Ever since the armed attack on Biosphere A, part of the experimental data was destroyed and the Garden project was stalled.
Even though none of the research institutes had terminated their cooperation with the Garden program, many foreign research institutes were considering whether to withdraw due to security reasons.
The project researchers had been reallocated to the Institute of Aerospace Technology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Biosphere A had already begun reconstruction. Local military forces had increased their presence. However, some of the losses were irreparable.
Nearly half a year of the Garden project’s results were destroyed. Professor Hu, as the project leader, suffered the most and lost a ton of weight.
Even though no one was blaming him, he was blaming himself.
Therefore, after he received the phone call from Professor Lu and heard that Professor Lu had something important to tell him about the Garden project, he immediately left Beijing and rushed off to Jinling.
After a long journey, he finally arrived at the Jinling Institute for Advanced Study dean’s office.
“This is what I wanted to give you.” Lu Zhou took out a hard drive from his drawer and sat down on the sofa. He handed it to Professor Hu and said solemnly, “I hope you can make good use of the data.”
Hu Yang looked at the hard drive and hesitated for a bit before asking, “What is this?”
“Data from Mars.”
The office went quiet for three seconds.
Professor Hu gulped and asked, “Is this… legal?”
Lu Zhou smiled and replied, “Depends on how you use it. It’s definitely not legal to publish in a journal. You also can’t discuss it with any foreign expert. But anything else should be legal.”
Hu Yang reached out and tried to grab the hard drive, but Lu Zhou didn’t let go.
Professor Hu looked up at Lu Zhou with a confused expression.
Lu Zhou looked at Professor Hu and said, “Remember, once you have this, you could be on a CIA list.”
Hu Yang smiled and said, “Whatever, I’m probably already on a list.”
The moment China displayed their interest in colonizing space, the Garden project was bound to be targeted. He, as the leader of the Garden project, was doomed from the beginning.
He tried to grab the hard drive again.
This time, Lu Zhou let go.
Professor Hu looked at the hard drive and suddenly said, “Once the Garden plan is completed, we will be able to colonize the solar system.”
Lu Zhou smiled and said, “Forget about the solar system, we’ll be able to conquer much more than that.”
It was just a matter of time.
…
After Hu Yang returned to Beijing with Lu Zhou’s data, he immediately contacted several key researchers who worked on the Garden project and set up an independent research group. This research group was specifically dedicated to researching valuable experimental data.
On the other hand, Starlight, which was thousands of kilometers away, successfully entered the Mars-Earth return orbit. There was no doubt that Starlight would return to Earth safely, so the Internet discussion gradually cooled down.
After the astronauts returned to Earth, CTV would conduct an interview…
A lot of things happened on Earth during Starlight’s month and a half long journey back to Earth.
NASA was going full force ahead with its Ares program and Lunar Gateway project. China, on the other hand, was focusing on Star Sky Technology and developing lunar resources.
The first phase of the Moon Palace project was complete. Once the six astronauts entered the lunar space station, human civilization would be on their way to colonizing the Moon.
The space station suspended in lunar orbit was like a global “spaceport”. Maybe in a decade or two, people would look at the starry skies and see a populated Moon…
Of course, this was just the beginning.
After countless days of design and planning, Chief Designer Lu’s “Earth-Moon orbital transport system” finally went from a blueprint to reality.
After soliciting opinions from the Internet, the first “Earth-Moon orbital transport system” spacecraft was named “Magpie Bridge”.
The Magpie Bridge design was similar to that of Skyglow; they both had a single propulsion engine at the rear of the spacecraft. They controlled the propulsion direction by changing the speeds of various engines. However, instead of the five engines in Skyglow, the Magpie Bridge had four engines. The Magpie Bridge also went from a shuttle-shaped design to a rectangular parallelepiped, and the wings were removed.
It looked more like a bulky ship that was going to go back and forth between the Earth and the Moon.
The Magpie Bridge was deployed and sent into low-Earth orbit by the Long March 9 rocket. The Lunar Orbit Committee’s Earth-Moon transfer capacity rose to a new level.
The transportation of materials from low-Earth orbit to lunar orbit would be completed by this ion thruster propulsion spacecraft, which was specifically designed for outer space navigation. The Magpie Bridge reached a carrying capacity of 500-750 tons!
So far, the Lunar Orbit Committee was considering whether to rent a unity module from the International Space Station to hold their “transit supplies”.
If this cooperation were to go through, the International Space Station would become a supply transfer station between lunar orbit and low-Earth orbit.
From now on, if someone wanted to send something to the Moon, they only had to send it to the ISS, which would then send it to the Moon by using the Magpie Bridge.
This way, smaller aerospace companies could participate in the lunar orbit project!
A high-thrust propulsion system would no longer be a requirement for the Earth-Moon transfer. The most difficult voyage would be done by Star Sky Technology’s giant “ship”.
Lu Zhou didn’t even realize that he was building an interplanetary transport company.
Most people would have never imagined that Space-X’s vision was being executed by a Chinese company…
