Rebirth of the 1980s: The Military Industry Empire

Saying those things are useless, they belong to fantasizing about the future. Let's talk about something useful right now. Old Liu felt that listening to Qin Yang brag about those things was not enjoyable anymore.

"Okay, then let's talk about what's needed now," Qin Yang said. "Currently, what our navy, air force, or even the army needs most is navigation and positioning satellites."

Whether it's fighting a war or doing something else, the first thing you need to do is know where you are. In fact, in ancient times, people needed navigation and positioning when sailing.

At that time, people used astronomy. They looked at the sun during the day and the stars at night, and used simple instruments to determine their position and various directions, and cooperated with the compass for exploration.

This method has been used all the time. Even now, when the navy trains sailors, they have to be able to use sextants and other astronomical observation equipment. The American advanced bomber F111 has special starlight navigation equipment, which uses a similar principle.

However, the accuracy of these methods is not high and cannot meet the needs of modern warfare. The army needs more accurate navigation and positioning methods.

In 1957, the Soviets launched the first artificial Earth satellite. Since then, there have been artificial flying objects in outer space. However, when this satellite was rotating in space, American scientists discovered changes in the frequency of the satellite's radio signals.

This is the same as waiting for a train at the train station. When the train comes, the sound of the whistle will become sharp because the frequency is increasing. When it leaves, the sound of the whistle will be low because the frequency is decreasing.

The actual frequency has not decreased, but the frequency heard by people is changing. This is the Doppler effect. Since the Doppler efficiency of the satellite has been observed, the satellite can be tracked from the ground! As long as the frequency offset is determined, the distance to the satellite can be known. If the position of the satellite is known, the position of the ground observer will naturally be known.

As a result, the Transit satellite positioning system came out. It was created by these American scientists. They launched 36 satellites to form a global satellite navigation network.

The emergence of this system greatly improved the positioning ability, from the previous accuracy of several kilometers to several tens of meters, an increase of two orders of magnitude.

But for the military, this is still not enough.

In 1964, the Americans began to study a new generation of satellite navigation systems. The goal of this navigation system was to increase the accuracy by two orders of magnitude, to the decimeter level or even higher.

As long as it reaches the meter level, it can be used to drop precision-guided bombs. If you want to hit the left window of the target, it will not enter from the right window. This is the famous GPS.

The satellite is still the satellite overhead, but the working principle has changed. The signal it emits is a time signal. This signal is received by the ground and needs to pass through time. As long as this time can be measured and multiplied by the speed of light, the distance to the satellite can be obtained. As long as you know your distance from three satellites, you can use a triangle to find your coordinates.

The more accurate this time is, the more accurate this distance will be. Therefore, the key to the satellite navigation system is the clock. A mechanical clock will not work, nor will a quartz clock. What needs to be placed on the navigation satellite is an atomic clock, with an error of only one second every ten million years.

From 1973 to 1979, the Americans were developing it. From 1979 to 1984, the Americans launched seven satellites to verify the practicality of this project, and then officially began networking.

Now, the American GPS project has not yet completed networking, and Qin Yang has proposed that we should develop a satellite navigation system!

"President Qin, your proposal is what we need now, but it is not something we can do," an old expert at the scene said after hearing Qin Yang say this. "In the 1960s, we established a satellite navigation team and began exploring satellite navigation. Soon, we discovered that we would encounter a lot of problems. Now, the country wants to engage in economic construction, and it is even more impossible to engage in this kind of investment."

The East also has foresight in many fields and has done a lot of basic research, but if you want to reach the point of practical application, you will face a large amount of capital demand.

Is there so much money?

"Building a global satellite navigation system is not easy, and the financial resources consumed will be many times the funds obtained by our aerospace department."

"Yes, Old Chen proposed a dual-satellite navigation system, but..."

"But what?" Qin Yang's eyes lit up.

The first-generation navigation system developed in the East, which is Beidou-1, uses the principle of dual-satellite positioning. It uses two satellites to achieve navigation and positioning needs, with low cost and quick results. Only after Beidou-1 came out did we start to develop Beidou-2 and Beidou-3, and eventually expanded to the world.

Now, Qin Yang is very happy to hear this news.

"However, we don't think it's reliable."

In 1983, Old Chen proposed a plan to use geostationary satellites for navigation and positioning. Because the country's economic strength was still very poor, it was destined to be unable to develop the kind of global navigation system used by the United States. We can first try a low-cost one.

However, his suggestion did not attract attention. Everyone felt that this plan was too simple. It was not until 1985 that Old Chen reiterated his proposal at the meeting: As long as you give me two geostationary satellites, I can solve the navigation and positioning problem!

This time, it attracted the attention of the leaders of the troops. Taking advantage of the east wind of the 863 Program, dual-satellite navigation was valued.

"The biggest problem with this plan is that it requires ground calculation, which will delay time and expose the user, so we think it is not very practical."

"But I think it's very practical," Qin Yang said. "Our current situation is that we don't have money. Since we don't have money, of course we have to develop a dual-satellite positioning plan that suits our national conditions! Where is this Old Chen? I want to meet him."

With only two satellites, there is no way to locate three points. The user needs to send the data up. Only with an extra set of data can it be solved. On the battlefield, isn't this exposing your target?

There is indeed this problem, but it is better to have satellite positioning than to have none. Regardless of whether there are defects or not, solve the problem first. Wait until there is money in the future, and then develop more advanced ones.

Besides, being able to transmit data has other benefits. Our Beidou-1's unique short message function is not available in other satellite navigation systems. At the earthquake site, the first soldiers to jump down used the message sent by the Beidou-1 terminal. Mobile Unicom and the like could no longer be used.

Qin Yang just didn't know that this plan already existed, and he could take the opportunity to implement this plan, even if our Factory 960 paid for it.

No, of course we have to pay for it. We can carry out commercial operations to avoid being occupied by the GPS market.