Chapter 771 Chapter 770

"five!"

"Four!"

"three!"

"two!"

"one!"

"zero!"

"ignition!"

Light blue arc jets stretched from the end of the outwardly flared wings toward the back of the aerospace plane.

Dragging a long and narrow azure blue plume, the Xiaguang, launched from the Jinling Space Launch Center, disappeared at the end of the cloud under the watchful eyes of all the ground staff, engineers and command staff of the launch center.

The launch program went very well.

After leaving the troposphere, the pair of short and thick ailerons of the Xiaguang slowly turned, lowering the angle of the jet ports connected to the ends of the wings, and gradually stretching the direction of the nose.

At the same time, the azure blue plume behind the wing gradually enlarged, and began to work against gravity directly, pushing Xiaguang to draw a trajectory tangent to the earth, and flew to the boundless deep space outside the earth.

Time passed by every minute and every second.

After nearly an hour of flight, Xiaguang finally lived up to expectations, smoothly broke through the edge of the dense section of the atmosphere, reached low-Earth orbit, and began a 72-hour orbital flight.

Sitting in the cockpit, Xu Zhenghong, the test pilot in the main driver's seat, took a closer look at various data such as the orbital altitude and the surface temperature of the spacecraft on the instrument.

After confirming that everything was normal, he finally breathed a sigh of relief with a tense expression.

It was his 57th test mission and his highest ever. When he was in the test pilot group, he never imagined that one day he would fly the plane outside the atmosphere.

Until one day, the superior of the army found him and arranged for him a test flight mission of the Xiaguang...

Although the plane is equipped with an escape pod, only a genius knows whether that thing works or not.

Reaching out to turn on the automatic cruise mode, Xu Zhenghong then disconnected the connection between the spacesuit in the cabin and the environmental control and life support system, and finally reached out and pressed the side of the helmet, took a deep breath and said.

"This is Xiaguang, we have successfully reached the target orbit, requesting instructions on the next step."

A series of noisy current sounds came from the communication channel.

After the communication signal stabilized, the response from the ground command center came quickly.

"...This is the ground command. Congratulations on successfully completing the first flight test exercise. Please keep the orbital altitude and continue flying for two hours. The next flight test exercise will start in two hours."

Xu Zhenghong: "Received, it has entered cruise mode."

Sitting in the co-pilot seat, Liu Biao, who also unlocked the environmental control and life support system, stretched out his hand to loosen the connection port on the helmet of the spacesuit, turned his gaze to the space outside the cockpit, and said something with a smile.

"The scenery here is pretty good."

Looking at the sparks below the clouds, and the deep universe above the sparks, Xu Zhenghong smiled and replied.

"yes."

This is probably the most beautiful scenery he has ever seen.

At this moment, far away, a silver spacecraft slowly climbed to the height and passed through the edge of the dense section of the atmosphere.

Looking in that direction, Liu Biao, who was sitting in the passenger seat, squinted his eyes and asked.

"That is?"

"It should be Space-X's BFR spacecraft. I heard that they also launched today." Looking at his comrades sitting next to him, Xu Zhenghong joked, "Your eyes are strange, and you have seen all of this."

After being praised by the captain, Liu Biao smiled embarrassedly.

"Do you think we should go over and say hello to them?"

Xu Zhenghong: "Good idea, you can ask the ground command center to see what the commander-in-chief has to say."

Liu Biao touched the back of his head with a somewhat embarrassed expression, and said, "Uh, I was just joking to cheer up the atmosphere, don't take it seriously."

Xu Zhenghong paused for a moment, then spoke.

"It's about as good as a joke, take a 10-minute break, and then get to work."

Liu Biao, who was sitting in the co-pilot seat, immediately straightened his back.

"Yes!"

...

Meanwhile, the other side of the track.

At the same time that Xiaguang discovered the BFS spacecraft, the BFS spacecraft also discovered them.

Although neither side is equipped with special radars for detecting spacecraft, since the orbital altitude is exactly the same and the distance is not particularly far, they can be seen at a glance.

Watching the silver spacecraft outside the porthole gradually go away, Taiwei, who was leaning on the seat, suddenly spoke.

"According to the tradition of the Marine Corps, should we write the mailbox on a piece of paper and stick it on the window?"

Johnson raised his eyebrows and said jokingly.

"The Marine Corps doesn't have that tradition, that's the Air Force ... and I guess even if we did, they wouldn't be able to see clearly from this distance."

