Hundreds of thousands of kilometers away on the Moon Palace, an aerospaceplane shaped like a bird slowly approached the towering fortress.
The alloy round tube acted as a gateway to the Moon Palace. It was inserted into the open connection port on the side of the Starlight, docking successfully.
The alloy tube began to be filled with air.
As the alloy door panels on both sides opened, six astronauts in spacesuits grabbed the handrails on both sides of the corridor and moved slowly across the gateway. They entered the buffer room of the Moon Palace.
Liang Youcheng stopped at the buffer room and looked at the Moon outside the porthole with a trace of fascination in his eyes.
“On Earth, I’ve heard about how, standing on the Moon Palace, you can see the ILHCRC collider and the Guanghan Special Economic Zone.”
“Definitely can’t see it standing here.” Captain Xu Zhenghong, who was in charge of sending the five astronauts to the Moon, walked to the side of Liang Youcheng and said with a smile, “But maybe if you wait another hour.”
“Have you been to Guanghan City?”
“Been twice.”
“What’s it like there?”
“Its development is fast!” Xu Zhenghong looked at the Moon outside the porthole and said, “I remember when I went there for the first time to send supplies. Back then, there was nothing on it, only one lonely scientific research station with a few research workers stationed there. My deputy and I even doubted whether they could survive with so little supplies.”
Liang Youcheng then asked, “What about the next time?”
“The next time was for 4.27 tons of lunar ore, 50 kilograms of wheat, corn, potatoes, and some biological reagents and scientific research specimens produced on the Moon… I remember very clearly because I personally counted those goods.”
Xu Zhenghong had a smirk on his face as he said, “The current Guanghan Special Economic Zone relies on the lunar ice below the surface to independently produce fresh water and oxygen, to cultivate space crops inside the plant growth units. They can even produce rare earth minerals. I heard that there is now a space hotel open to reservations from ordinary tourists, but it is still relatively expensive.”
“I really want to take a look if I can.”
“You’ll get an opportunity.” Xu Zhenghong said with a smile, “Your team seems to change every three years. When you return from Mars next time, I’ll probably be the one taking you home. I will take you to Guanghan City then.”
Liang Youcheng smiled and stretched out his fist.
“Good, then you better be here when I come back.”
“Of course I will.” Xu Zhenghong smiled and fist bumped Liang Youcheng. He said, “You should be careful over there. Don’t make any mistakes.”
“Don’t worry.” Liang Youcheng said with a faint smile, “I promise all of the astronauts will return home alive and well.”
…
The turmoil surrounding the engagement did not last long.
Gossip was like the wind; it would come and go in waves, and everyone would eventually forget about it.
A few days later, other celebrities would get married or broken up. Soon, the netizens began to gossip on some other news.
As the “day of departure” became closer, Professor Lu’s personal life was obviously less worth talking about than the mission of all of mankind.
The last day of March.
Under the much-anticipated expectations, the colonists of the Mars landing project finally appeared in the public eye.
For various reasons, the Mars landing office did not announce the identities of the colonists who went to Mars this time.
It wasn’t until the five people successfully arrived at the Moon Palace hundreds of thousands of kilometers away and right before they were about to enter the Xu Fu colonial ship did their names and photos were finally announced.
What surprised people was that in the initial Mars landing plan published by the Mars landing office, there were only three colonists mentioned in the text.
Because of this matter, many people on the Internet discussed that the Mars landing office was actually imitating NASA’s “New Virginia” plan.
However, the first batch of people had changed from three to five.
This sudden change surprised those who were paying attention to the Mars landing project, as well as NASA.
After all, bringing one more person to Mars was not as simple as adding an extra seat to the spacecraft. This not only required the artificial ecosystem deployed on the surface of Mars to have a higher capacity, but it also meant that the colonial ship had to carry extra supplies that could cover two more people.
From a technology standpoint, this was not an easy task.
Also, coupled with the fact that the Mars landing itself was an attention-grabbing event, people couldn’t help but relate it to international politics.
Only a few years ago, NASA almost brought a dangerous Mars bacteria back to Earth, which almost caused a serious ecological crisis. Even now, there was still an astronaut on the Lunar Scientific Research Station that was still in a coma due to the virus.
There were exactly three astronauts on the BFS spacecraft sent by NASA to Mars, and now China suddenly announced that they would increase the number of people on the Mars landing project from three to five. It was easy for the public to form political conspiracies.
Many people regarded it as a challenge from China to North America’s aerospace field.
Some people even interpreted it as a high-profile announcement by China that they had won the race for the future of mankind.
This result was completely beyond Lu Zhou’s expectation; it even made him a little dumbfounded.
He swore that this was not his intention.
In the beginning, having three people to board the ship was because there would be one captain, one deputy, and one substitute. Three people just happened to be enough for most of the initial exploration work.
The reason why the timeline was shortened and the number of astronauts was changed to five people was for the system rewards. He would be able to gain more experience points this way.
He didn’t expect the experts in international relations to brainwash the excited netizens and interpret this in so many ways. Not only was Lu Zhou dumbfounded, Director Li and Director Chang were also flabbergasted after they heard about the situation.
Because there were too many people paying attention to this news, in order to avoid unnecessary misunderstanding, the Mars landing office held a press conference to publicly respond and clarify these false rumors.
However, once they tried to clarify themselves, people thought that there must be some hidden secrets and messages behind it.
On Twitter.
The official account of CNN News reported on the live interview of the press conference.
The reply section completely exploded.
“China is trying to provoke us!”
“How dare they… How dare they!”
“We should restart our Mars landing plan immediately!”
“That’s right! If they send five people, then we will send ten people!”
“…”
Of course, there were many rational voices amidst the excitement of the community.
In addition to those who were clamoring about restarting the Mars landing program, many people were also opposed to the Mars landing plan. They believed that the White House should focus more on the Lunar Gateway project. They should then follow the footsteps of the Chinese and try to catch up on the Moon.
In fact, this was correct.
Even now, NASA had not completely cleared up the mess left by the last Mars landing plan; they had yet to recover from the New Virginia disaster.
Regardless of whether or not their limited resources were focused on the exploration and development of the Moon, now was not a good time to restart the Mars landing plan.
However, if they did nothing, it would undoubtedly damage their approval rate and support from the White House.
America was the pride of Americans.
They had maintained this pride for half a century.
In any case, this was not something that could be dealt with carelessly.
