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

After deciding to pursue the nuclear program, Xinyuan Company launched a formal moon landing plan internally.

Seven or eight engineers and Lin Ju stayed in a dark little black room, brainstorming together.

First, what are the preparations for landing on the moon?

First, you need to complete at least one unmanned lunar exploration, launch a satellite to reach or fly past the lunar orbit, and find a suitable landing site.

Second, communication relay satellites, especially when they need to perform missions on the far side of the moon, cannot send out anything because their back is to the earth, so there must be relay satellites orbiting the moon;

This relay satellite can be launched in advance, or it can be launched later with the lunar landing spacecraft.

Third, the lander, return spacecraft, and lander were all assembled together as a whole lunar landing spacecraft and launched into the lunar orbit by a giant rocket in the past. This was the case for the Apollo program and the N1 rocket lunar landing planned by the former Alliance.

After the moon landing plan was formally proposed internally, Xinyuan engineers were more thoughtful and wrote two versions of the moon landing draft:

The first one is based on the premise that NAPE cannot be put into use on time, which is more conservative.

First, use the Xinyuan-2A, which is the CBC configuration Xinyuan-2, with a lunar transfer orbit carrying capacity of 50 tons, to send a large module to the lunar orbit as a space station.

Then the second-stage rocket in the middle was cancelled, and a large space shuttle was hung on the side to carry out the moon landing.

Manufacture the H2 large space shuttle, with a length of about 74 meters, a dead weight of 85 tons, and a maximum take-off weight of 132 tons. It is equipped with three A100 nuclear thermal engines and 12 tons of methane. It can carry 5 crew members. The service module and crew module add up to 70 cubic meters. meter space, and also built a conventional version of the methane engine. Except that it cannot travel far, other indicators are similar, and it is dedicated to low-Earth orbit missions.

H2 can first use an unmanned mission to send a 35-ton payload in the cargo compartment, including the lunar rover, habitation module, and nuclear power plant; the second manned mission can send 5 astronauts. After H2 docks with the space station, 4 of them will use 30-ton payloads. The heavy lander will land on the moon. After completing its mission, it will ride on the ascender and return to the lunar orbit. The ascender will be docked with the space station for reuse.

Then the five crew members took the space shuttle and returned to Earth, perfect.

Second, NAPE was successfully developed as scheduled.

Create a planetary spacecraft XN90 using 6 NAPEs. Take the initial letter X for Xinyuan and N for atomic power. The number is about 90 tons of dead weight. It takes off from the ground into space, then refuels at the space station in Earth orbit and flies to the moon. , land, take off back to Earth orbit, refuel the space station, and land on the surface.

The XN90 can also carry five astronauts, integrating the return module, orbital module, lander and ascender into one.

The landing and takeoff are just like in the Star Wars movie, and you fly into the universe while breathing flames, the level of science fiction is MAX.

However, although the two plans are very different, they can both use a lunar space station and a lunar surface base that no one has built in the past.

Guo Shen planned the preliminary preparations that Xinyuan can make now:

First, two satellites are launched into lunar orbit, one to detect where water may exist on the back of the moon, and the other to serve as a communications satellite to maintain uninterrupted contact.

After finding the water source, use Xinyuan 2 or Xinyuan 3 to build a base, power station, residential module, spacecraft landing site, and fuel station that can synthesize methane.

Then there is the lunar space station, which provides living space and on-orbit fueling. The fuel station on the lunar surface can transport some methane up through the unmanned reusable liquid oxygen methane fuel ascender.

As well as the construction of a near-Earth space station, which can be operated together with the Tiangong Space Station or independently.

Whether it is H2 or XN90, these facilities are used.

The above tasks require five to six launches of giant rockets such as Xinyuan-2A or Xinyuan-3, plus the space station, etc. The initial investment is 8 billion yuan (internally priced, not disclosed).

The cost of H2 or XN90 will be 2 to 4 billion yuan per unit, which is very expensive.

The NAPE and A100 nuclear propulsion plans cost approximately less than 30 billion yuan, and the budget for the entire moon landing plan is initially positioned at 40 billion yuan.

Did you think this was the end? No.

Regarding the near-Earth space station, Androv proposed a new idea.

The "Forward" large-scale centrifugal space station has a gyration radius of 60 meters, rotates at 2 revolutions per minute, and can generate 0.28G gravity.

The space station consists of two longitudinal 14-meter-diameter core cabins and a node cabin in the middle as the rotating center. Six spoke cabins radiate outward to connect the outer ring cabins.

