Chapter 164: Spaceship_1

What surprised people was that the Planetary Spaceship in Moon City actually used a liquid fuel propulsion system.

This could be seen from the aerospace engines at the rear of the spaceship.

The scientific team originally responsible for building the spaceship had not disbanded, and when Moon City's concept drawing of the spaceship was released, some engineers found that the propulsion system was too powerful, yet the space for storing fuel was too small.

Although there were no specific blueprints or exact parameters of the spaceship, engineers believed that with the ship's fuel reserves, it might take more than a year to reach Mars.

Faced with the engineers' doubts, the newly appointed Mayor of Moon City, Burton, declared that the spaceship could reach Mars in three months!

Some scientists and engineers scoffed at this, and lost hope for Moon City's spaceship.

Burton paid no attention to these doubts and requested that the PDC settle Moon City's science research budget for the next three years before they announced the detailed Mars plan.

The rotating chairman of the PDC was somewhat speechless; the technical disputes were none of PDC's business!

Then, when the PDC claimed to be short on funds, Burton had them sign a contract ensuring Moon City's research budget would not be in arrears for the next three years.

The PDC's international representatives were a bit pained. The "Declaration" had stipulated that the PDC was to continue providing science research funds to Moon City, but these seasoned politicians thought that didn't mean they couldn't delay payments or reduce them annually.

This was a detail that neither Jiang Yu nor Bil had anticipated, but as the saying goes, specialization is important. Burton, with his management expertise, had discovered this loophole upon taking office and had devised this trick.

Once the contract was signed, the various countries' calculations were overturned.

At least for these three years, they could find no reason to pressure Moon City.

If Moon City were given three years, would there be a chance to pressure them in the future?

But now, the PDC needed Moon City, so they had to sign the contract first and deal with future matters later.

After the contract was signed, Bil, as promised, announced Moon City's Mars plan.

The announcement was made through a video presentation that explained the origin of the plan.

The speaker was Bil, who started from the first proposal.

Bil's team first examined the acceleration method used in the "Ladder Plan," but they quickly realized that the space sails dragging the spaceship would have to be about a third the size of the Moon.

Moreover, since it was a dragging force, it was hard to control. It was also a problem whether the space sails could be retracted smoothly after nearing Mars.

So Bil's team came up with another solution: install an enormous metal plate at the rear of the spaceship.

When the hydrogen bomb exploded behind the spaceship, the resulting shock wave and radiation were absorbed by the metal plate at the rear. The force absorbed by the metal plate was used to propel the spaceship forward.

However, after meticulous calculations, the team members found this method too slow.

The shock wave produced by the hydrogen bomb explosion would scatter in space, and even if the metal plate at the rear of the ship were square kilometers in size, the thrust obtained would be minimal.

Moreover, the larger the rear metal plate, the heavier the spaceship would be, wasting more thrust.

Besides, the metal plate was difficult to install. After all, the spaceship was only a few meters in diameter at its widest, it was only thirty to forty meters, yet it dragged a metal plate kilometers in diameter, looking like a tack at first glance.

The key point was that it was impractical and not even as fast as traditional liquid fuel rockets.

So, the problem came back to the starting point: the spaceship needed too much fuel to get to Mars, the astronauts needed too many supplies en route, and necessary living facilities.

In the end, Bil's team still found inspiration in the "Ladder Plan." Their solution was to provide supplies in batches!

First, they would launch two or three supply modules into a predetermined orbit. When the spaceship took off, it would only carry a third of the fuel and supplies for the entire mission, replenishing en route by docking with the supply modules.

This way, the spaceship could accelerate boldly. Bil's team calculated that at the highest speed of the current liquid propellant, it would take only three months and two days to reach Mars.

Bil called this supply method the "Mars Ladder Plan"!

Upon hearing this news, all the scientists at the PDC breathed a sigh of relief, as the plan seemed highly feasible just from hearing about it.

The technology of liquid fuel aerospace engines, as well as space docking techniques, had long been mature; there were no technical obstacles, and the astronauts were also familiar with the relevant operations.

As soon as the spacecraft was assembled, it could depart immediately.

Then everyone began to feel fortunate; fortunately, Moon City had plans for landing on Mars early on. Otherwise, it wouldn't have been possible to think of this method in just a day or two, and, coupled with the construction of the spacecraft and so forth, there definitely wouldn't have been enough time.

At the same time, some people felt like this was all a little too coincidental, wasn't it?

But it was just a passing thought, after all, it was difficult to link the advanced intelligent signals from Mars with Jiang Yu, Bil, and Moon City.

The spaceship was no longer a cause for concern; next, they had to solve the problem of selecting astronauts for the Mars landing.

Before the plan to land on Mars was conceived, most people actually had little concept of interplanetary travel.

It wasn't until the distance between Earth and Mars was laid out before everyone that they truly grasped the enormity of the task.

In everyone's minds before, Mars seemed close to Earth, but that "close" was still 90 million kilometers away!

Even at the nearest point, it was around 60 million kilometers!

And the circumference of the Earth's equator didn't even amount to 40,000 kilometers; the distance between Earth and the Moon was only 380,000 kilometers.

This Mars landing mission would be over two hundred times the farthest distance humanity had currently achieved with the "moon landing missions"!

It was as if a child, who had just learned to walk, was about to run a five-kilometer cross-country race.

Then, some people began to get excited; humanity was finally about to step out of its cradle.

...

What surprised Jiang Yu was that PDC even invited him to participate in the meeting for the selection of astronauts for the Mars spacecraft.

Jiang Yu had thought that after Moon City became autonomous, PDC would definitely make him sit on the sidelines for a while.

Unexpectedly, there was still a minimum level of respect maintained for the Wallfacers.

Jiang Yu's defeat of the Wallbreakers and his efforts to clean up Tyler's mess had ensured that the Wallfacer Project still wielded significant power to this day.

At least for now, people still valued this plan.

After all, who knew if Jiang Yu's actions were part of his plan?

Moreover, as long as Jiang Yu hadn't caused substantial harm to the human world and as long as he didn't commit acts that challenged the authority of PDC, PDC wasn't going to fall out with "the true master of Moon City" at this juncture.

Politicians love to "keep a back door open," and if they were to take down Jiang Yu, they would wait until he really became useless.

The selection of astronauts was actually not much of a topic for discussion but merely a meeting of division and compromise!

There were only six seats available on the Mars spacecraft, and Moon City wanted to send one spacecraft construction engineer to avoid the possibility of the spacecraft "breaking down" en route.

The remaining five seats would be divided, with one for US-Russia, one for the UK and France to share, and one for Germany and India to share.

The seats were fully allotted just among the "Big Seven."

During a break in the meeting, the PDC's presiding chairperson sought out Jiang Yu for a private conversation.

Jiang Yu had thought they were going to talk about issues regarding Moon City again, and he'd prepared excuses to evade the topic.

But to his surprise, upon meeting, the presiding chairperson said, "Each country has reviewed and arrested a portion of the hard-line 'anti-escape' demonstrators.

"After interrogation, the majority of them turned out to be ETO members!

"Following the clues they provided, the French police just arrested a high-ranking ETO member with the gaming ID 'King Wen of Zhou.'"