China Space Administration held a press conference.

Yang Liwei and other astronauts attended the press conference. At the press conference, the China Space Administration officially announced the complete success of the second flight of the “Panshan” space shuttle.

Yang Liwei and others even praised the “Panshan” aerospace plane, believing that the aerospace plane represents the development direction of aerospace vehicles, and that spacecraft and space shuttles are out of date.

This is what strategic deception is like, a mixture of truth and falsehood.

Liu Tao defines “Panshan” as a spacecraft, but it is promoted to the outside world as an aerospace plane.

This will cause the major countries in the world to invest large amounts of scientific research funds in aerospace planes if they do not want to fall behind.

Just like now, in the information released by the China Space Administration, the ‘Panshan’ space plane uses a nuclear reactor and utilizes nuclear energy instead of traditional fossil fuels, and its sensational innovative propulsion method has completely subverted people’s understanding of aerospace.

It seems that we are now entering a new era and the aerospace field is ushering in a new era.

You know, China has always been trying to catch up with the United States and Russia in the field of aerospace, but now, China seems to have overtaken them all of a sudden.

If the United States, Russia and Europe want to keep up with the times, they must invest a large amount of scientific research funds and a large number of scientific research teams in the aerospace field.

If more is invested in the aerospace sector, there will naturally be less investment in other areas.

The China National Space Administration has clearly released a timetable for manned lunar landing, and no one will doubt whether the China National Space Administration can carry out manned lunar landing.

China has long proved with its actions that the Chinese government’s words are effective and count.

China’s aerospace sector has taken steady steps, from being an admirer, a follower to the current leader, becoming a leader in the world’s aerospace field and successfully overtaking others.

At present, the only fig leaf left in the U.S. space industry is manned lunar landing.

If the United States fails to catch up and send another manned moon landing, the fig leaf of the U.S. space sector will be torn off.

And if other countries land humans on the moon before the United States and confirm that the manned lunar landing site announced by the United States has never had any manned lunar landing, then they will be slapped in the face. It will not be as simple as having the fig leaf torn off, but the lie of the century.

Every action and every press conference of the China National Space Administration is like a death warrant, making the United States feel uneasy.

American private aerospace companies never mention manned lunar landings. Whenever asked, they talk about space travel and manned landings on Mars.

For example, Musk, the boss of Space X, has proposed the goal of colonizing Mars.

Faced with tremendous pressure within the United States and increasing pressure from the outside, NASA received special funding from Congress, which means that NASA will increase its original funding by at least $100 billion each year.

Space technology is not only a guarantee of national defense strength, but also a part of the national glory of the United States.

The United States is not willing to lag behind in this regard.

The United States has brought together many companies including Boeing and Raytheon, led by NASA, to develop a new aerospace plane.

As for the aerospace plane project originally led by the US Air Force, it was far behind before it was successfully developed, so there was naturally no need to continue investing in it.

NASA proposed two main indicators based on the situation of the Panshan space shuttle.

The first indicator: adopting nuclear reactors and replacing fossil fuels with nuclear energy.

The second indicator: adopting electric propulsion system.

Since the “Panshan” aerospace plane was successfully developed, it means that the aerospace plane path is feasible. Then the United States only needs to follow this path and master the technology to develop an aerospace plane of its own.

There is no doubt that these two indicators are extremely difficult to achieve.

Moving a nuclear reactor onto a space plane means that the miniaturization technology of the nuclear reactor must be at least upgraded by two levels compared to the US nuclear reactor technology in order to meet the requirements.

Prior to this, the United States had restarted its nuclear-powered aircraft project, but still faced huge difficulties.

Back then, when World War II had not yet ended and the ‘Manhattan Project’ that was preparing to end World War II with an atomic bomb was still in full swing, the famous scientist Fermi told those scientists that in addition to the atomic bomb, they should not forget to develop nuclear-powered aircraft.

Sure enough, as soon as World War II ended, the development of nuclear-powered aircraft began in full swing.

The United States developed nuclear-powered aircraft with the intention of creating a high-performance long-range strategic bomber that could fly around the earth dozens of times without refueling. The temptation was so great that such an aircraft would get rid of its dependence on a large number of airports and aerial refueling tankers. If it were converted into a nuclear-powered transport aircraft, its efficiency would be unparalleled.

