Lu Zhou actually didn’t have any extremely high ambitions.
He realized this about himself recently.
In the face of the universe, his influence was ultimately tiny.
He could spend months locking himself in his tiny room, trying to solve an equation or a conjecture by himself. However, for giant system engineering missions, he needed a team of scholars from many disciplines. It was no longer a solo-mission.
Even though he could design the ion thruster propulsion system perfectly, he couldn’t build the propulsion system himself. He needed other people to help him.
If he wanted to have an impact on this world, he needed other people’s help.
As an academic leader, his responsibilities went far beyond exploration and discovery. He was also responsible for guiding the next generation of scholars.
The more he pushed the boundaries of human knowledge, the more he realized how important it was to push human boundaries.
Just like Lu Zhou had expected, a week after he joined the Class of Youth program, the Ministry of Education approved the program.
The Class of Youth was a class that specialized in training academic talents. Second-year undergraduate students would be allowed to apply, and only 30 of the top students would be chosen.
As the chief consultant, Lu Zhou gave a lot of valuable opinions with regard to the training of the Class of Youth program.
He hoped that he could use his experience to guide these young students onto the correct path…
Even though this took up a bit of Lu Zhou’s time, it didn’t affect his work at the Lunar Orbit Committee.
As October came to an end, good news came from the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation.
After countless days and months of design and practice, the second component of the Lunar Mining Program, the automated smelting unit, finally went from a concept to reality.
The Long March 5 vehicle sent the automated smelting unit to the cargo bay of the International Space Station. It was then sent to the Moon through the Magpie Bridge.
After a week of hard work, with the help from the Moon Palace staff members, the automated smelting unit finally landed on the Moon’s surface. The automated smelting unit was then connected with the already deployed automated mining unit.
Once the automated mining unit was activated, the sharp drill bit began to crush into the titanium ore deposits in the lunar soil. The titanium ores were then sent to the automated smelting unit.
Even though this production line didn’t have high efficiency, the high-quality titanium alloy materials were still being produced at a slow and steady rate.
When Lu Zhou looked at the progress of his system mission, he felt quite good. This meant that the system recognized his automated lunar mining facility.
If this trend continued, he should be able to complete this branch mission within a month.
While the branch mission was progressing steadily, the main Control of Earth and Moon mission was also progressing.
In order to cure the colonist who was still in a coma, and to properly preserve and research the X-0172 bacterial samples, the lunar research facility had received fundings from various countries and was about to begin construction.
If everything went according to plan, it should be finished by the middle of next year.
On the other hand, with the installation of several experimental modules and multifunction cabins, the second phase of the Moon Palace came to an end.
China’s Moon Palace project was nearly complete, whereas the American’s “Lunar Gateway” project had barely begun. Waves of criticism were directed at the Ares program and NASA.
The public was so supportive of the New Virginia colonists, but it became such a disappointment. Even though NASA had accomplished a lot over the past two decades, all of that accomplishment was overshadowed by the failure of the Ares program.
American public figures said that the past 20 years was a complete waste of time.
Ever since the Cold War, they had been slowly losing their advantage in the space race…
The Chinese, on the other hand, didn’t care too much about the space race. They were just happy to see their space station orbiting the Moon.
The entire aerospace industry was changing.
It was almost like there was a rocket, pushing the entire industry forward…
It felt like the entire world was evolving…
…
Only three days remained until the Ares program astronauts would return to Earth.
Lu Zhou took a high-speed rail train to Beijing and participated in the final Mars Rescue conference.
After the conference ended, Lu Zhou didn’t immediately return to his hotel. Instead, he went to the State Administration for National Defense and handed Director Li a proposal.
“… Plan for the restructuring of the Lunar Orbit Committee?” Director Li saw the proposal Lu Zhou brought over and adjusted his glasses. He asked, “You’re not going to… ditch us, right?”
This happened with the controllable fusion project as well.
After the project was successful, Lu Zhou began working on his next project. Not long after they achieved fusion ignition, Lu Zhou quit his chief designer position.
Lu Zhou looked at Director Li and smiled.
“Not quite. After the lunar research facility is built, I have something important to do. I won’t leave my chief designer position until that important thing is done.”
Director Li sighed in relief and replied, “Sometimes, I’m quite impressed that you’re able to give up power so easily.”
“Yeah…” Lu Zhou smiled and casually said, “At least for me, anything outside of research is mostly a waste of time.”
Director Li: “Then what? After the lunar stuff is over, what do you plan on doing next? The second generation of nuclear fusion? Mars?”
“Neither…” Lu Zhou shook his head and said, “I’ve done enough for the aerospace industry, after that… I think I’ll set some time aside for myself to explore the things that interest me.”
“Oh, I see…”
Even though Director Li didn’t know specifically what Lu Zhou meant, he knew what Lu Zhou was feeling.
He spoke solemnly.
“When you step down from your Lunar Orbit Committee position, if I haven’t retired yet, you can call me if you ever need anything. I’ll do my best to help you.”
Lu Zhou gently smiled.
“I definitely will.”
Director Li: “Oh yeah, can I ask, before you resign… What ‘important thing’ do you plan on doing?”
Lu Zhou smirked and replied, “Remember the lunar engineering conference a year ago?”
“Of course I do.” Director Li smiled and said, “Time really flies by. Before this, we were talking about how to land on the Moon, and now, we’re talking about building houses on the Moon.”
“We can do more than just build houses there. We can also bring lunar resources back to Earth.” Lu Zhou took out a pen and drew two lines on a piece of white paper.
Director Li stared at the two straight lines and squinted his eyes. He was puzzled.
“What is this?”
“This is the last phase of the entire Earth-Moon transport system.” Lu Zhou paused for a second and said, “Remember the mass driver I talked about?
“It will be difficult to build the mass driver on Earth.
“But we can try building it on the Moon!”
