Technology invades the modern world

Chapter 474 Why did you take my spot again?

John Morgan Jr. wouldn't feel any respect just because Lin Ran said those words; he would only find the other person boring and old-fashioned.

What era are we living in now? Commercial spaceflight emphasizes agile development, relying on iteration, optimization, and high-frequency launches to drive projects forward.

SpaceX ushered in this era, and from the outside perspective, Lin's Apollo technology pushed this era to its climax with "rapid trial and error, rapid fixes".

In this new era, the traditional approach of aerospace agencies, which spends years and mobilizes vast resources to pursue a one-shot, perfect success, is outdated. Even institutions like China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation and NASA, which have access to massive resources, are pursuing new-era approaches.

This approach not only aligns with current trends but also resonates with the thinking of financial professionals: failure is not failure, but preparation for the next success.

If this theory existed during the Cold War, the Soviet Union would have gritted its teeth and allowed N1 to operate for several more years before abolishing it.

European Space Agency, Russian Space Agency, Japanese Space Agency, and other traditional space agencies are all striving to incubate their own SpaceX.

When they only had SpaceX, they weren't in a hurry, after all, America was special.

When China had Apollo Technology, these organizations, embracing the idea that "if China can do it, so can we," started to get anxious and eager to support their own country's SpaceX.

In this day and age, no country will be motivated to strive for excellence because of America's technological achievements, but it will certainly be inspired by China's success to think, "I can do it too."

Take Japan as an example. They poached the chief engineer who had led large-scale projects from Apollo Technology for an exorbitant price, helped pay the breach of contract penalty, waited for the other party to pass the desensitization period, and even knew that the person they were poaching was not a key figure.

“Professor, well, perhaps you are right. You are the master, and I am just an apprentice,” John Morgan Jr. said outwardly, offering a flattering reply.

John Morgan Jr. has been having a great time lately. His father has risen to prominence within the Morgan family, achieving remarkable feats and leading everyone to plunder the wealth of an entire region, returning to the center stage of the family and becoming a pivotal figure.

With General Aerospace in his hands, Morgan remains steadfast amidst the ebb and flow of the White House, and no matter how much Musk reforms NASA, General Aerospace always manages to secure its rightful share.

General Aerospace possesses the Burning One rocket technology, comparable to the Falcon 9, the Saturn V rocket, and a strong relationship with Apollo Technologies, all of which determine their position in America's commercial space industry.

This is an era in which the Wolf Clause exists in name only.

“John, please give my regards to your father. I haven’t seen him for almost a month. Is he in Tokyo or New York?” Lin Ran asked.

John Morgan Jr.'s smile was somewhat stiff, because his father seemed to be having such a good time in Tokyo that he had no intention of returning to New York: "Still in Tokyo, Professor, thank you for your concern."

He wondered if Kabukicho in Tokyo was so captivating that it had mesmerized his father.

John Morgan Jr. did not continue the topic, but instead said, "Professor, NASA has invested resources in the construction of the T-base in the Arctic. They also want to build an electromagnetic launch orbit similar to the Steel Dragon on the Moon. The mission of the Deep Space Gateway space station has been fully handed over to General Aerospace."

Now, my task is to remedy the situation, and I need your help.

No payment was discussed; everything was understood without being said.

Need I say more about the compensation? For John Morgan Jr., even if NASA's entire grant were directly transferred to Apollo Technologies, it wouldn't be a huge sum of money. He had plenty of ways to recoup that money from the capital markets, at least doubling the amount.

After listening, Lin Ran asked directly, "Where do you want to go? This time we'll occupy the best location in NRHO."

NRHO, or Near-Linear Halo Orbit, refers to the optimal location of an orbit that offers the longest energy window, the lowest Earth-Moon communication delay, and the lowest orbital maintenance cost.

In lunar orbit, energy relies almost entirely on solar panels.

Therefore, the energy window is equal to the light window.

John Morgan Jr. replied without hesitation, “Professor, we would certainly prefer you to help us choose this second-best position.”

