Super Copy of Great Power Technology

When the flight time of the rocket reached 2 minutes and 45 seconds and the flight altitude reached 66 kilometers, most of the engines of the first-stage rocket were shut down, leaving only the three engines in the middle still working to maintain thrust. Then the locking device opened, the first and second-stage rockets separated, and the second-stage rocket ignited to continue sending the lunar spacecraft to higher space. The first-stage rocket maintained a small thrust and continued to rise for a period of time, then the speed returned to zero and began to fall slowly, and then opened the grid rudder, shut down all the engines, and carried out a controlled landing under the action of its own gravity. At the same time, the combination of the second-stage rocket and the lunar spacecraft has rushed out of the atmosphere and arrived in space 123 kilometers above the ground.

"Throw away the fairing" With the new command, a clamshell-shaped cover covering the outside of the lunar exploration spacecraft split into two and was thrown down, quickly disappearing in the camera lens. There was warm applause and cheers at the rocket launch site and in the flight control hall. Just by listening to the sound, you can tell how excited the staff and engineers are.

Du Qingqing explained at the right time: "The fairing is used to protect satellites and other payloads to prevent satellites from being affected by harmful environments such as aerodynamics, aerodynamic heating and acoustic vibration. It is an important part of the launch vehicle. When the satellite or other payload flies out of the atmosphere, the fairing loses its function. In order to reduce its own weight, the fairing is often discarded. The successful throwing of the fairing often means that the most difficult stage has passed, the satellite has been successfully sent into space, and success is not far away, so at this time, the engineers and staff will cheer excitedly.

Next, the second-stage rocket will push the lunar exploration spacecraft for a long period of accelerated flight. Now, let's go back and watch the recovery process of the first stage of the rocket. At this time, the first-stage rocket has increased its descent speed to more than 2500 kilometers per hour, and the flight altitude has reached 80 kilometers. If it continues to accelerate and fall like this, the final result of the first-stage rocket will inevitably be a smashed to pieces. Of course, in order to avoid tragedy, before landing, the flight control system will control the engine at the tail of the first-stage rocket to ignite again and reverse thrust to slow down.

Now, let me switch the camera to the rear view of the first stage rocket. Oh, my God, it is an unforgettable beautiful scene, blue sky, green grassland, white clouds, and in the right corner, there is a deep space and part of the earth's curvature. At this time, the first stage rocket is guided by the grid rudder and falls to the rocket recovery site at the edge of the black stone beach. At this time, the rocket's falling speed has reached an astonishing 4500 kilometers per hour, and the height from the ground is only 22 kilometers.

From the live broadcast, we can see some striped interference. This is because the first-stage rocket is falling too fast, and the friction with the air produces terrifying high temperatures, static electricity, and a small amount of plasma gas, which interferes with communications. If the rocket's falling speed continues to increase and exceeds a certain value, a black barrier phenomenon will occur, completely cutting off communications. However, the first-stage rocket will definitely not enter the black barrier, because it will soon ignite the engine again to reverse thrust and slow down. "

Not long after Du Qingqing stopped explaining, the commander's voice came from the loudspeaker, "Secondary ignition of the first-stage rocket engine, rocket recovery site, start the rocket recovery system, and prepare for the recovery of the first-stage rocket."

The next moment, the three inner engines and five middle engines of the first-stage rocket ignited at the same time and began to reverse thrust and decelerate. The entire first-stage rocket was like someone suddenly stepped on the brakes, and the falling speed decreased rapidly. At this time, the first-stage rocket was only one thousand meters away from the ground. Qiao Ruida, Du Qingqing and others could already see with their naked eyes that the first-stage rocket, with a long tail flame, was landing towards a certain location in the distance.

"The rocket recovery site understands that the rocket recovery system has been turned on. The sounding radar has detected the target and emitted a positioning signal." The staff at the rocket recovery site also responded.

At this time, Du Qingqing's explanation sounded again, "For safety reasons, Ruida Aerospace has set up the rocket recovery site 25 kilometers away from Ruida Aerospace City. It is definitely too late for us to rush over now, but we can cut the camera over and take a glimpse of the true appearance of the rocket recovery site.

