In the company's adjustment after the year, Was, Wae and Wih officially became R&D management institutions instead of the previous consulting institutions. Among the affiliated research institutes, except for the three cutting-edge science and technology research institutes and asa, the others are managed under the academic department. The other research institutes are just internal customary names. After all, they have been used for ten years.
The Institute of Planetary Transformation has been ridiculed by the media. The director, Dr. Ernest Anderson, has visited Li Zhuang many times, all because of the name. Since some researchers were transferred to the Environmental Renovation Group to form the new Environmental Renovation Research Institute, Anderson felt that this organization could be classified under ASA. Besides, the span was too big and no one could control it.
The computer expert thought about it again and again, and decided that it would be better not to be in the limelight. ASA's institutions are complete and will continue to be strengthened this time, because it has been two years since the base was established in this weird place on the moon. The secrets of nature have exceeded the scope of the current system's cognition. Even the earth where we live and the nearby moon are full of weirdness, and we don't know how many crises are lurking.
The Artificial Intelligence Research Institute now operates smoothly, and the internal training mechanism is complete. Li Zhuang¡¯s breathing time has increased significantly than before. Besides, Thomas is still watching, so there is no problem that cannot be solved.
Xinwei City is heavily guarded with cameras and security facilities. The Australian Army and the ASA Security Department have protected this city tightly and it is a special zone. Now there is no one who can pass without obstruction, including the nominal boss of the company.
Li Zhuang told Thomas and took three bodyguards to Xinwei City. He first went to see the A1 speaker. After careful inspection, he found that there was nothing abnormal. The high-strength protective cover jointly developed by the Nanotechnology Research Institute and asa had sufficient margin.
"Father, when will the aerospace plane take off next time? Space is more fun than the ground." A1 speaker asked.
"Haha, every time you fly to the space station, you spend a lot of money. Besides, you have to check it carefully, otherwise your life will be in danger."
The a1 speaker said nonchalantly, "I'm not afraid. Even if I become a satellite in space, I won't die until rescue arrives."
Li Zhuang smiled and said: "What if it falls to the ground? I know you are not afraid of the sea."
"That's okay. My shell is strong. Even if there is a problem, father, you can help me fix it, right?" The a1 speaker was silent for a moment, and then answered after carefully calculating the data.
Li Zhuang laughed loudly, said goodbye to his two young sons, and headed to the aerospace aircraft hangar not far away. Arthur had never seen an aerospace aircraft, so this time the computer expert took him to visit, including the previous small test aircraft.
The hangar is built in a hill. It took a lot of effort to dig out such a large cave, but considering the safety, it was all worth it. Li Meng and Chen Xiaojun kept following. It was boring outside, but you could still take a look inside, although you couldn't understand anything. Arthur followed Li Zhuang around and watched with great interest.
There are eight test machines, the smallest one is only one-third the size of the space shuttle, and it follows the same path as Citigroup. The VA-class is similar in size to the space shuttle and is equipped with three types of engines. Turbojet, scramjet and rocket engines are all developed by the company.
The codename of the test machine is ea, from ea1 to ea8. ea1 only has a scramjet engine and a rocket engine, and is launched using a single-stage rocket. The company did not have heavy bombers, so it used liquid oxygen and kerosene rockets, which it was good at.
An aerospace aircraft needs to enter and exit the atmosphere many times, and each time it will violently rub against the air and produce a large amount of aerodynamic heating. Especially when it returns to the atmosphere at hypersonic speeds, the aerodynamic heating will cause its surface to reach extremely high temperatures, so it must have a weight. Lightweight, high-performance, reusable thermal protection system. The high-temperature resistant materials were completed by the Aerospace Materials Research Institute with the support of several fraternal units. The Powder Metallurgy Laboratory contributed titanium-based composite materials, and the Nanotechnology Research Institute developed carbon composite materials and coatings.
The engine development cycle is very long. The turbojet engine is provided by the Power Technology Research Institute, the scramjet engine is jointly developed by the Military Industry Research Institute and asa, and the rocket engine is developed by the asa chemical engine laboratory.
¡°It was a big failure on the first test flight, mainly due to lack of experience. The Intelligent Brain Group can only improve the design. If the design plan itself is not quite right, then it is not a problem that the Intelligent Brain can solve.
Researchers at the Aerospace Shuttle Laboratory racked their brains to re-adjust the framework, and Vicky sixteen perfected the details and re-created a verification aircraft, which is the extremely streamlined ea1 in front of her. It is very beautiful. After the successful test flight, it was used for more than ten scramjet and rocket engine tests. It was retired after its service life and stored in a hangar.
