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

August, Texas.

The scorching sun hung brightly in the sky.

In the Houston suburbs, the Bob family is sprawled on the sofa, enjoying the only solace after the air conditioner broke down.

A brand new table fan.

These are the bargains Bob snapped up at Walmart last week.

The "Triangle" brand from Japan is only $55.

It's $15 cheaper than that ridiculously expensive Chinese "Red Star" cigarette.

"Buzzing—"

The fan spun hard, bringing a touch of coolness to the stuffy house.

"Damn weather."

Bob took a swig of ice-cold beer and stared at the football game on TV.

"Hey Susan, move the fan closer, on the highest setting!"

Susan rolled her eyes and turned the knob to "High".

In that very instant.

"Snapped!"

A crisp popping sound was followed by a teeth-grinding "crack".

The fan blades, which were spinning at high speed, suddenly shattered!

A piece of debris broke through the net and hit Bob's arm.

"Shit!"

Bob screamed and clutched his arm.

"I'm going to sue! I'm going to hire the best lawyer!"

Bob stared at the base, which was now just a bare, spinning shaft, and roared so loudly that dust fell from the roof.

"I'm going to make those garbage-making dwarfs go bankrupt! So bankrupt they'll be begging on the streets!"

……

The same scene unfolded across North America within that week.

Miami, Los Angeles, Chicago...

Thousands of fracture accidents and hundreds of personal injury complaints are flying into major shopping malls like snowflakes.

The phone at the headquarters of "Wonima" was ringing off the hook, and the purchasing director's once shiny forehead was now covered in cold sweat.

The line for returns stretched from the service desk all the way to the parking lot.

Angry consumers in the United States are waving lawyer's letters.

A storm of "quality" and "fraud" swept across the Pacific Ocean and struck Tokyo hard.

……

Cherry Blossom Country, Tokyo, Chiyoda Ward.

Top floor conference room at the headquarters of Triangle Electric Co., Ltd.

The atmosphere was so oppressive, it felt like a funeral.

"Baka yarou!"

The president slapped the sales manager hard across the face.

"Returns! Nationwide recall! Huge compensation claims!"

The president grabbed a thick stack of documents and threw them at him relentlessly.

"Is this what you promised—market domination?"

"Is this the glory of being made in Japan? Is this the spirit of craftsmanship?!"

"You're making a fool of the company's reputation!"

The sales manager covered his face and bowed at a 90-degree angle.

Cold sweat dripped from the tip of his nose onto the carpet. He didn't dare to utter a single word in rebuttal, and could only glare fiercely at the technical director opposite him out of the corner of his eye.

"President! This isn't our fault!"

The sales manager abruptly looked up, quickly shifting the blame.

"It's the technical department! It's a product quality issue!"

"The report from Wonima indicates that all the fault points are exactly the same—"

"The leaf base is broken!"

"This is a serious design flaw!"

"What?!" The chief of technology jumped up.

"Nonsense! That's utter nonsense!"

The head of technology took a vernier caliper and two fan blades out of his briefcase and slammed them heavily on the table.

"We made a one-to-one replica of China's 'Red Star'!"

"Every curve, every chamfer, even the flow channel design at the injection port is exactly the same!"

He held up the broken leaf, his eyes bloodshot:

"We used the best ABS particles from Sumitomo Chemical, and the injection molding machine is Toshiba's most advanced model!"

"In terms of precision, we're ten times better than that Chinese workshop!"

"In terms of materials, we are a hundred times better!"

"Then why did theirs continue, but ours didn't?" The president's cold voice was like a venomous snake.

The head of technology opened his mouth, his face turning a deep purplish-red, but he couldn't utter a single word.

He really didn't know.

Over the past month, dozens of engineers in the technical department have been racking their brains.

They looked at it with a microscope and burned it with a spectrometer.

They even consulted a fluid mechanics professor from the University of Tokyo, and the conclusion they reached was—

The design of the stress concentration point at the root of the blade is extremely counterintuitive; theoretically, it will inevitably break if the rotation speed exceeds 1000 revolutions per minute.

But that damned "Red Star," it just keeps coming!

It was as if it had been blessed by Eastern witchcraft, remaining as stable as a mountain at the same rotation speed.

"Report!"

The conference room door was suddenly pushed open.

The Deputy Minister of Justice stumbled in, holding a fax he had just received, his face ashen.

"President...something terrible has happened."

"What could be bigger than this?" the president gritted his teeth.

"It's the Red Star Service Center of China."

The Deputy Minister of Justice swallowed hard, his voice trembling.

"They filed lawsuits simultaneously in New York, London, and Frankfurt."

"What are you suing us for? Patent infringement?" the president sneered.

"With that kind of design, a lawsuit could go on for ten years without any resolution."

"No...it's not about the appearance."

The Deputy Minister of Justice handed over the fax, pointing to a line of text circled in red.

"They sued us... for unfair competition and malicious defamation."

"They disclosed the technical specifications of that blade in the indictment." The Deputy Minister of Justice's voice carried a hint of despair.

"They added 3% of a 'long fiber reinforcing agent' to the blade material and used it in conjunction with a specific injection molding temperature and pressure profile to specifically eliminate root stress."

"They said..."

"What are you saying? Read it!"

"They said that this root design was specifically designed to work with this special material and process, and it is 'Red Star's' unique technological moat."

"If you don't have the formula and process, blindly copying the appearance is like creating a 'time bomb'."

"Red Star stated that they had issued a notice as early as the Canton Fair, warning their peers not to blindly imitate them, otherwise they would bear the consequences."

"Triangle Electric ignored the warnings, produced substandard products that endangered consumer safety, and seriously damaged the reputation of 'similar appearance products'—that is, Red Star."

Dead silence.

The entire conference room fell into a deathly silence.

The chief of technology slumped into his chair, his eyes glazed over.

trap.

This is a technological trap.

That Chinese designer, from the very first stroke of his drawing, knew there would be plagiarists.

He deliberately left a fatal physics bug, then filled it with an exclusive material formula.

Whoever plagiarizes will die.

"They...they're fishing..." the chief of technical affairs muttered to himself.

"Such ruthless methods...such vicious scheming..."

Triangle Electric suffered huge losses.

Huge compensation payments, the collapse of brand reputation, and a global sales ban.

This once-arrogant company was taken over by a "service agency" from Northwest China.

With a tiny plastic leaf, he was nailed to the pillar of shame.

……