Technology invades the modern world

Chapter 468: Ghosts of History

A document from a Chinese aerospace giant, which they claimed was top secret.

The Russians had no reason not to believe it.

Nobody jokes about something like this.

They dispatched their most elite "staff," who, after communicating with the Chinese side, personally smuggled the documents from Shanghai back to Moscow.

Often, the physical body is the safest option.

After receiving the documents, it was confirmed that it was no joke.

But after a closer look, Valentin's doubts did not subside; instead, even more doubts arose.

First of all, the format of the material is very strange; it's microfilm.

What era are we living in? Why are people still using microfilm?

After the film was enlarged and converted into a paper document, the contents left him even more confused.

As a bureaucrat who gradually rose from an engineer to a management position, he possesses a solid foundation in science and engineering.

This document, simply put, is about the N1 rocket. The N1 was indeed a monster in the history of spaceflight, but it was an outdated monster. Even the Russians themselves never thought of restarting the N1.

Russia, which inherited the mantle of the Soviet Union, has always retained the dream of building a super heavy rocket, and this dream is even stronger today in the China-America lunar race.

However, it's not a reboot of the N1, but a new, completely new design concept.

After a young man named Randolph Lin in the Far East miraculously landed on the moon with the Saturn V rocket, there were indeed voices within the Russian space program suggesting that we should follow the example of our Chinese counterparts and restart the N1 mission, but such voices quickly disappeared.

Because they weren't confident they could do it.

Now Randolph Lin was passing on information about the N1 rocket to them, which made Valentin wonder if Comrade Lin had helped them complete the design of the N1 rocket.

Otherwise, as the inheritors of the Soviet legacy, we have all these materials here.

Upon closer inspection, he realized something was amiss. What was amiss? The traces on the document itself indicated that it was the work of the Soviet space agency, with no signs of modern alteration.

The thrust curve of the NK-33 engine, in particular, demonstrates, through the smoothness of the thrust control curve and the response time, that it has solved all the problems related to subsynchronous vibration.

This is also the century-old problem that led to the N1 rocket's ultimate demise.

Even now, Starship has only barely managed to resolve the problems caused by the resonance of so many engines.

Does this document indicate that they solved the problem during the Soviet era?
Valentin found it unbelievable.

He quickly assembled a panel of experts, needing them to provide a more detailed analysis.

Alexei, a propulsion systems expert at the Russian Space Agency, stared intently at the magnified thrust curve of the NK-33 engine on the projector.

"In terms of engineering data, this is almost perfect cheating! It solves all the nightmares about subsynchronous vibrations."

The design drawings show that it used a high-frequency pressure sensor and a digital throttle valve that we had never succeeded with before.

I'm certain that even up to 1970, with Soviet technology, they couldn't have manufactured a high-frequency pressure sensor with such parameters.

Another control system expert focused his attention on the architecture diagram of the control system.

“This is not a KORD system! This is a distributed digital control network, but look here,” he pointed to a chip diagram labeled CPU: “Its logic gate array design is not the familiar Soviet modular layout, nor is it America’s style. It’s a completely new style, strangely, as if classical and modern have intertwined at this moment.”

Please see the wiring and signal flow here.

This architecture completely abandons the synchronous clock-driven mode widely used by the Soviet Union and America in the late 60s.

It employs asynchronous logic and highly parallel computing units.

In principle, it is closer to the event-driven architecture that we are only starting to try today, which can greatly reduce latency and power consumption.

However, its underlying logic gates themselves possess a classical, minimalist elegance.

Instead of using complex, highly integrated TTL gates, it extensively employs custom-designed logic units based on basic transistors.

The wiring of these units follows a very rigorous graph theory optimization algorithm to maximize functionality and minimize the number of transistors.

This extreme saving of silicon wafer space and computing paths is typical of the mindset of engineers in the era of extreme resource scarcity in the 1960s.

This is the core of the contradiction.

The packaging and interconnection style of this digital circuit uses relatively large, highly reliable wires and multilayer board technology that we were able to manufacture back then.

This shows that the designers were very aware of the manufacturing limitations of that era, and they used the most advanced logical framework to adapt to the most primitive production processes.

The redundant design of the central coordination unit is something I am familiar with.

I saw it in top-secret internal documents. It used a specific dual hot backup scheme that was rejected in a top-secret study in 1973, but its design drawings were never made public.

Dmitry Orlov, an expert in archives and technical history, was responsible for comparing the physical and coded characteristics of the documents.

Dmitri picked up a restored printout: "Please look at the footer."

The code here is not in modern Russian format.

It adopted the GOST 6.38-66 standard, a document format specification used by the Soviet Union in the late 60s. In particular, the handwritten Cyrillic annotations on the drawings, with their unique strokes and the marking habits of blue engineering pencils, were highly consistent with the personal style of the late chief engineer of the Korolev Design Bureau, Makarov.

What's even stranger is that the startup verification program of the control module contains a seven-digit KORD system diagnostic code.