ASA originally wanted to put the EA1 in the aerospace exhibition hall. The company's senior management considered that there were not many forces that could own such an aircraft, so they blocked ASA's management's decision. I like it these daysThere are many countries that brag about it. There are aerospace planes everywhere, but few of them can actually fly into space. Or they just use models to pretend to be cool. Without a solid foundation, you can only copy the appearance. The design of the engine and control system is difficult to copy unless you send a spy to steal it. Even for the parts that can be forced to be upgraded, the cost is horrifyingly high. The modification of the mere nine aircraft that brought Lizhuang over back then cost billions of dollars, which was a waste of money.
The design of ea1 is perfect, and the aerodynamic shape was successful after many verifications, including computer simulations. Several brother units contributed money to the construction of the ultra-high-speed wind tunnel group, but asa's long-term occupation of doing experiments affected the progress of the Military Industry Research Institute. If there is a leak, Dr. Taylor may cause trouble for Andreev.
"Why is that big plane so broken and messy? It can't be the one that crashed three years ago, right?" Arthur asked, pointing to a pile of rubble.
"Yes, that is the VA-level Unit Zero. I shouldn't have given it that name." Li Zhuang smiled bitterly, while the two people next to him giggled, and Arthur was at a loss.
"Zero represents the beginning and represents perfection, so the ASA management joint meeting named the aerospace aircraft test machine VA-0. According to the company's lazy habit, all aerospace planes will be named VA-level. The first-generation aerospace plane is VA-1, and the file code is VA-10. The new aircraft has been tested for design flaws. The first four flights were normal, but the fifth time something went wrong. Due to the high strength of the modular design of the internal frame, va-0 did not completely fall apart. The a1 speaker fell into the sea, but his brother ds1 speaker fished it back with a deep submersible.
Li Zhuang only saw the file code, and thought it was pretty good at the time. ¡°10¡± represented perfection. He did not expect that the official name of the asa management and the file name were different. When he heard the bad news, he felt that zero represented "done", so he directly intervened not to use similar names in the future. This test shows that there are many problems with the original design of the VA class. The A1 speaker does not require oxygen, but astronauts do, and the relevant life support equipment is readily available. The data recorded at the time of the accident showed that the strength and stability of the passenger compartment did not meet the design requirements. The parachute worked normally, but the airbag deployment system failed.
Large-scale aerospace aircraft are technology-intensive, and their aerodynamic shapes are frightening whether they go to space or come back from space. In contrast, the conical return capsule of the manned spacecraft has a high safety factor and requires less investment. The scale of the manned spacecraft laboratory is not as large as that of the aerospace aircraft laboratory. The vss manned spacecraft they developed has become the favorite means of transportation for asa astronauts. Only two people have flown on the VA-1 aerospace plane, both of which went to the space station. They usually use the vss manned spacecraft to return to the ground from the space station. When the two astronauts returned to the ground last month, they used the first-generation VSS-class spacecraft No. 5, which was code-named VSS-15 in the file.
The A1 speaker has flown ten times in the past two years, delivering 300 tons of cargo to the LTA space station. The VA-1 works normally, and the cost is much lower than the space shuttle and lower than the rocket. The best thing is that it can put multiple satellites at one time. At ease; leisurely.
The door of the tightly secured hangar behind him slowly closed, and Li Zhuang and his party drove to the ASA administrative center. He wanted to see the progress of the research, especially some weird designs.
When passing by the space elevator project team, the computer expert decided to take a look. There are many people who like this project, but not many employees are willing to engage in research simply because it is unreliable. The principle of this thing is very simple. Choose to build a mobile base on the Earth's equator, then build a space station in a geostationary orbit about 36,000 kilometers above the equator, and use a high-strength cable to connect the base and the space station.
The media has been speculating on space elevators for more than a year or two. With the advancement of nanotechnology, this concept has become a hot topic again. Related problems, including cable swing and strength, have theoretical solutions. Recently, some scientists said that such an elevator can be built with an investment of 100 million gold coupons.
Li Zhuang asked many experts for their opinions, but the directors of both the Nanotechnology Research Institute and asa shook their heads, believing that maintaining a 100,000-kilometer cable is too difficult. Even with the company's current strength in the field of carbon nanotechnology, it cannot build a space elevator system with a mere 100 million gold coupons, let alone other forces. If something happens, you will have to walk around without food.