From launch to orbit and final assembly, Apollo Technologies' Moon Palace Gate went through an exceptionally smooth and efficient process.

Burning 2 precisely delivered the massive main body of the space station module, primarily the core energy and propulsion module, into a lunar transfer orbit.

Subsequently, Apollo Technologies and China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation will use their respective rockets to send key components such as the habitation module, experimental module, and docking module into the Earth-Moon transfer orbit in batches.

Each subsequent module is equipped with a high-precision lidar and autonomous docking system provided by Apollo Technologies.

The module performs precise autonomous maneuvers in its near-lunar orbit and docks fully automatically with the core module on NRHO.

The entire process is like an assembly line operation, eliminating the reliance on extensive extravehicular activities by astronauts in the traditional space station assembly.

With its elegant posture, stable NRHO orbit, and energy efficiency far exceeding external expectations, it overlooks the moon from its lunar orbit.

The whole process was very smooth.

Apollo Technologies also released a small satellite to faithfully record the assembly process from a distance, near the gates of the Moon Palace.

But the video and the incident itself are just news on the Simplified Chinese internet, a piece of news that doesn't cause any stir.

News and events are not the same.

All events are news, but not all of them will be reported.

But news is not necessarily the same as an event.

The incident needs to provoke widespread public discussion and commentary.

However, there was none. On Apollo Technology's official Bilibili video account, the assembly process, which they filmed with great effort, had many views but very few comments.

It's just a lunar space station, isn't it? Is that so strange?

Goraf Chaudhry is an Indian blogger who primarily operates on TikTok and YouTube.

In the past, he mainly produced content about Silicon Valley, but in recent years he has gradually expanded his content to China, frequently traveling to China to report on the latest technological advancements in the country.

He stood in front of the towering skyscrapers of Shanghai, holding a cup of coffee, his expression exaggerated yet helpless.

His latest video is titled: "Lunar Space Station? They didn't even lift an eyebrow!"

Golav, speaking to the camera with a puzzled tone, said: "Hello everyone, I'm Golav! Today I want to talk about a very serious issue."

Just yesterday, China successfully launched a lunar orbiter named "Gate to the Moon Palace".

This is the first space station ever built on the moon in human history.

This is also the most advanced and efficient space station!
Moreover, it completed orbital capture in just four days!

This is a feat that far surpasses what other countries have been able to achieve, isn't it?

He shrugged forcefully, his expression exaggerated.

"But among my Chinese friends and colleagues, I feel like I'm living in another universe! I asked my Chinese colleagues, 'Hey, your lunar space station has been launched!' They all replied, 'Oh, I know.'"

But I couldn't detect any excitement in their expressions!

The scene then cuts to Goraf secretly filming his Chinese classmate who is using his phone.

The classmate was expressionless, watching a video about pet cats.

Goraf returned to the camera, lowered his voice, and offered a professional analysis tinged with a hint of helplessness:

"I realized that this wasn't indifference; it was that the threshold had been raised too high!"
What did they experience just over a year ago? They witnessed the lunar dragon with their own eyes.

They witnessed the first test of a lunar electromagnetic orbit, and saw an unmanned spacecraft accelerate to escape velocity on the lunar surface! That was science fiction becoming reality! That was a strategic show of force!

Goraf shrugged, his tone full of irony:
"After experiencing the extreme tension and excitement of the electromagnetic railgun launch and deep space rescue over several days, you can now tell them: Hey, we launched a space station that will slowly orbit the moon."

They were completely unmoved, simply thinking: Oh, so it's the one that slowly flies up using traditional fossil fuels? That's good, it's infrastructure.

Indeed, for China today, reusable rockets are like technology from the previous era, now outdated.

The Falcon 9 was successfully recovered in 2015. In just 11 years, the technology has already become outdated. It should be noted that India has not yet mastered this technology, and the vast majority of countries in the world have not mastered it either.

China truly lives up to its reputation as a top-tier technological power. Even something as revolutionary as the lunar space station, which could change the global space landscape, couldn't excite them!
My God, I feel like I need to report on the successful human colonization of Mars just to get my Chinese friends to even raise an eyebrow! They've gotten used to miracles!