This code was specifically designed to test the D/A conversion error of analog computers, and it only appeared in internal test reports that were destroyed after the 1971 explosion.

It's a ghost code, and it's impossible for anyone outside of a few senior engineers to know about it.

But strangely, this code is different from the information I found. The format is the same, but the numbers are different. If I remember correctly, it's not a fault code; it's a success code.

Russian experts analyzed the situation for a long time and only found one explanation: in the long run, the N1 rocket was actually successful.

Valentin urgently wrote a report to the Kremlin, requesting permission to travel to Shenhai immediately.

His application was approved quickly, and he rushed to Shanghai overnight.

In Shenhai, he met that terrifyingly young Chinese man. Compared to their last meeting, where the man displayed great technological prowess, Valentin felt that the man was shrouded in mystery this time.

Looking back now, perhaps the other party did have this veil of mystery back then, but he simply overlooked some details.

"Professor, the microfilm you provided is of immense value."

I believe it is true, but I also believe our records are complete and credible.

"I'm very curious where your information came from?" Valentin's expression was serious, and he was eager to get the answer.

Sitting opposite him, Lin Ran replied in a Moscow accent even more standard than Valentin's: "Comrade Valentin, you were an engineer in that era, you know best how easily archives can be altered."

Especially those projects involving high-level politics and failures.

The archives you see may have been edited, while the materials I give you are the true history.

Which is the true history? History has become blurred at this moment.

Lin Ran was talking about his altered history, but the confidence he displayed made Valentin hesitate. Could it be that we really did manage to defeat N1 in history?

Lin Ran's accusations regarding the archives made Valentin frown and feel extremely uncomfortable.

This is a direct attack on the Russians' lungs.

Because in the history of Soviet Russia, the Russians were most adept at doing this.

Lev Trotsky's image was systematically removed from all official photographs, history textbooks, and official documents.

There is a famous photograph of Lenin giving a speech in Red Square, with Trotsky standing on the steps.

However, in the later official version by Soviet Russia, he was completely erased, as if he had never existed.

Like Nikolai Yezhov, he was systematically deleted.

"Trotsky, Yezhov, Kamenev, Zinoviev"

Lin Ran rattled off the names of prominent figures in Soviet history who had been systematically purged, his impeccable Moscow accent making Valentin feel as if he had been transported back to the 1980s. Valentin quickly waved his hand, "Enough, Professor, enough! I know what you mean, you're right." Valentin didn't want to recall the 1980s; it was the most painful memory for Soviet Russia, when the entire space program faced an unprecedented predicament.

At that time, he was a senior engineer on the Energia rocket project.

On the surface, they were working hard on the ambitious Buran space shuttle project, and the Kremlin propaganda machine was still singing the great hymn of fighting against America.

But Valentin clearly remembers that behind the magnificent curtain, everything was rotting.

It was a hopeless predicament that permeated every corner.

He recalled the biting winds blowing through the massive assembly building and over the unfinished fuel pipelines at the Baikonur launch site.

It's not a technical problem, it's a funding problem.

The project budget was cut at every stage, and the workers became lazy and drank heavily because they were not paid enough.

Those idealists who once burned with passion for humanity's conquest of space are now worrying every day about whether they can buy a decent pair of shoes.

He recalled that at the design bureau, he had to personally beg those military procurement officers just to get a few reliable integrated circuit chips.

They knew that the West had more advanced and smaller digital processors, but due to strict embargoes and the backwardness of their domestic semiconductor industry, they could only rely on Soviet-made components that were bulky, had low computing power, and poor reliability.

Every time he conducted a rocket test, Valentin would pray to God that the critical sensors would not fail at the moment of ignition.

The most painful thing is the loss of talent.

Those veteran experts who had dedicated their lives to working alongside Korolev and Grushko retired one after another, carrying with them their experience and honors.

The young engineers who succeeded them no longer had the fervor for space; instead, they yearned for Western electronics, jeans, and a free lifestyle.

They no longer believe in ideals, ideologies, or other grand slogans; they only believe in foreign exchange and tangible resources.

Thinking about all this, Valentin felt as if his throat was choked.

He took a deep breath, suppressing those moldy memories deep within his heart:
"Professor, perhaps you are right. After the project was officially canceled in 1974, all public information about the entire project was completely erased."

The existence of the N1 rocket has been denied by the Kremlin for decades.

The engineers at the time were instructed to destroy all blueprints, photographs, and hardware.

It wasn't until the open policy period that the outside world learned the exact scale of the project and the details of its failure.

You might be able to convince outsiders and people who don't know the inside story with this kind of explanation, but you definitely can't convince me.

"I've spent decades at NASA. If N1 were to actually succeed in history, even if it were just a hope of success, I would definitely find out from the relevant personnel. They can't hide it from me; they won't."

Lin Ran said quietly, "I don't know either, and I can't give you an answer."

This is something I found in America while searching for NASA information. It's a document about the N1 rocket, and I didn't think much of it at the time.