The space environment in which the geostationary orbit is located is extremely complex, mainly composed of high-energy particles other than the gravitational field, thermal plasma, plasma layer plasma, ring current, magnetic field, solar electromagnetic radiation, meteoroids and space debris. The geostationary orbit area is an area where the Earth's space environment is seriously affected by solar activity. When strong solar wind arrives, the magnetosphere is compressed, and the geostationary orbit area is completely exposed to solar cosmic rays. During magnetic storms or substorms, high-temperature plasma injected from the magnetotail can also reach this area, making this area a high-risk area for space environment-induced spacecraft anomalies, in which high-energy particle (including solar proton events) environment and substorm injection The thermal plasma environment is the most important environment causing anomalies and is the area with the most serious spacecraft charging problems.
This place is also an area where communication satellites gather. In case the communication satellitesThe elves may have been bumped into for some special reason, which would be very interesting. This is not the era of the Earth Federation. In addition, if the cable is hit by space junk everywhere, repairing it will not be easy.
In short, this is a concept, at least Li Zhuang thinks so. If you take an elevator like this, you might as well take a space plane. It's not expensive, but it's a little dangerous. Even without a pilot like a space horn, the risk is lower than that of a space elevator.
Li Zhuang arrived at the right time. The project team members were conducting experiments using a thousand-meter-high iron tower. However, this iron tower was not built by the space elevator project team, but was the property of the Meteorological Institute, which happened to be used by the space elevator. Used by the project team.
The so-called laser propulsion space elevator is just a name given by the leader of the project team. The essence is that laser power transmission is converted into electrical energy to drive the motor through the elevator's photoelectric components. This project team is a mess, with everyone involved. There are employees from the Power Transmission and Distribution Research Institute and the Meteorological Research Institute working on it. Everyone should get what they need.
Due to the strong directionality and concentrated energy of the laser, the laser can carry a large amount of energy, which can reduce the weight of the cable and eliminate the need for additional power supply lines. Some scientists say that the cable can be electrified to use the earth's magnetic field to reduce the swing of the cable, but this solution is difficult to implement and has greater variables.
After the experiment started, it only took a short time for the simulated elevator to climb to near the top of the tower, and then it came down smoothly, and the researchers cheered.
Li Zhuang shook his head and was about to leave. Chen Xiaojun grabbed him and said, "Tou Zhuang, how about we go see the electromagnetic catapult?"
"What electromagnetic catapult? Isn't it an electromagnetic railgun? They make a lot of fools of themselves." Li Meng curled his lips in disdain, and Arthur laughed beside him.
The computer expert agreed to Chen Xiaojun¡¯s request, and the group changed direction to see the Electromagnetic Orbital Launch Laboratory. Because it ejects the target, it is called an "electromagnetic catapult" internally. This thing is essentially an electromagnetic railgun, and the electromagnetic catapult developed by the Electric Machinery Research Institute for aircraft carriers is a system with a linear motor as the core.
The speed of the first universe is more than 20 Mach. Different from the slow acceleration of rockets, the aircraft launched by the electromagnetic railgun moves at high speed in the atmosphere from the beginning, and the aerodynamic heating is terrifying.
There are many problems with this idea. One is how to reuse it. The high firing speed and muzzle kinetic energy are fatal to the damage to the track. The track material must have sufficient strength and stiffness and must be able to withstand strong current. The second is how to ensure the operation of the internal components of the aircraft in a strong magnetic environment. Electromagnetic artillery shells do not matter, but if it is a satellite or the like, it will be very troublesome.
The electromagnetic gun currently developed by the company has a maximum speed of Mach 12, which is far from the first cosmic speed of 7900 meters per second. Of course, this is under economic conditions and solves the problem of orbital damage.
The company¡¯s research on high-power pulse power supply technology, forced energy storage devices and high-power switches is top-notch, no worse than Citigroup. Theoretically, electromagnetic orbital launch is a very economical method of satellite launch, which is very suitable for launching small satellites and the cost is much lower than that of rockets.
Li Zhuang was just thinking that he was still far away from his destination when he saw a fire dragon flying into the air from a distance and disappeared without a trace in an instant. It took a long time for the deafening sound to arrive.
"Look, they are doing an experiment, I hope it will work this time." Arthur was chirping beside him.
Li Meng sped up. When the car drove into the launch site, the laboratory employees were nervously communicating with the space station. Since they almost hit a satellite last time, these people have to coordinate with multiple departments to obtain detailed data every time they conduct experiments. John Crocker complained to Li Zhuang more than once that the Electromagnetic Orbital Launch Laboratory always harassed them, but the computer expert had no explanation and had to ask him to be more considerate.
"How is it?" Li Zhuang grabbed the laboratory director and asked.
"Boss, it's not bad. A signal has been transmitted back. Our research has made a breakthrough. The space station said that the small satellite has changed its trajectory. It is expected to reach the space station after changing its orbit tomorrow."
"Ah, is this okay?" Before the computer expert came, he was still criticizing these people for messing around.