Chapter 784 Encountered a Little Trouble

The video, shot and sent from the part of the spacecraft stranded in orbit, is just one minute and fifty seconds long.

In that video, a semicircular landing module separated from the spaceship of the Heart of Gold, dragged a little bit of flame light, fell towards the thin atmosphere of Mars, and finally turned into a point and disappeared in the Martian atmosphere. edge……

As Lu Zhou guessed, NASA announced the relevant news on the official website immediately after the successful landing, and posted the video clips captured by the Heart of Gold on the Internet.

And what happened next was also expected.

In just ten minutes, this video, which is less than two minutes long, has seen a surge in hits, and finally reached the top three of YouTube's real-time hottest videos.

After watching the pictures in the video, the conference room was silent, and no one spoke.

After a long time, Chen Yunhai coughed lightly and broke the silence.

"We need to discuss countermeasures—"

"There is nothing to discuss. I have said from the beginning that it is enough to do the job at hand."

After closing the notebook on the table, Lu Zhou looked at Academician Yuan Huanmin. After thinking for a moment, he continued to ask, "How long will it take for the living quarters of the Moon Palace to be ready?"

Academician Yuan hesitated for a moment before speaking.

"It's ready, and the testing will take another week."

"Then the next launch is scheduled to be in two weeks!" Lu Zhou stuffed his notebook into his bag and stood up from the meeting table.

...

The successful landing of the Heart of Gold has won great international prestige for the United States, and the entire North America has fallen into a sea of ​​joy.

The comment section of the video released by NASA on youtube and the official website has been maxed out by netizens from all over the world.

As if to vent pent-up anger over the Luna Palace core module cooling system the previous time, the New York Times purposely placed a cartoon of a star-spangled boxing glove posing triumphantly next to the news report .

Even the "Washington Post", which has always been known for its rigor, rarely used "a great step in the history of mankind" to describe the success of the fire plan.

In addition to the extensive reports by the North American media, the overseas media also paid the highest attention to this matter.

This time, the BBC's evaluation, as always, is still from the standpoint of watching the show, saying that NASA has already gained the upper hand in this competition.

At present, compared with Huaguo's Moon Palace project, the Ares project seems to be deeper.

Compared with the helium-III resources that can only be used in unknown years and months, the abundant methane resources on Mars can be used as the energy source for liquid oxygen methane rocket engines.

It turns out that chemical propulsion technology is far from reaching the bottleneck, at least the BFS rocket proves it. The colony on Mars will also become a springboard for NASA to project spacecraft to other planets in the future.

The future of electric propulsion may be even wider, but does a liquid oxygen methane rocket engine look like it would be too bad?

Just as the popularity of the Ares project continued to rise, Space-X announced that it would open a business with video sites such as YouTube to regularly release daily videos of Mars colonists online for free.

In an interview with the media, Musk solemnly promised that all the advertising revenue generated by the video will be used for aerospace projects.

At the same time, the official websites of the White House and NASA successively released a message, soliciting the names of Mars colonies from the American public, and set up an online poll to count everyone's opinions.

This activity has aroused considerable enthusiasm among the North American people. Even those who are not usually interested in aerospace have participated in this name solicitation activity with great interest.

In less than a day, the number of voters exceeded 30 million.

After some sifting, and after weeding out a few names that were obviously spoofs, the White House finally announced "New Virginia" as the name for the first Mars colony.

Historically, this is where British colonization began in North America.

Today, choosing this name to name the Mars colony is undoubtedly quite commemorative.

Just after the name of "New Virginia" was announced, NASA immediately announced the next step of the Ares program.

Before continuing to export immigrants to Mars, the immigration pioneers stationed on Mars will conduct surveys of methane gas reserves, metal deposits and other resources near the colony, and expand the scope of geological exploration activities to areas that cannot be reached by remote-controlled Mars rovers. To explore the storage of solid carbon dioxide in the polar regions of Mars, evaluate the feasibility of artificially activating the greenhouse effect to repair the Martian atmosphere, and most importantly, explore the groundwater.

At present, the balance of victory seems to be tilting towards the east coast of the Pacific Ocean.

And just as North America was in a carnival due to the success of the Ares project, the Lunar Orbit Construction Committee on the other side of the Pacific Ocean was also under a lot of pressure.

When the original space station project started, there was a lot of debate in the industry about whether to choose the "Moon Palace" or the "Tiangong", but now the breakthrough progress of the Ares project seems to make the debate louder.

However, Lu Zhou, the chief designer of the Lunar Orbit Construction Committee, seemed to be deaf to these voices of discussion.

The launch schedule for the Moon Palace living module components remains as usual.

After the assembly of the living module is completed, the Moon Palace, which has been equipped with functional modules, node modules, and experimental modules, will serve as a complete lunar space station, floating on the "NRHO" orbit, and can be stationed by the ground command center for researchers.

At the same time, this is also the last component of the first phase of the Moon Palace...

...

White House.

the office of the president.

The president, who had just returned from Congress, was sitting in an office chair and flipping through the meeting minutes, with a vigorous expression on his face.

At the previous meeting, the deflated expressions on the faces of the members of the opposition party made him feel so happy that even the steak at noon became more fragrant.

Just a week ago, opposition MPs were attacking him for overspending the space program, but now there is little doubt that he is right.

The success of the Ares plan is correct!

Winning the space race is right!

And I, who is leading the American people to victory, is the greatest correctness!

After signing his name on the document in his hand, he couldn't help but sneered when he thought of the congressman who had euphemistically pointed out to him at the meeting that he should be a little more restrained.

"Why do these idiots just don't understand? Although aerospace has spent a lot of money, it has stimulated the economy and created jobs. I don't know what else they are dissatisfied with..."

Roosevelt's dams lifted the American economy, and his rockets can do the same.

Shaking his head, he put the signed budget aside and picked up the next document on the California fusion power plant project.

However, just as he was about to read carefully, there was a knock on the door.

Putting down the documents in his hand, he cleared his throat and said "Come in".

When he saw Director Carson appearing at the door, a bright smile appeared on the president's face.

"Director Carson, nice to meet you, please take a seat!"

Looking at the president with a bright smile on his face, Carson's expression was a little subtle, or he didn't know how to speak.

"Mr. President, it's nice to meet you too..."

With fingers crossed on the table, the president, who was leaning on the office chair, said with a pleasant face: "It seems that you have something to say, do you have any good news to report to me?"

"No...it might be exactly the opposite of what you expected," Director Carson said with difficulty after swallowing a mouthful of spittle, with cold sweat breaking out on his forehead, "Our colonists may have encountered a little trouble..."