Because the N1 rocket was a failed project, it left no impression on history other than regret.

However, a simulation graph in this document caught my attention, showing that it had the potential to succeed.

Later, even after I returned to Shanghai, I kept asking our "staff" in America to help me complete this file.

After collecting all the information, I found that it seemed to be real, or at least its solution was feasible, and it was even designed based on technology from the late 60s.

Its design philosophy was an extreme adaptation to the backward productivity of the late 1960s. After simulation calculation with a supercomputer, the curve was almost identical to the simulated curve.

I find it hard to imagine which undiscovered genius, with the worst semiconductors and the fewest resources, achieved this miracle that should have been accomplished by the entire national machinery.

In my view, this document represents the indomitable spirit of the Soviet engineers who refused to accept defeat.

Valentin was already in tears.

He didn't try to wipe it away, but simply let the complex emotions churn in his chest.

He really couldn't think of it.

He once thought that, as a witness, he had completely sealed the tragedy of the N-1 rocket in the coffin of history.

He once thought that the truth behind the failure was nothing more than political arrogance and technological limitations.

He even once thought that if he had received even a little more funding or a little more trust back then, the outcome would not have been any different; he would still have failed.

Unexpectedly, in a foreign land, there were engineers from the Russian Space Agency who persisted in this dream—the super-large rocket they had envisioned together at the Baikonur Cosmodrome.

Nobody dislikes big guys.

He suddenly reached out and grabbed the magnified, perfect flight curve diagram on the table.

That curve, which should have been a triumphant anthem for Soviet spaceflight, has become a ghostly illusion in the real world.

“It’s Zakharov!” Valentin’s voice trembled, so hoarse it was almost inaudible. “It must be Zakharov! When he proposed distributed control, we all thought he was crazy, that he was just daydreaming.”

His thoughts were abruptly pulled back to Moscow in 1974, to the young Kiev engineer who, with an incongruous confidence, presented his overly radical plan.

At the time, Valentin was sitting in the audience, listening to the experts on stage reject him on the grounds of insufficient resources and outdated technology.

In the years that followed, Zakharov disappeared.

Valentin thought to himself, "So the other party went to America and continued to pursue their dream there."

Thinking of this, Valentin shook his head helplessly. Even though he was a high-ranking official in the Soviet Space Agency at the time, he couldn't push N1 forward.

The reason is simple: Soviet Russia was out of money.

It was not politics or dogma that killed this great idea.

Rather, it was the Soviet Union's scarce resources and inherent economic disadvantages that meant that no matter how brilliant the idea was, they couldn't provide the resources for initial trial and error.

It wasn't possible back then, but it is now.

Valentin raised his head, his eyes burning with a rekindled flame.

“Professor, you have brought back a ghost,” Valentin’s voice was full of determination. “You have brought back our buried souls, Professor. Name your price.”

Do you still have the original design notes? Besides the film, do you have the test reports and programming instructions for that digital controller? We need to reinfuse this soul into the body of Russian spaceflight! We want the world to know that Soviet engineers didn't lose because of technology, but because they didn't have as many resources as NASA.

Lin Ran thought to himself, "Sure enough, not everything needs to be explained very clearly. You only need to give a general overview, and the other party will naturally fill in the blanks."

They will complete the entire narrative logic.

From the Russian perspective, it remains unknown whether this document came from Lin Ran or from the official Yenching government, whether it was collected by someone commissioned by Lin Ran, or whether Yenching became interested in it after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 91 and collected it in Moscow.

In this world without superpowers, science dominates all seemingly impossible phenomena, and even if it is indeed caused by superpowers, people will add a layer of scientific veneer to it.

Just like UFOs, people used to be incredibly enthusiastic about them, with countless UFO enthusiasts making the search for extraterrestrial life their life goal. But what about now? Even if a UFO really appears, people's first reaction is, "This is some kind of top-secret national project."

Reality doesn't need logic, because reality can always find a self-consistent explanation.

Lin Ran added, "I have all of these. My information is complete. Comrade Valentin, I'd like to remind you of something: should we consider buying the rocket itself from us as well?"

Valentin hesitated. "Buy from you? What do you mean?"

Lin Ran said, "We have rich experience in historical replication, a large team of engineers, and readily available production capacity."

Another point I'd like to point out is that buying from us will definitely be much cheaper than making it yourself.

Valenkin understood Lin Ran's subtext: You didn't have enough resources in the past, do you think you have enough now?

2026 is Russia's military budget year, with defense spending reaching 8% of GDP, a truly staggering figure.

How much more resources will their space program receive?

It would be better to just buy a ready-made one from China, assemble it ourselves, and complete a lunar landing for a fee, like setting off a big firework, to comfort the spirits of the Soviet heroes. Secondly, it would also prove to the world that Russia has not given up in this lunar race, and that we still have the ability to be at the table.

After a moment's hesitation, Valentin shook his head firmly: "No, Professor, we will return to the moon on our own."

(End of this chapter)