Okay, I split the live video. On the left side of the screen is the first-stage rocket that is falling, and on the right side of the screen is the real-time scene of the rocket recovery site. As you can see, Ruida Aerospace has enabled a brand-new rocket recovery device in this star-rocket test. It consists of eight steel wires, four horizontal and four vertical. Each steel wire can be moved up and down, or left and right, driven by a motor. Normally, the eight steel wires are evenly arranged to form a standard sixteen-square grid. When the rocket is about to land, the automatic control system captures the rocket at the first time, calculates the landing point of the rocket, and links the motor to adjust the position of the steel wire in real time. At the moment the rocket lands, the steel wire moves quickly to shrink the grid where the rocket is located, thereby jamming the grid rudder, unloading the impact of the rocket, and completing the rocket recovery process. ”

While Du Qingqing was explaining, the first-stage rocket continued to fall, and when it was more than 100 meters from the ground, the falling speed had dropped to kilometers per hour. At this time, the second-circle engine was shut down again, leaving only the three engines in the middle to continue working and provide thrust. At this time, the fuel loaded on the first-stage rocket before takeoff had been basically exhausted, and the entire rocket was left with only an empty shell. It was very light, and even the remaining three engines could still support the entire weight of the first-stage rocket. At this height, the grid rudder cooperated with the vector swing of the three engines to make the last fine-tuning of the rocket's landing point, and then gradually reduced the engine output and slowly landed.

The position chosen by the first-stage rocket is exactly the third grid in the second row from the right of the sixteen-square grid. The multiple sensors of the rocket recovery system immediately captured the landing direction of the first-stage rocket, quickly adjusted the corresponding position of the wire rope, locked the first-stage rocket, and caught it steadily. The flight control system on the first-stage rocket sensed that it had successfully landed on the ground and slowly shut down the engine. At this point, the recovery process of the first-stage rocket of the Star Arrow was completed.

After watching the recovery process of the first-stage rocket, the scene was once again filled with warm applause and cheers, which were even more enthusiastic than the last time. As a result, tens of millions of netizens in the live broadcast room were also infected by the atmosphere of the scene. Various small gifts were constantly displayed, and special effects of large gifts worth hundreds or thousands of dollars were also lined up to fill the screen in the live broadcast room.

"I didn't expect that watching the live broadcast today would bring me an unexpected gain. I actually witnessed the birth of a brand new method of rocket recovery."

"Other aerospace companies are still working hard to realize the rocket recovery function, but Ruida Aerospace has already invented a second rocket recovery method. This is too awesome."

"What a fantastic idea, and what a bizarre way to recover a rocket. I've never seen anything like this before."

"These staff members are so happy. They are cheering and hugging each other. Some of them are laughing so hard that their back teeth are showing. Is it necessary to be so exaggerated? Isn't it just a successful recovery of a rocket stage? Is it worth celebrating like this?" "This is what you don't understand. Super-heavy launch vehicles like Star Rocket are incredibly expensive. The cost of the first stage of the rocket alone is tens of millions. Now that the first stage of the rocket has been successfully recovered, it is equivalent to tens of millions of funds. If it were me, I would also be excited and forget everything else."

"RuiDa Aerospace is really amazing. Not only has it developed the most powerful rocket carrier in service, it has also invented a new way to recover rockets. It is really daring and daring. It is a role model for our generation."

"Hey, why is there a crane in the camera? Is it here to lift the first stage of the Star Arrow rocket?"

"That should be the case. After all, there will be another second-stage rocket returning to the ground and being recovered at the same site later."

After the crane entered the site, a worker wearing a "Rui Da Aerospace" work uniform drove a construction vehicle into the site. He drove the construction vehicle to the side of the first-stage rocket, parked the vehicle, and climbed onto the back of the vehicle. There, a folding hydraulic lifting platform was installed, which could send people to a height of more than 20 meters as required. The worker stood on the lifting platform and then controlled the lifting platform to rise to the highest height through the remote control.