There are 12 cabins on the outer ring, which are rectangular parallelepipeds with a side length of 11.8 meters. Six of them are connected to the spoke cabins and are connected to each other through annular pipes.

The two large cabin sections on the axis and one node cabin weigh a total of 220 tons. The six connecting channels are 5 meters in diameter, each 43 meters long, and weigh 30 tons. Each centrifuge cabin is 44 meters long and weighs 90 tons. The connected environmental pipelines are each Each weighs 5 tons.

The assembly mass is 220+30*6+90*12+5*12=1540 tons, and it can exceed 1800 tons after adding fuel or materials.

Among the 12 centrifugal cabins, 6 are crew cabins, which together provide 2,400 square meters of space, and 6 service cabins for power, fuel, and reserves.

The overall activity space available for the occupants is up to 32,000 cubic meters.

There are also four large docking ports on the axis, which can dock the XN90 spacecraft or the H2 and H1 space shuttles, but two must be balanced on the symmetry plane for rotation.

This will be mankind's first centrifugal low-gravity space station. It can exceed 2,000 tons by docking two H2 or XN90.

More importantly, the 0.28G gravity coupled with constant exercise is enough to ensure that astronauts will not suffer serious physical decline for two years in space.

In the past two years, nuclear rocket engines have been used to detect any planet in the solar system.

At that time, the Advance space station will be able to rely on adding no more than 500 tons of mass on the axis and add a propulsion module containing nuclear engines and fuel.

Of course, the overall budget of the Qianjin is also relatively high. The 14 large cabin sections require a total of 14 launches of the Xinyuan-3 giant rocket, the 12 arc-shaped pipe connecting cabin sections require 6 H2 transports, and the 6 spoke cabins require 33 One group is launched by two Xin Yuan 3s.

Each part alone will require a total of 16 launches of the Xinyuan-3 giant rocket and 6 launches of the Xinyuan-2A giant rocket to transport H2. The rocket launch cost is 8.78 billion yuan.

As for the cabin sections, each of the 6 service cabins requires 50 million, the 6 living cabins cost 80 million each, the 2 core cabins cost 80 million each, the 6 spoke cabins cost 30 million each, and the 12 arc-shaped pipe connecting cabins each require 0.8 billion. 01 million, with a total price of 3.94 billion.

The two H2s are on duty alternately, with a cost of 4 billion including research and development expenses, and a cost of 100 million each for 6 flight missions.

Therefore, the total cost of the Qianjin space station is 87.8+39.4+40+6, which has reached 13.7 billion.

But this is all an ideal situation. Counting other expenditures, it will cost about 16 billion yuan.

In fact, Androv had a further idea for the forward space station, which was to allow the centrifugal part to rotate but the central axis section not to rotate, which required the construction of two large slip rings.

This slip ring must simultaneously ensure strength, air tightness, low resistance, signal nuclear power interaction, etc. The problems caused by this structure are quite complex.

Let’s not talk about air tightness. Let’s just talk about resistance. The centrifugal part has a mass of 1,000 tons. Even if the friction coefficient is very low, it will bring huge deflection torque to the central axis compartment, which is very troublesome to solve.

Bearings are not enough. Androv envisions magnetic levitation. A high vacuum is drawn between the inner and outer rings of the slip ring, and then magnetically levitated, with almost no resistance.

But air tightness is a big problem, and the connecting parts may have to withstand the intensity of acceleration, etc...

In the end, I simply gave up on this idea and discussed it later. Let’s just use it for now.

The solution to the problem of docking after spinning is also relatively simple, that is, stop spinning, otherwise it will stop spinning during docking.

The maximum speed at the end of the Progress space station, which is spinning at a speed of 2 rpm, is only 13 meters per second. It does not take long to decelerate. It just needs the astronauts in the living module to clean up, so as not to make the living cabin a mess due to weightlessness.

Anyway, it is a verification product, so this shortcoming can be tolerated, even if it stops running once a month, it is acceptable.

And if the near-Earth space station of the moon landing plan is changed to the Advance, the budget will not be 40 billion but 50 billion.

How much money does Xinyuan have on its account now? In addition to the launch site, B-level base construction, rocket manufacturing and personnel expenses, the company has almost 14 billion remaining funds...

Don’t forget, the nuclear propulsion team needs 8 billion in the early stage, and the total planned expenditure is 30 billion.

There is still almost 5 billion left when Abel's final payment arrives, so the nuclear promotion team still has a gap of 11 billion.

Overall, Xinyuan Aerospace Power must raise at least 39 billion in funds over the next more than three years...

Lin Ju: Uncle, come here.