At the end of the video, Goraf drinks the coffee in a blue antler-patterned coffee cup in one gulp, seemingly using caffeine to accept this cruel reality.

In the battle between the dragon and the elephant, the elephant is now far behind, while the dragon has already taken flight.

Fortunately, Indian netizens were mainly just looking for fun.

For America's netizens, however, it's a different story.

This was terrible news for them.

Because the spots that NASA carefully selected were taken by Chinese people.

Traditional media didn't report it, but on YouTube, among the space-related channels that have sprung up in recent years, various bloggers were very dissatisfied, commenting on it as yet another failure, and everyone's face was extremely somber.

Jack Corbyn, a former Boeing engineer, was humanely treated by Boeing during the pandemic. In layman's terms, he was fired.

His position was taken by an Indian engineer who was only paid a third of his salary.

Many of these jobs previously held by older white men have been filled by minorities, becoming a highlight in Boeing management's cost-cutting and efficiency-enhancing figures reported to the board.

There are plenty of people like this who were originally liberals, but after experiencing this, they naturally became supporters of big T.

The same goes for Jack Corbyn.

During his time with the Democratic Party, Corbyn was known for his sharp criticism of NASA, but now that Elon Musk has taken over NASA, he rarely criticizes the agency and usually emphasizes the objective difficulties.

When acknowledging China's achievements, emphasize how impressive the country is, rather than criticizing NASA's incompetent bureaucracy.

He wasn't like this before.

Previously, when faced with the miracle of landing on the moon in a year, Corbyn also claimed that NASA was incompetent and the White House was useless.

This time, however, he unusually launched a fierce critique of NASA.

Jack Corbyn is facing the camera, his face ashen, with a diagram of the NRHO orbit on the background screen, one of the perfect points being occupied by a bright red Moon Palace icon.

Jack Corbyn's tone was heavy and filled with anger:
"Ladies and gentlemen, today we're not going to talk about SpaceX's new test; we're going to talk about a heartbreaking fact that we can't avoid."

The deployment of the "Gate to the Moon Palace" by China, which has just been completed, is not merely an engineering success; it is a public humiliation of America's space strategy!

He suddenly pointed to the track diagram on the screen:

Jack Corbyn exclaimed, "Look closely, everyone! This orbital point they've occupied wasn't just randomly chosen! It's the optimal NRHO location that NASA and ESA jointly determined after years of computing resources and millions of dollars in analysis!"

"Why is it considered the best? Because it provides the longest energy window."

Spacecraft in lunar orbit face two main risks of light shading.

The first is a lunar eclipse, when the spaceship is blocked by the Earth and enters the Earth's shadow, losing its light.

The second is the moon's own shadow, which occurs when the spacecraft is blocked by the moon and enters its shadow region.

In the NRHO orbit, the spacecraft will inevitably experience periodic obstructions as it moves along an elongated elliptical path around the moon.

A near-linear halo orbit is an extremely unstable three-body problem orbit with a high degree of eccentricity, where one end of the orbit is very close to the Moon and the other end is very far away.

This requires precise calculations to find a specific variant within the NRHO orbital family that has unique geometric properties that allow the spacecraft to remain above or below the Moon's polar axis most of the time, thus avoiding the Moon's enormous shadow cast near the equator.

In addition, the orbital period has been optimized to perfectly match the phase of the Earth-Moon orbit, enabling the spacecraft to avoid Earth's shadow when passing through the perigee or apogee.

There might only be one such position, and it was thus occupied by China.

The fact that the moon spends too much time in the shadow zone is not as simple as people think, which means it can't generate photovoltaic power; it also means that thermal management becomes extremely complicated.

With China having established cryogenic laboratories in the lunar shadow region, people should gradually realize that in places without air, temperatures can drop to below zero.

Similarly, if you enter a shaded area for an extended period of time, the temperature will plummet to minus 150 degrees Celsius. This means that a large amount of energy will be needed to heat the equipment and maintain the system's normal operation.

