The doors of various factories were open; logistics trucks of all sizes drove on the spacious highways. Some trucks were filled with raw materials, others were filled with various parts. The trucks were like blood cells, filling the industrial area with nutrition, making China’s aerospace industry stronger.
Located in the center of the entire industrial park was the boxy and spacious Jinling aerospace assembly center.
Inside the factory was a spacecraft metal skeleton, which was broken up into three pieces.
This place was like a sanctuary for the aerospace industry. The metal spacecraft skeleton was like a coffin, attracting the attention of astronauts all over the world.
Companies like Boeing, Space-X, and Airbus, companies that had done well in their respective fields, were willing to pay tens of billions of dollars to cooperate with Space-X. This was just to let their engineers take a look at the assembly center.
A group of foreign experts was standing beside the Magpie Bridge skeleton as they whispered to one another and pointed at things with a surprised look on their faces.
“Jesus Christ… How do you plan on sending it to space?”
The Chinese engineer standing beside them didn’t respond. He merely stood still with his hands behind his back.
The foreign expert obviously wasn’t satisfied, so he deliberately spoke in a provocative and sarcastic tone.
“This type of cuboid-shaped skeleton has a bunch of fatal flaws. Have you thought about what would happen if it gets hit by a meteorite? What about the cold metal welding effect in space? The huge amount of thrust will definitely magnify all of these risks.”
The engineer with a hard hat still stood there with a polite smile on his face, and the foreign experts were a little annoyed.
The foreign experts weren’t able to extract any information from the Chinese engineers, and they began to look a little disappointed.
The bearded expert who previously mentioned the cold welding effect was especially annoyed. He angrily complained, “Damnit… Aren’t you going to argue?”
Suddenly, the quiet engineer spoke.
“Nothing to argue about. The spacecraft speaks for itself.”
“…”
Director Li, who was also touring the warehouse, looked at the group of disappointed foreign experts and asked his assistant, “Who are these people? What are they doing?”
His assistant’s English was pretty good, so he explained, “Those foreign people… are trying to find mistakes?”
“Mistakes?” Director Li raised his eyebrows. He chuckled and said, “They have the audacity to try and find mistakes here?”
If this were before, he wouldn’t have been so confident. After all, a couple of years ago, China’s aerospace industry wasn’t strong enough to ignore the opinions of foreign experts.
But now, they were the only country in the world with controllable fusion technology, as well as ion thruster propulsion spacecraft. Why should they listen to anyone else’s advice?
What a joke.
“The main reason they’re here is to gain information on our technology. However, their tactics aren’t that clever, and provoking us is useless.”
Hou Guang, the director of the Aerospace Research Institute at the Jinling Institute for Advanced Study walked over and shook Director Li’s hand with a smile. He said, “Director Li, welcome to the aerospace assembly center. We look forward to your guidance. You should have told me you were coming, I would have made some preparations.”
“What guidance? I’m just a layman, so I can’t give you any valuable advice. I didn’t want to disturb the work here, so I didn’t tell you guys I was coming,” Director Li said as he shook Hou Guang’s hand. He was a little worried about the foreign experts, so he said, “If you know they’re here to extract information, why did you let them in?”
“That was a request from our partners. They want to ensure that our safety practices are up to standard. We’re not going to lock them outside just because of this.” Hou Guang smiled nonchalantly as he said, “Any technology that can be reverse-engineered just by looking at it isn’t worth anything. Our core technology is at the Institute for Advanced Study. Forget the fact that they’re not allowed in there. Even if they’re watching us doing experiments, they probably wouldn’t know what is going on.”
In fact, this annoyed the competitors the most.
They spent a ton of money just to come here in the name of “safety inspection”. However, all they saw were piles of metal scraps.
Yes, even though these metal scraps were valuable, they weren’t able to extract any technical information.
After all, they weren’t able to create a miniaturized version of controllable nuclear fusion themselves.
As Director Li looked at the jealous and resentful faces of the foreign experts, he sighed and said, “I never would have expected to see other people try to steal our technology.”
Hou Guang smiled and said, “Yeah, sometimes it feels like I’m in a dream.”
The group of foreign experts looked like tourists, moving from one attraction to the other. Hou Guang paused for a second and spoke.
“So far, we are currently bidding for NASA’s 500-ton lunar transfer orbit mission. If everything goes well, our offer should be 20% lower than Space-X’s offer. After discussing with experts, this is the most suitable bidding scheme. If the bid is successful, we’ll be able to receive US$10 billion in transportation revenue, but…”
Director Li: “But what? You can ask me anything outside of technology, I’ll try my best to help.”
“No, you’re mistaken, everything is going fine. I was just going to say that, but unfortunately, Academician Lu’s attention is focused on mathematics.” Hou Guang sighed and said, “Honestly, I miss the days of being on the front line with Academician Lu. We’d exchange data and ideas, and he often inspired me.”
Director Li sighed and spoke.
“There’s nothing we can do about that. Academician Lu has his own priorities. We can’t always ask him to sacrifice for us.”
“You’re right, we shouldn’t rely on him.” Hou Guang nodded and said, “Looks like we have to try our best. Academician Lu tried his best to give us this advantage, we shouldn’t let it go to waste.”
Director Li smiled and nodded.
“Yeah, I’ll go look around. If you see Professor Lu, make sure to say hi for me.”
“Okay.” Hou Guang waved his hand and put on his hard hat.
After Hou Guang walked away, Director Li looked at the nearly-complete Magpie Bridge, and he looked relieved and fascinated.
China’s aerospace industry was going full force ahead, and everything was going in the right direction.
I can’t believe I’m able to witness this during my lifetime.
I won’t have any regrets when I die.
