose was.

Most importantly, if I could, I would really like to land on the moon again.

After listening, Aldrin quickly asked, "Are there any strange things in your manuscripts?"

After thinking for a moment, Haines said, "You know what, there really is one."

A professor keeps appearing out of nowhere.

I have no recollection of ever having a professor like that.

However, in my manuscript, I seem to have held this professor, who doesn't exist in my memory, in particularly high esteem.

They said the professor was able to help them complete the fourth and fifth terms of Newton's gravitational normalization formula.

What professor's calculations are more accurate than those of a computer?

The professor also appears from time to time in other manuscripts.

It's strange, really. In the past, I portrayed professors as if they were omnipotent.

But I really don't remember such a person existing.

I calculated Newton's law of gravitation myself, taking my own time.

There were more than one disagreement between him and von Bryan's side.

I honestly don't remember any professors.

From the moment Haines mentioned the professor, Aldrin completely stopped listening to what Haines said afterward.

He was preoccupied with wondering what this strange professor meant.
He took a deep breath, his voice trembling slightly: "What's his name?"

Haines asked in confusion, "What do you mean by what?"

Aldrin said, "It's not called anything, it's Professor."

Didn't you mention that the professor was also mentioned in the letter you received?

What I want to ask is, what's the professor's name?

Haines suddenly realized: "No, it's the professor."

He has neither a surname nor a given name.

Aldrin recounted the contents of his letter to Haines.

Both parties confirmed that the professor was the same one.

Then they went to each of the former NASA employees on the plane to confirm.

It was confirmed that they all received the letter, and that the professor appeared in the letter.

Finally, the two returned to their seats, exchanged a glance, and said in unison:

"So, who exactly is the professor?"

Not only were they puzzled, but all the former NASA elite employees on the plane began to wonder.

Let's turn back the clock a little.

Lin Ran returned to China on a special plane arranged by the Chinese side. He was greeted at the airport by the Shanghai Municipal Government, Shanghai Jiaotong University, and local media.

As Lin Ran stepped off the plane, he was greeted with flowers and handshakes, followed by a brief speech:

"I am very happy to return to my motherland and to the embrace of my motherland."

I've been longing to return home lately. Just before my return, after seeing my interview with Baihua Press air, I read online that the government should create a favorable environment for me so I can focus on my research without distractions; otherwise, I would choose a better place to stay.

(End of this chapter)