At this time, the crane had already lowered two steel wire ropes with hooks. The staff raised their hands, grabbed one of the safety hooks, and hung it on the hook reserved in advance for the first-stage rocket, and then followed the same method to hang the other safety hook. Then the crane lifted the entire first-stage rocket slowly. The rocket recovery system also intervened in time, moving the steel wire rope to release the squares that locked the first-stage rocket. The crane lifted the first-stage rocket more than 20 meters away from the range of the 16 squares, and then called a special truck developed for transporting star rockets, and carefully placed the first-stage rocket on the truck.

At this moment, Du Qingqing's voice sounded again, "Okay, here we are, the recovery of the first-stage rocket is complete. Next, let's switch the camera back to see the current status of the second-stage rocket and the lunar probe, and whether they have completed the orbit."

As she spoke, Du Qingqing operated her laptop and switched the live broadcast signal from the ground signal to the video signal sent back by the second-stage rocket and the lunar exploration spacecraft. The second-stage rocket and the lunar exploration spacecraft were still flying in the dark space as a combination. However, the engines of the second-stage rocket had all been shut down, and the combination was flying in space completely relying on inertia.

"As you can see, the second-stage rocket has been shut down, and the assembly is making final adjustments along an elliptical orbit with a perigee of 140 kilometers and an apogee of 200 kilometers. From the background of the picture, you can see that the assembly is currently in the shadow of the Earth, and the Earth below is also pitch black. Only a few densely populated cities have large areas of lights on. Looking up at the Ruida Space City where we are currently, the sun is still high in the sky, and it will take at least four or five hours before dark. This means that the second-stage rocket and the lunar exploration spacecraft are currently quite far away from the launch site, even to the other side of the Earth."

"Star-rocket separation" As the new command was issued, the locking device between the lunar spacecraft and the second-stage rocket opened automatically, and the plasma engine installed on the lunar spacecraft began to work, pushing the lunar spacecraft, gradually accelerating, changing orbits, and using the gravitational slingshot effect to complete the final sprint and cut into the Earth-Moon transfer orbit. The second-stage rocket did not make any maneuvers and continued to move forward along the original orbit. When the second-stage rocket, along the orbit, flies around the earth and returns to the sky above Ruida Aerospace, it will be the best time to recover it.

After waiting for more than 40 minutes, the second-stage rocket finally returned to the sky above China, and the flight control system controlled the engine to ignite and brake. The flight speed of the second-stage rocket dropped sharply, and it was difficult to maintain its orbit, and it began to fall to the ground at an accelerated speed. When the second-stage rocket landed at a certain height, the four grid rudders opened, the engine was shut down, and it relied entirely on the rocket's own weight to accelerate its descent. At the same time, the grid rudders were constantly adjusting to guide the flight path of the second-stage rocket to land as close to the recovery site as possible.

Because the second-stage rocket went through a process of reentering the atmosphere, the falling speed was so fast that it entered a blackout state after a short while. The video signal was interrupted, and the communication line was also interrupted. The current flight status of the second-stage rocket could only be captured and detected remotely through infrared radar.

"The second-stage rocket is currently experiencing a blackout. All signals cannot be transmitted, so we cannot understand the status of the second-stage rocket in the first place. From the images captured by the infrared radar, the second-stage rocket is falling at a high speed. The violent air friction generates a large amount of accumulated heat, ionizing the surrounding air and forming a large amount of plasma, which wraps around the rocket and shields various signals.

According to the data scanned by the radar, the second-stage rocket is now falling at an astonishing speed of 15226 kilometers per hour, which is frighteningly fast. The height from the ground is only about 5 kilometers. Please pay attention, the flight control system controls the second-stage rocket to open some engines for reverse thrust deceleration. "

Sure enough, in the image scanned by the infrared radar, several flames were ejected from the tail of the rocket. Just a few minutes later, the descent speed of the second-stage rocket was reduced to 500 kilometers per hour, and it successfully exited the black barrier. The communication between the rocket and the ground was also quickly restored. Du Qingqing immediately operated the computer and displayed the images in the live broadcast room in a split screen. The left side still displayed the radar image, and the right side displayed the video signal sent back by the second-stage rocket. (End of this chapter)