I ask you to build tractors, but you build rockets?.

Chapter 755 Accident
Beijing.

Three 777 passenger planes landed one after another. In order to allow them to land together, the tower took a lot of effort to adjust the flights that occupied their time.

But it was worth it because the passengers on these three planes were all of high status.

The team was led by NACA Deputy Administrator Jim Freeh, six senior NASA officials, several active astronauts, and representatives from several aerospace companies such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Grumman. In total, there were more than one hundred people, with even more entourage, and they chartered three passenger planes.

It is really difficult to make a correct judgment when this visit was conducted just a few days after the Lightning Night and the heat from the outside world has not yet subsided.

There was news from the outside world a month before this visit. After such a sudden change, the situation remained unchanged and the specifications were not lowered at all, as if nothing had happened.

The domestic welcoming team was also quite luxurious, with the Aerospace Development Commission, mainstream private aerospace companies, and official reception staff all gathered on the tarmac.

Reporters rushed to take pictures, watching in a strange way the two sides happily shaking hands with each other.

Lin Ju was next to Zhong Cheng. He shook Jim's right hand vigorously. After greeting him, he smiled and said:
"Give my regards to Mr. Robert."

The smile on Jim's face froze slightly, and he nodded without answering.

Several senior executives of the Aviation Development Commission understood instantly that it was Robert who was leading the team in the docking between the two parties, and now it is basically certain that the latter is finished.

However, Amei did not take the initiative to report it, and there was no public information showing that Robert was arrested.

In addition to the fact that this incident itself was too embarrassing, another important reason was that NACA's personnel changes were already frequent enough:

If the replacement is announced publicly again, it will mean that the director of NACA has been changed for the third time in two years. No matter how you look at it, it will be difficult to convince the public. It will also make the outside world and even NACA itself think that there is a problem, causing instability among the people.

This time, the NACA delegation did not mention any information about Robert. When they couldn't find an excuse, they said that the director had important matters to attend to and could not be busy. In short, there would be no problem with Deputy Director Jim making the decision for the time being.

Robert's arrest was completely expected. Although the Intelligence Agency has regressed a lot in recent years, it can still do small things like monitoring through social software with ease.

Since Amei didn't want to make a bigger scandal, she pretended to be unaware of it and, apart from changing people, she still followed the pre-prepared itinerary.

On the day of welcoming the plane, they mainly appeared in public and took photos, and there was no substantive communication.

A few hours later, the NACA delegation checked into the booked hotel without any secret talks being arranged.

After all, NACA shared almost all the data of Firefly 1, and NACA also understood that there was nothing worthy of special attention, and the main thing to discuss was earth cooperation.

……

A foreign-funded star hotel.

Jim returned to his room and met with several staff members from Office 13 to discuss the next contact plan.

Robert was right, he was indeed not suitable for this kind of job. Jim was a typical professional technical bureaucrat, and he could even go to the moon, but this kind of visit was very brain-intensive and quite strenuous for Jim.

But now the director of NACA has been secretly arrested, and the former director Claire can only indirectly control the operation of this huge organization when he returns, and can only send Jim out.

The lightning night did have an impact on the contact plan, but it has not yet manifested itself. The NACA visiting team must be prepared to make adjustments at any time.

"Anthony, how can we convince those Chinese people?"

Jim asked painfully. Before he set off, he received a very difficult task: to find a way to establish a real-time Mars monitoring system with the Aerospace Development Commission. Simply put, the two sides share the data of all Mars probes at any time. It's not just asking for it. Amei's several probes can also open channels to them, but it's still very difficult to think about it.

After all, the Chinese have launched more probes, and the key is that their ground detection capabilities are very strong. If you want to obtain first-hand data on alien civilization detection, you can only rely on the "Tianwen" series of missions.

It was obviously impossible to convince Jim with the justice of human civilization. NACA was able to accept a certain price and let Jim decide which ones, but this only made the latter feel more pressure.

Anthony from the Air Force Intelligence Room has now transferred to the Aramco Space Force, but is also affiliated with the Thirteenth Office and has also followed here as an attaché.

He did have some ideas, and answered without much thought:
"We can cooperate on Artemis. The Chinese will definitely be interested, but in what specific areas..."

"Tuk Tuk"

He was interrupted by a knock on the door, followed by the voice of the assistant who was arranging the itinerary:

"Please open the door. There is a change of schedule."

Jim ran over quickly, and then several people looked at the assistant and said:

"Just now, the contact personnel of the Aerospace Development Commission told us that due to some malfunctions, Yinghuo-1 stopped sending back signals. The scheduled trip to their Mars Monitoring Center will only see the previous content. I hope to postpone it for a day. They will try to restore contact first."

"Fault?"

Anthony reacted immediately, his eyes rolled and his brows frowned as he said;
"It worked efficiently for a week straight, and then something broke down when we arrived? How could this be such a coincidence!

Did something happen again or are they just being sensitive and deciding to reject the deal we had made?"

Assistant: "We can't confirm it yet. The Aviation Development Commission only gave us a notification, but the tone was not bad. It should not be a rejection of us. There is not much else to say."

“We need to understand this ourselves.”

Jim waved his hands. He also thought it was unlikely that the other party would be fine during the day and suddenly turn hostile at night. It was very likely that something unexpected had really happened.

Anthony: "If it's true, it's probably worse than just rejecting us."

Jim was startled, then immediately understood what he meant.

No one can deny that the Chinese have very good aerospace technology and generally speaking no serious accidents occur.

The environment on Mars is much better than that on the moon, and Firefly 1 is equipped with high-power isotope batteries, which has a very high safety factor.

The power of its isotope battery is enough to provide adequate insulation for the core components, and there was no loss of connection even during the months of travel in space. However, after arriving on Mars, it could not transmit any signal back, which was either due to external impact or poor quality.

But in the past few days, Firefly 1 was still desperately transmitting large amounts of data, and its bandwidth is several times higher than that of Curiosity, so the possibility of a sudden failure of the antenna or controller is relatively low.

Then there is also the possibility that it was caused by alien civilization. If that is the case...

The problem became tricky. There was an alien civilization on the car, and Jim didn't know what to do. NACA had no right to make a decision on its own. I'm afraid the federal government would have to make the final decision carefully.

(End of this chapter)