At the same time, the Soviet Union also began to develop nuclear-powered aircraft. Compared with the United States, the Soviet Union had greater power to develop nuclear-powered aircraft because at that time the Soviet Union did not have bombers with a long range. Therefore, the Soviet Union very much hoped to develop a bomber that could easily fly to any place in the United States, carry out bombing, and then return. Nuclear-powered aircraft simply met the needs of the Soviet Union.

At that time, the United States and the Soviet Union had two drive methods in their design plans for nuclear-powered aircraft.

The first is that when the aircraft is flying in the sky, the reactor starts, heating the liquid metal around the core, and then allowing the high-speed airflow to contact the high-temperature liquid metal, so that the airflow becomes high-temperature and high-pressure gas. After diversion, these gases are led to the supercharger turbines of each engine, and finally ejected to generate rear thrust. This design is a hybrid power, that is, the engine still uses fuel when the aircraft takes off and lands, and only switches to nuclear power after climbing to a high altitude. Why not use nuclear power during takeoff and landing? Because the high-speed airflow passes through the liquid metal in the core and then is discharged, the nuclear pollution is relatively serious.

The second option is that the air does not enter the core directly, but uses a heat exchanger to heat the air. There is water or liquid metal in the heat exchanger, which circulates and continuously takes heat out of the core and heats the air passing from the outside, and so on.

One of the biggest difficulties in developing nuclear-powered aircraft at that time was how to protect the pilot from long-term radiation?
Also, how can we avoid nuclear contamination on the ground if a plane crashes?

When the U.S. NB-36H was equipped with a reactor for a test flight to test the radiation level of the reactor to the pilot, there was another plane following the NB-36H, which was full of soldiers. This was so that if the NB-36H crashed, they could rush down immediately to seal off the scene and prevent the surrounding people from being exposed to nuclear radiation.

Later, with the emergence of intercontinental missiles, the demand for nuclear-powered long-range bombers was reduced. Coupled with various technical difficulties, the United States and the Soviet Union discontinued their nuclear-powered aircraft programs.

In addition to nuclear-powered aircraft, the United States and the Soviet Union were also eager for nuclear-powered rockets. At that time, scientists believed that if a nuclear-powered rocket was used to fly to Mars, it would only take 30 days.

That year, after learning that the Curies had proposed the radioactive element radium, the father of Russian space flight, Tsiolkovsky, predicted that a one-ton rocket would only need a small amount of radium to break all gravitational ties with the solar system.

Following nuclear-powered aircraft, Americans began developing nuclear-powered rockets in 1957, which was the Orion nuclear rocket project.

According to the plan, during the take-off phase, a small atomic bomb with a TNT equivalent of 100 tons will be detonated every second. When the rocket reaches a certain speed and altitude, the detonation rate will drop to one bomb every 10 seconds. Since it is far away from the ground, the nuclear bomb with a TNT equivalent of 2 tons will be detonated at this time.

Later, because this method would cause serious nuclear pollution, it was stillborn. Later, a safer method was proposed, which was to use multiple rockets to lift the spacecraft into space, away from the earth, and then drop nuclear bombs as much as possible. Unfortunately, nuclear-powered rockets also face huge technical difficulties. Therefore, in 1963, with the entry into force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Tests in the Atmosphere and Outer Space, the Orion nuclear rocket program and the Soviet Union’s nuclear-powered rocket program also came to an end.

The problems faced back then are naturally the same problems the United States is facing today.

How to further miniaturize nuclear reactors? In addition to miniaturization, there is another very important consideration, which is the safety of nuclear reactors.

Such a small nuclear reactor needs to provide a large amount of energy to support the spacecraft to escape the earth’s gravity and enter space. There are a lot of technical problems involved.

Not to mention electric propulsion!

That’s not the case. All we need to do is move the propulsion systems of nuclear submarines and nuclear-powered aircraft carriers to the spacecraft!

These are two completely different things!
It is precisely because of these difficulties that after China developed a nuclear-powered aircraft, the United States has still not been able to develop a prototype of a nuclear-powered aircraft in the past few years.

You should know that China’s nuclear-powered aircraft have flown around the earth more than once or even twice, and have even shot down orbiting satellites at high altitudes several times, and have even conducted missile interception tests.

The United States has to back down on many issues. Does this mean that the United States has become kind-hearted?

No!

That’s because there is no other way!

