Chapter 103 Successful Launch
Competitors are too strong and it is easy for investors to lose confidence.
Oriental Space is Yao Song’s second business venture. The first time he started his business, everything was smooth sailing. In the end, he sold the company and cashed out hundreds of millions of yuan. While completing primitive accumulation, it also made him understand a lot of truths.
In the process of starting a business, if you meet ten investors and they all reject you, it’s okay. As long as the eleventh person is willing to invest money in you, then the investment will be successful. Its success. The rate is one hundred percent, not nine percent.
But this time, the eleventh person also rejected him, and all investment institutions said they would wait and see.
Even Matrix Partners and Sequoia Capital, which invested money in them in angel rounds, said they would wait and see.
"Yao Song, you also know that Guangjia Aerospace is moving too fast. I have been telling you before that we must speed up the research and development progress.
We must complete it before Guangjia Aerospace The launch of recyclable solid rockets will allow you to have enough capital for the next round of financing.
Compared with Chen Yuanguang, the previous steps are still far from enough. "Wu Liang, director of Jingwei Capital. and executive, said when Yao Songla invested.
Yao Song had been a partner at Jingwei Capital before, and Wu Liang was his direct leader. These words were somewhat heartfelt.
And he founded Oriental Space because he saw a lot of commercial aerospace projects while working at Matrix Partners.
Wu Liang continued: "You know that we are the investment institution that invests the most in commercial aviation projects, and our entire internal investment research mechanism is very complete.
In front of Guangjia Aerospace, you The advantages are limited. If you cannot prove yourself as soon as possible, it will be difficult for you to obtain follow-up investment.
If according to Guangjia Aerospace’s announcement, they will complete the research and development of large-scale recyclable rockets next year, then you only have one year.
The first round of launch they are about to carry out, once successful, you will have to make huge concessions in subsequent financing, and investors will need to obtain more shares
This time will be the last round of financing. If you fail to catch up before Guangjia Aerospace successfully launches its rocket next year, there will be no next round of financing.
Investors will unite and push Guangjia Aerospace to acquire you. If Guangjia Aerospace is not willing, then we will promote the merger of the remaining commercial aerospace companies that make recyclable rockets, and promote the listing after the merger. "Wu Liang is very straightforward.
With the capital market of Big A, it is still a technology-rich project like commercial aerospace, and the difficulty of promoting the listing is much lower.
This guarantees No matter what they do, they will not lose money, and they can even make a lot of money. As for whose money they are making, they all understand.
Yao Song stared at the computer screen, and thoughts came to his mind. Wu Liang's conversation, as his old employer, Jingwei Capital is already the investment institution he is most confident about, and this is the result.
He had no hope for other investment institutions. No, there was another one. When Yao Song thought about it, he almost forgot that there was MiHoYo.
MiHoYo has a lot of cash in hand and has negotiated with them several times, intending to participate in this round of financing from Oriental Space. However, Yao Song is not very fond of this kind of investment that only has money and cannot provide other help. square.
Looking at it now, MiHoYo is really the only life-saving straw.
(In reality, MiHoYo participated in Oriental Space’s Series A financing.)
“Do we still have to rely on the power of the second dimension in the end?” Yao Song couldn’t help but flash this sentence in his mind. He looked at the black screen full of bullets and smiled bitterly.
MiHoYo is not easy to fool, especially Guangjia Aerospace, which is heavily promoted on various media platforms.
On Station B, Douyin, and YouTube, no matter whether the rocket launch is successful or not after this round of live broadcast, it will definitely be a hot search on Weibo.
In addition, MiHoYo’s investment and research team are not vegetarians. How can we fool them into believing that Oriental Space can compete with Light Armor Aerospace?
The second dimension is rich, but the second dimension is not stupid.
Just like the up owners of B site are not easy to cash out, it is not because the B friends are poor, on the contrary, it is because the B friends are too smart, so it is difficult for the up owners to make money from the B friends.
Yao Song felt a headache. He prayed silently in his heart that he would definitely fail. It would be better if the rocket exploded in mid-air and set off a big firework.
Seven o'clock in the morning, Yanjing time, is three o'clock in the afternoon, San Francisco time. Musk was also watching the live broadcast. He complained:
"Why doesn't Wright create an account on X? It can also be broadcast live."
"Do you think they can succeed?" Musk asked.
Tom, a core developer at SpaceX, is responsible for developing rocket engines. He has worked at SpaceX since its inception: “I don’t know, I don’t understand their rocket situation at all.
I can't judge.
But if the launch fails, will anyone be responsible for its failure? ”
Tom was very curious about this. He had dealt with Chen Yuanguang. In his opinion, Chen Yuanguang had a good temper and was much better than Musk.
He felt that maybe this was just Facing them, this is not necessarily the case internally.