The longest energy window means minimal energy consumption and also the easiest thermal management.

After finishing his explanation, Corbyn slammed his hand on the table:
"And now, this prime location has been snatched away by China! By Apollo Technology! They've nailed their space station there two years ahead of us!"

This is actually an attempt to defend NASA.

The subtext was to tell his audience that we were only two years behind China.

In reality, it would take far more than two years to complete, because NASA calculated the optimal location back in 2019, and the first component of NASA's Lunar Gateway space station is planned to be launched into orbit in 2022.

It's already 2026, and we have nothing, we're nothing, and delaying has become a habit.

Without Apollo Technologies providing NASA with enhanced capabilities, John Morgan Jr.'s General Aerospace would continue to happily collect money from NASA every year without doing any work.

(Conceptual image of NASA's lunar space station)

"Do you know what this means? It means that NASA can only look for suboptimal orbits now."

Suboptimal orbits mean that our astronauts and cargo transport will consume more fuel and involve higher risks.

He buried his head in his hands, then slammed them down, saying sadly, "What's worse is that, like Shackleton Crater, this location was carefully calculated by us."

After extensive consultation and careful analysis, we have officially selected L2 South NRHO as the target orbit for the lunar space station.

In 2019, we published a detailed white paper, which provided a 15-year NRHO reference trajectory.

This white paper was originally intended to guide our own engineering designs and mission planning with our international partners.

How arrogant and blindly conceited NASA was back then!

They believe that America's technological advantage is so great that our competitors simply cannot catch up technologically.

They are not afraid that our competitors will seize this golden track ahead of time. In their strategic blueprint, it may take China ten years to have a heavy-lift rocket to complete this task.

But what is the truth?
The fact is, the gate to the Moon Palace has reached L2 South NRHO.

We've essentially laid bare the geometry of orbits, energy windows, eclipse avoidance timing—all the most difficult calculations and optimizations—before the Chinese people had a chance to learn, like an open textbook!

Jack Corbyn continued, "We can say we've been telling the Chinese people, step by step, that's the best location. If you're going to build a space station on the moon, go there."

They didn't spend a single penny on chaotic dynamics calculations, nor on verifying the optimal energy window. All they needed was an engineer who knew how to use a search engine, and then it was a race against time, a test of engineering prowess and speed.

He slammed his fist on the table.

"This is no longer a matter of technological gap; it is a failure of strategic thinking."

We have handed over our most valuable and scarce strategic information to others.

This is NASA under the leadership of the Democrats; they know nothing but arrogance!

Don't tell me that the 2019 president is a big shot. Even if the president is a big shot, NASA is still the traditional stronghold of the Democrats, and they have a firm grip on NASA.

These are all foolish decisions made by NASA, which are known to DeepState.

Finally, Jack Corbyn concluded: "We have the world's best engineers and the strongest science budget, but we lost to speed and decision-making."

The Chinese saw an opportunity and immediately mobilized the national will and private enterprises to take direct action.

And what are we doing? We're still in meetings discussing contract review, redundant design, and political correctness.

America is losing the ability to translate grand ideas into immediate action.

The Moon's orbit is not in the high seas.

Once occupied, it is permanent.

We missed the opportunity; we missed the advantage in energy and efficiency.

On the moon, we've already lost the race from the starting line.

Why do international opinion hold that America is becoming a larger version of India, even among informed individuals in India?

It's because there are too many people like Corbyn.

There are too many people who talk big but don't want to work in a factory.

It's too easy to make accusations, but it's far too difficult to actually take action.

Take Corbyn as an example. With his experience as a Boeing engineer, it would be easy for him to find a similar job.

It wasn’t easy during the pandemic, but it’s easy now.

But being an engineer is nowhere near as fun as being a YouTuber.

Like Jack Corbyn, a YouTuber can live in Thailand, earn dollars from Google, and make just as much money as he would at Boeing, without having to go to the factory every day and smell of engine oil.

So no matter how much Corbyn complained in the video, he never thought about returning to his front-line engineering position in the aerospace industry to make even the slightest contribution to the country.

(End of this chapter)