What the hell is a private enterprise?

Chapter 664 Beidou is lacking everything

The Amazon rainforest fires should actually be a hot international news topic, but unfortunately there are just too many other hot topics lately, so much so that the absolutely correct forest protection efforts have been overshadowed.

After the Prism Building discovered that the climate change had caused the Divine Retribution plan to fail, they simply withdrew the aircraft and ignored it. After all, their losses were just some stockpiled incendiary bombs and fuel costs, so they didn't take it seriously at all.

But Jonathan and other meteorologists had been closely monitoring the situation, using their authority to take satellite photos, and eventually discovered that the area affected by the wildfires would reach a terrifying 30 square kilometers or more.

External voices generally claim that the fire is due to the strong El Niño phenomenon. The Pakistani authorities can only accept their misfortune. According to statistics from international organizations, there have been dozens of deaths in four months, about 1.3 people have been injured by fire or smoke and require treatment, and the living space of more than 60 people has been affected.

The impact on the environment and animals is even more terrifying, to the point that Jonathan doesn't dare to look at it.

Yes, even without the "divine retribution" plan, the rainforest would have experienced more wildfires due to the abnormally dry climate, but the Prism Building amplified the damage by at least three times.

Although the generals were not paying attention to Project Divine Retribution for the time being, they still knew to keep it secret and kept the experts in the know under surveillance. However, Jonathan took a vacation to Florida under the pretext of needing to clear his mind, and took a colleague who was also feeling guilty with him.

Upon arriving in Florida, the two immediately took action. His colleague broke into the Russian embassy overnight to request asylum, while Jonathan himself braved hardships to reach Pakistan.

Because he had met Aveiro once before when the South Mei coalition command was being established, Jonathan came into contact with him and ultimately informed Itamar of the matter instead of President Enrique.

“I am not here to betray the Empire, nor do I hope to gain anything from you. I only hope to fight for the compensation that the victims deserve and to warn others not to try to bring the forces of nature into human conflict in the future. In the end, it will only hurt the whole world.”

Jonathan spoke with heartfelt sincerity, but the "Brothers of Justice" had no interest in it at all.

Avila was the first to react, and suddenly his expression changed drastically as he asked:

"You weren't followed when you came, were you?"

"I think... there shouldn't be any, right?"

Jonathan's eyes darted around. He knew he was under surveillance, and someone must have already discovered his disappearance. With the power of Prism Building, finding his trail would be a piece of cake.

Meanwhile, the other members of the "Brothers of Justice" also realized this. The "Fourth Brother," Paral, couldn't sit still any longer and looked at Itamar:
"General, the IAA has probably already tracked us down here!"

However, Itamar was at a loss as well. Seeing this, Jonathan stepped forward and sighed, saying:

"My mission is complete, let them take me away."

"Please go and rest, we will handle it."

Aveiro first ushered Jonathan out of the room, and only spoke when only "his own people" remained:
"General, this is an opportunity."

"What opportunity? Just hand this mentally challenged expert over to the IAA. The Empire won't bother us with something like this."

Paral was eager to get rid of this troublesome person, and Avilo felt a slight anger when he saw Itamar clearly showing some interest:
The "Brothers of Justice" were initially formed to oppose Enrique's efforts to save the land, but history has repeatedly shown that Itamar is truly old and no longer has that courage, yet he still speaks out:
"General, if we promote the 'Divine Punishment Plan,' we can immediately gain a lot of support, and Enrique will definitely not dare to oppose the Empire. As long as we press on, we can drive Enrique out of power!"
You are the true hero in the hearts of the people; only you can protect our dignity!

A few bold words made Itamar's eyes gleam; what Avilo said was exactly what he had been thinking deep inside, but he quickly suppressed the impulse:
"Enrique is nothing to fear, but the Empire will not stand idly by."

"Then let's fight to the bitter end!"

Aveiro showed no fear, but he failed to notice that the others had lowered their heads, and only one person was equally excited.

Itamar took it all in. He stretched his upper body, leaned back in his chair, and clenched his fists. Paral immediately spoke up:
"Avila, you haven't considered reality at all! Do you want to plunge the entire continent into war?!"

"This is what we should be doing!"

Just as the two were about to start arguing, Itamar raised his right hand, and the scene immediately quieted down as everyone looked at the real "first brother".

“Avello is right. We can no longer tolerate Enrique's wanton harm to the people in order to appease the Empire.”

Avilo was overjoyed, but Itamar then said:

"But our strength is still not enough to fight Prism Tower; we need allies."

The others immediately began chattering about potential allies in the vicinity, but Itamar remained silent until Avilo uttered that name:
"The Lost Empire, they are the only steadfast ally we can trust."

Itamar's eyes sparkled:

“That’s true, Avila. You should help us contact the Lost Empire.”

"Yes, General!"