"That's right." Taiwei muttered to himself, and then stopped talking.

Unlike the two big men, Jones, who was sitting on the other side of the spacecraft, was completely attracted by the blue planet behind the spacecraft.

After staring out the porthole for a long time, Jones sighed softly: "What a beautiful view..."

After glancing at Jones, Taiwei also turned his gaze out of the window and hummed.

"Yes, the scenery here is beautiful."

"Speaking of which, we all received training at different training bases, and we only met two weeks before the launch mission." Looking at the two people staring out of the window, Johnson suddenly opened his mouth and said with a toothy smile, "I mean Yes, why don't we talk?"

Looking away from the porthole, Taiwei cast a questioning look at him: "What are you talking about?"

"Talk about life, talk about dreams, talk about why we are sitting here, why we signed up to go to Mars... Oh, damn, it would be great if there was a bottle of whiskey here." Johnson touched his head in distress and made a funny Said the expression.

Jones whispered: "Living material storage can't be unlocked until after landing...I heard it during training."

Tai Wei didn't pay attention to those irrelevant questions, but answered his previous sentence.

"Haven't these things already been said on the show?"

Johnson shrugged and made a helpless expression.

"Only I said it, you haven't."

Taiwei hesitated for a while, but finally did not answer the question, but looked at Jones.

"Lady first."

"Eh? Me? I..." Jones glanced around awkwardly, then sighed as if giving up, and said, "Well, I hope you don't laugh at me after I say it. Just a little problem..."

Johnson: "Relationship issues? Breakup? Divorce? Or... oh, sorry, I shouldn't have gotten to the bottom of—"

"It's a breakup," Jones continued after being silent for a while, "maybe it doesn't seem like a big deal to you, but it hit me hard. I hope to get back together and live a new life in another place."

Taiwei raised his eyebrows, and asked a little in disbelief: "Then at this moment, you saw the recruitment advertisement for the Ares project?"

"Yes," Jones forced a slightly forced smile on his face, and continued, "It's surprising, isn't it? My colleagues were all shocked, no one thought that I would be selected... …Immigration quickly approved my application, and Space-X even reimbursed my air ticket from Amsterdam to the United States. I thought about it later and thought it was good, so I just…”

As if he didn't know how to express it, Jones shrugged and ended the topic abruptly, "Anyway, I'm sitting here now."

"This is too exaggerated..." Taiwei looked at Jones in disbelief, and muttered, "If I have to run so far just because of the breakup, I'm afraid I've already flown outside the solar system."

"Stop, don't say such unlucky words," Johnson patted Tavy on the shoulder, "Our lady has finished speaking, now it's your turn. I've always been curious, what makes a football player quarterback, turned into an astronaut."

Finally faced this problem.

Taiwei hesitated, and finally shrugged as if giving up.

"Because of... the debt problem."

Johnson looked at him in surprise: "Credit card?"

"That's right..." Taiwei moved his gaze away subtly.

Johnson smiled cheerfully and patted him on the shoulder encouragingly.

"Haha, there are no nasty bills on Mars, you're relieved now."

Taiwei smiled from the bottom of his heart, but didn't answer.

Jones glanced at him, and the woman's gut told her that the guy wasn't telling the truth, or that he wasn't finishing what he had to say.

At least, the reason why he participated in this plan is definitely not as simple as the debt problem.

Compared with Jones, Johnson didn't care about these details. He just felt that Taiwei didn't seem to want to continue this topic, so he didn't delve into this aspect.

A person's past is not important, what matters is how he faces the future.

Now that they are sitting here, they are teammates, they are a team, and they have to face all problems together...

The chatterbox gradually opened up, and the atmosphere gradually became familiar.

Looking at the two teammates who recovered, Johnson nodded with satisfaction.

As the "captain" of this flight, Columbus sailing to the New World, in addition to being responsible for professional operations, he also had to be responsible for coordinating the mental state of his teammates.

After all, I have to squat in this small and compact manned spaceship for nearly two months. This feeling is probably not much better than being in jail.

Time passed by, and the blue planet behind them, as well as the spacecraft that had long since disappeared, had gradually moved away from them.

In this way, with yearning for the new continent and longing for a better future, the BFS spaceship left the synchronous orbit, sailed into a dark deep space, and flew towards the fiery red planet...

Sorry, I forgot about the time difference ORZ