Live Stream 1980: Netizens Teach Me How to Make a Rocket by Hand

Lin Xi stepped forward, her gaze falling on the table.

There was a stack of blueprints there.

"Mr. Zhang, what happened?"

Lin Xi's heart skipped a beat.

Zhang Zhengguo did not answer immediately, but instead pulled out the top sheet of paper and pushed it in front of him.

"Yesterday, the computer room deciphered this batch of new packages. Several senior experts in the overall control room who understand engines reviewed it overnight, and none of them could sleep."

Lin Xi's gaze fell on the blueprints.

This is not a simple shell structure at all.

The densely packed lines intertwine, forming fluid pipelines, pump structures, and precision valve assemblies, resembling a disassembled metal heart.

The top right corner is entirely labeled in Russian.

The area next to it was already covered with Chinese characters written in red pen by the translator.

Zhang Zhengguo tapped his knuckles twice on the table.

"We originally thought that the Southern Design Bureau would only use those computers to draw the outer shell and calculate the local aerodynamics of the missile."

"I never expected that the Soviets would put their most treasured skills into the computer."

Lin Xi stared at the red text on the drawing and read it aloud in a low voice:

"Oxidizer main pump... turbine blade cross-section... pre-combustion chamber fuel nozzle array..."

As he read this, his hand, which was gripping the edge of the drawing, stopped.

When these structures are put together, the name almost jumps off the page on its own.

The next second, the live stream in my mind exploded.

The barrage of comments scrolled by like a waterfall, almost blocking out the view.

[Holy crap! Holy crap! Streamer, scroll back! Look at the coaxial structure of the main pump and auxiliary pump!]

[The angle of the air intake deflector and the design of the oxygen-enriched pre-combustion chamber are absolutely spot on!]

[RD-120! Absolutely the RD-120! The prized possession of the Southern Design Bureau! The main engine for the second stage of the Zenit rocket!]

[The Soviets are really daring; they even draw this kind of thing on a computer?]

It's not that they're crazy, it's just that Red Star CAD is too good to be true. With tens of thousands of parts, if drafters were to actually draw them on the board, they'd be worn out from exhaustion.

[Lin Shen isn't just selling software; he's using CAD as a fishing rod to reel in the great white shark of the Soviet aerospace industry!]

Lin Xi took a slow breath.

RD-120.

In his previous life, he graduated from a reputable aerospace university and knew all too well the significance this model represented in the history of human spaceflight.

In the original timeline, China only managed to import a few complete Soviet-era engines through special channels in the 1990s.

Disassembly, mapping, and replication.

It took nearly twenty years to develop the YF-100 series high-thrust engine that later powered the Hongxing-5 and Hongxing-7 rockets.

And now, it is 1985.

The core blueprints of the Southern Design Bureau of the Soviet Union, which were still in the testing and improvement stage, were actually placed directly on the confidential table of China on a few floppy disks!

This is not a crash log.

This is a blind box sent by the Soviet aerospace industry.

What I got was still the Golden Legend.

"Mr. Zhang."

Lin Xi raised her head, suppressing the surging emotions in her heart, and tried to keep her voice steady.

"What did the experts in the power room say?"

Zhang Zhengguo replied with a cold expression:

"We've discussed this in a meeting, and our initial assessment is that this is an engine cycle method that has never been explored in China before."

"It doesn't use unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide, which we commonly use now, but rather liquid oxygen and kerosene."

Lin Xi took a deep breath, nodded, placed her hands on the table, and leaned closer to the blueprint.

"The experts were very accurate."

Lin Xi pointed to one of the cross-sectional diagrams of the pre-combustion chamber.

"Mr. Zhang, the conventional propellants we use in our rockets are highly toxic and corrosive, and their specific impulse, or the efficiency of fuel combustion in generating thrust, is almost at its limit."

"To increase thrust again is as difficult as climbing to the sky."

Zhang Zhengguo crossed his arms and listened attentively.

"This set of blueprints represents the heart of the next generation of launch vehicles."