Fifth Academy
Tang Wen and Qian Lin'an chatted for an entire afternoon, their conversation ranging from the moon landing to interstellar exploration.

Later on, he couldn't help but ask a question:
"If we use nuclear fusion to create a spaceship, what percentage of the speed of light could we reach?"

Qian Lin'an had clearly anticipated this, and immediately replied:
"Depending on different principles, the theoretical limits are different. The fastest speed should be 30% of the speed of light, but the general upper limit is only 12%. In reality... if a fusion engine using hydrogen atoms as a medium is built in 30 to 50 years, it would be good if the speed could reach 1% of the speed of light."

Tang Wen: "What about a propellantless fusion engine? I mean one that doesn't need to eject a medium, but only needs to provide thrust through radiation or photons."

"First, radiation propulsion is still essentially propellant propulsion, only the medium is changed to the alpha example. Second, pure propellantless propulsion violates the law of conservation of energy, and as for light propulsion... that's just a beautiful fairy tale."

Qian Lin'an's words were concise and to the point.

Tang Wen understood; this man was a veteran of the aerospace industry (just kidding).

The interstellar travel topic has finally come to an end, and Tang Wen returns to reality:
"Moon landing is too far away, and even manned spaceflight is still a long way off... I want to invest in some projects that will yield quick results—GPS satellites."

Qian Lin'an: "The BeiDou satellite is under construction and is currently in the experimental stage, but it should be able to form a network in a few years."

How many are there now?

Qian Lin'an held up one finger.

That's right, just one satellite, the "Beidou-1" satellite, which is an experimental satellite and does not provide services.

Tang Wen was not as optimistic as him. In fact, the problem with the Beidou project was not the technology but confidence and expenditure... Before 2005, China had been working hard to cooperate with Russia's GLONASS or Europe's Galileo to try to build and use it together.

These two companies were also quite wicked, stringing China along like scumbags, neither taking the initiative nor rejecting it, dragging it out until almost 2010 when China, which had become wealthy, could no longer tolerate it and launched five satellites in one go, forming a dense network that year. Then, in 2012, they achieved Asia-Pacific coverage, and in 20 years, they achieved global coverage.

Tang Wen brought this up for a simple reason: marine GPS is now ridiculously expensive, as the fishing boats under the Gaijin banner have already experienced, and it can be easily blocked by the Empire, plus its accuracy is poor.

That's one thing, but cars also need navigation, and the required accuracy is extremely high. Navigation devices with GPS chips are incredibly expensive and difficult to use, yet they are still in short supply.

Aside from the most obvious navigation requirement, communication base stations also need satellite clocks for time synchronization and calibration, which has been determined in the development of the Empire's MDA.

GPS satellites rely on built-in atomic clocks as an absolute time axis for calibration, and the cumulative error over 300 years is less than 1 second, making it an important and indispensable part of civilization.

Qian Lin'an wasn't paying attention to the BeiDou project at the moment, so he called Yang Xinan over.

The latter glanced at the manuscript on the table without his noticing as he entered the room, then suppressed his shock and sat down to the side.

I've heard some unreliable rumors about going to the moon. Is it true?

"Xiao Yang, tell me, where does GPS technology stand now?"

He answered Qian Lin'an's question without hesitation:

"We are still far from achieving our goals. Currently, the experimental accuracy is only around 100 meters, which is only sufficient for maritime positioning. The critical atomic clock accuracy is three orders of magnitude less than acceptable. We also lack expertise in orbital altitude calculation, have not yet mastered inter-satellite link communication, have poor anti-interference capabilities and are prone to failure, have low processor computing power and rely on imports, lack automatic orbital correction technology and still require ground guidance, and lack overseas observation stations for high-precision ranging of the operational orbit..."

Yang Xinan, however, was hoping that the big shot would complain about being poor on the spot, and he practically laid out all sorts of problems, not forgetting to add at the end:
"Currently, the entire research institute only has three PhDs specializing in satellites. Our research capabilities are terrible, and we can barely make any progress."

Tang Wen: "..."

I thought it would be solved by spending some money, but it sounds like there are a lot of problems.
The current Beidou-1 system can hardly be described as near perfect; it is practically useless.

Now he was forced to reinforce his preconceived notion of cutting-edge industry: it requires progress and cooperation from the entire industry, and it's not something that can be solved by localized efforts.

Is a moon landing going to be a distant dream?
Qian Lin'an noticed his thoughts and immediately spoke up:
"GPS didn't even have a network until 1995, so it's normal that it took a long time to refine. The future of Beidou-1 is still very promising!"

Tang Wen was somewhat disappointed, after all, he couldn't shoot down a satellite... He should invest in it instead, at least that would definitely speed things up.

"Okay, can Gekin invest in GPS? Also, Shanghai Semiconductor has successfully copied the 486, and perhaps the spaceborne version 486EX also has hope. If it's possible to invest, I can offer some support."

(End of this chapter)