Today’s China is truly the world’s largest industrial power and a billion-level industrial country. Its steel output has exceeded one billion tons for many consecutive years, and it is said that a lot of its production capacity has been concealed.

You should know that the highest steel production in the United States was in 1973, when the crude steel production of the U.S. steel industry was 1.37 million tons, the highest steel production record in the history of the U.S. steel industry. The Soviet Union’s steel production reached its peak in 1982, with a steel production of 1.47 million tons.

China’s steel output is at the level of billions of tons, and it has not been maintained for one or two years, but for many consecutive years.

The thought of steel production reaching billions of tons is terrifying.

This means that once war breaks out, the ability to produce troops will be extremely terrifying.

The United States is well aware of this.

Why was the United States able to become the biggest winner in World War II? Wasn’t it because the United States was the largest industrial country and relied on its powerful industry to expand its military and produce countless weapons and ammunition, which killed Germany, Italy and Japan?

NASA received a large amount of scientific research funding and began to prepare for the “Return to the Moon Plan” with full freedom.

After all, if NASA does nothing and has received so much funding, it will be criticized to death.

Panshan Group Headquarters.

Liu Tao looked at the newspaper and couldn’t help but smile and shook his head.

According to news reports, the United States not only plans to return to the moon, but also to build a base on the moon. It will use an open bidding method to split the entire project into several sub-projects, which will be allocated to Space X, Blue Origin and other aerospace companies in the United States and its allies, and volunteers will be recruited from all over the world.

And the United States once again took out the “Saturn V” launch vehicle to bask in the sun. This “Saturn V” launch vehicle is the pride of Americans. It was born in the 60s. It has a low-Earth orbit carrying capacity of up to 118 tons and a lunar orbit carrying capacity of 45 tons. The success rate has reached a terrifying 13/13.

The United States will use the Saturn V launch vehicle to launch a spacecraft to the moon for manned lunar landing. NASA has announced that the United States will conduct a lunar landing every year starting next year. The first three lunar landings will be unmanned, and life support equipment will be delivered to the lunar surface first. After confirming that the life support equipment can operate normally, the second part of the launch plan will be launched, that is, manned lunar landing. The third part is to establish a complete lunar base.

good!very good!very good!

Liu Tao is not afraid of the United States increasing its investment in the aerospace field, whether it is manned space flight, manned lunar landing or manned landing on Mars.

Instead, he is worried that the United States will back down, which would be a real problem.

You know, China has a large number of satellites in the Earth orbit. In the lunar orbit, China also has more than 20 satellites, including relay satellites, communication satellites, meteorological satellites, reconnaissance satellites, navigation satellites, lunar measurement satellites, lunar resource satellites, etc.

Whether the Americans will succeed in carrying out a manned lunar landing by then will not escape the eyes of these satellites.

Even, at that time, the “Panshan” spacecraft can set off and track!

The United States’ current move means that in the next five years, the United States will have to spend at least more than $500 billion on manned lunar landing.

Five hundred billion US dollars is almost as much as the United States’ annual military expenditure.

Not to mention, there is also the space plane development project jointly undertaken by NASA and the US Air Force, which will cost at least several hundred billion US dollars. Add to that the nuclear-powered aircraft, and it is unlikely that there will be any substantial progress unless this project costs hundreds of billions of dollars.

The United States’ fiscal revenue is limited, and it is becoming increasingly difficult for the United States to reap the world’s benefits. As for issuing treasury bonds, it is no longer that easy.

This means that the United States either has to cut spending on military and other areas, or bear the cost of an increased deficit.

No matter which situation occurs, he would be happy to see it.

Of course, it would be fine if the United States could dare to impose high taxes on large companies and big capitalists like it did in the past.

But the question is, does the United States have this capability now?

Liu Tao was highly suspicious.

“We need to add more fuel to the fire and increase the intensity on Lan Fang’s side!” Liu Tao muttered to himself.

It is not just the aerospace field that needs to increase its intensity, other areas also need to increase their intensity.

This is not a conspiracy, but an open conspiracy.

If you want to maintain it, you have to invest more when facing greater pressure. If you don’t want to invest more, you have to retreat!
Invest more, it comes at a price!
Likewise, retreating will also come at a price!
Looking at the current situation, the best direction to start is Australia.

Australia is related to the route from the South Pacific to South America. Once it is lost, it also means losing control of this route. (End of this chapter)