Lin Xi tapped his knuckles on the blueprint, the sound steady and powerful.

"It burns liquid oxygen and kerosene."

"Environmentally friendly and non-toxic."

"The price is less than a tenth of the fuel we use now!"

Zhang Zhengguo's eyebrows twitched slightly.

For someone like him who deals with funding, schedules, and production capacity every day, the word "cheap" is more real than any slogan.

Lin Xi continued:

"The more crucial aspect is the cycle method."

Lin Xi quickly pulled out another assembly drawing of the turbopump and covered it with the drawing.

"Many of our engines now use gas generator recirculation. Simply put, after a portion of the fuel is burned, the exhaust gas is directly discharged, which is equivalent to wasting a portion of the power."

He pointed to the dense cluster of pipes on the blueprint.

"But the Soviet design is a high-pressure combustion cycle."

"The unburned oxygen-rich gas in the pre-combustion chamber is not discharged, but is instead pushed back into the main combustion chamber under extremely high pressure to continue burning."

"It's like squeezing every last drop of power out of the propellant."

The live stream chat was still flooded with comments.

Yes, that's it! High-pressure afterburning cycle, maximizing chemical energy utilization!

[Oxygen-enriched pre-combustion is truly insane. In a high-temperature, high-pressure, pure oxygen environment, many metals are not parts, but firewood.]

The Soviets were able to contain this fire inside the pipe thanks to special alloys and extraordinary craftsmanship. In the 1980s, they were in a league of their own!

Lin Xi looked up at Zhang Zhengguo.

"Mr. Zhang, this is not an ordinary engine."

"If it can truly master it, we can turn a new page on the days when we're racking our brains to figure out how to handle loads of just a few dozen kilograms."

He gently pressed his knuckles on the drawing.

"The foundation for the power system of the Hongxing-3, Hongxing-4, and even future heavy-lift launch vehicles with thrust of hundreds or thousands of tons has been completely laid."

"With this, sending eight-ton or ten-ton payloads into space is no longer a dream."

Zhang Zhengguo's hand holding the cigarette trembled suddenly, and a piece of ash mixed with burnt tobacco fell onto the table.

He was in charge of the administrative scheduling of Project 851, and his mind was always preoccupied with money and progress.

Therefore, he understood better than anyone what the word "thrust" meant.

Chinese aerospace engineers are now dreaming of increasing payload capacity even further.

However, the potential of existing engines has already been fully realized.

To accommodate tens of kilograms more payload, engineers would painstakingly scrape off the weight bit by bit from the aluminum alloy rocket body using files.

If the kind of super power Lin Xi described really exists...

Zhang Zhengguo suddenly stood up straight.

"That's great...that's great!"

Zhang Zhengguo straightened up, his eyes welling up with tears, and he slammed his hands heavily on the table, staring at the blueprints.

"The Soviets have delivered a mountain of gold to us!"

But he is, after all, an older generation who has weathered many storms.

The excitement lasted only a few seconds before Zhang Zhengguo quickly suppressed his emotions.

He reached out and tapped the stack of papers, his brows furrowing again.

"Lin Xi, don't be too happy yet."

"The experts in the overall design department also said that the drawings are incomplete."

Lin Xi was not surprised and nodded in response:

"normal."

"After all, it's just a cache of data randomly captured from a crashed CAD software; they draw a part, and we capture a part."

"That's not the most fatal thing."

Zhang Zhengguo pulled out a translated Russian process sheet from the bottom and handed it directly to Lin Xi.

"Experts said that the key materials marked on the drawings, such as high-strength stainless steel and high-temperature resistant special alloys used in the oxygen-enriched pre-combustion chamber, are not available in China at all."

"They don't even know the smelting formula."

He exhaled, his voice becoming deep.

Even if I give you a complete set of mechanical blueprints.

"With our current chemical and metallurgical foundation, once the equipment is ignited, a burst of high-pressure oxygen-rich gas at hundreds of atmospheres will cause any component to be defective, even if the materials are slightly inferior."

"It's firewood."

"After it's burned, not even a decent ash remains."