Musk said helplessly: "No, Tom, you are wrong, Jim did not drive him away, he wanted to leave. ”
The aforementioned president of SeaLaunch left SeaLaunch in March 2006 to join SpaceX as CEO. He resigned after the Falcon 9 launch failed in December.
Tom has been joking that it was because Musk put too much pressure on him and attributed the failure of the Falcon 9 launch to Jim Mather.
Musk has always denied it.
Tom was noncommittal: "Well, maybe you're right."
Musk said: "Jim is leaving because he has a better chance, not because of the Falcon I want him to take responsibility for the failure of the launch and help me bear the pressure from investors.”
Musk muttered: "Wright shouldn't have such worries."
The two parties did not speak anymore and silently watched the trajectory of the rocket launch.
"It looks pretty good. Their rocket has entered low-Earth orbit and is more successful than our first launch." Tom said.
Because Trail Blazer One is not big, it does not put much pressure on Musk.
He was able to view this matter with the mentality of an audience: "Yes, I still remember that something went wrong during the static test ignition of Falcon 9.
It seemed that the turbo pump was malfunctioning. "
Tom nodded: "Yes, one valve did not receive the opening command. "
He continued: "Because of that mistake, the launch of Falcon 9 was delayed for three months.
It seems that our Chinese counterparts have to do better than us, don't they? ”
As the rocket successfully entered the preset orbit, ten minutes after launch, the first stage returned to the target landing point and successfully completed vertical recovery in space.
Yao Song watched the live broadcast with a look of despair on his face. The performance of Trail Blazers 1 can be described as perfect.
I was thinking about recycling before, but there was no way to do it so accurately and accurately recycle it to the target point.
As a result, this small probability event happened. Pioneer 1 not only achieved rocket recovery, but also achieved precise recovery.
After the first step is successful, the follow-up is nothing more than expanding the rocket's carrying capacity and upgrading the engine, power, and control systems.
The work from zero to one is completed, and SpaceX is in front of us from one to one hundred, which is nothing more than investing manpower and money.
In both cases, Guangjia Aerospace is not bad. The problem is that Oriental Space has not even completed the first step. Yao Song feels that it is finished. Their plan is to launch a recyclable solid rocket next year at the earliest and achieve precise recovery the year after that.
Now your biggest competitor is two years ahead of you, how can you catch up? I’m afraid it’s not easy to fool people in the second dimension.
“Our Chinese colleagues are doing a good job, and it is much smoother than Bezos’ Blue Origin.” Musk complained.
He and Bezos have always had a bad relationship. The source of the bad relationship is that they are both engaged in commercial aerospace. Bezos is engaged in Blue Origin and he is engaged in SpaceX.
They often cynicize on Twitter. Bezos's Blue Origin announced that it will launch 3,000 satellites to build a global network. Musk commented directly below: Plagiarism dog, and directly @Bezos.
I don’t give any face at all.
Tom said: "China has always had an advantage in the aerospace field. They have a large team of engineers."
Musk smiled: "Fortunately, we don't have to compete with them. They No matter how fast the progress is, we don’t have to worry.”
SpaceX will not be able to get the cake from China, and Guangjia Aerospace will not be able to get orders from NASA.
There is little competition between the two parties.
Except if everyone can go to Mars in the future.
“Dear viewers, this is a thrilling dream-chasing journey. It is the first time I have witnessed a rocket launch with my own eyes, and it was personally received by Chen Yuanguang-Guangshen.
It is simply satisfying. All my fantasies have been shattered!”
The day of the rocket launch was Monday, December 5th. The material was recorded on Monday morning and Tim’s team edited it and released it on Tuesday afternoon.
Tim was very excited at the beginning of the video:
“The God of Light has always been a very mysterious existence in the outside world. We rarely hear him introduce what he is doing, and we mostly see it from the news. The news about Phoenix Feilizhao seems to be related to him. How relevant it is is completely unknown
This time we will go to Jiuquan to find out for ourselves.”
The number of views exceeded one million in just one hour, and the number of views exceeded 10 million in four hours.
The entire video is filled with barrages.
B friends were in rejoicing:
“Punch in”
“Witness the miracle”
“Damn God of Light”
“Chinese people’s own recyclable Rocket"
"Happy New Year"
"I hope asteroid mining can be realized soon"
There are too many barrages to watch.
The comments below the video are full of positive energy:
“There are not many pearls in the crown of human science and technology. China has limited opportunities to gather them. Light Armor Aerospace has caught up. Other companies should quickly follow up, crushers from developed countries are not kidding you!”
“There have been voices saying that SpaceX’s recyclable rockets are the real development direction of the future of aerospace. We have taken the wrong path. Now it seems that this path is not difficult to follow.”
“Guangshen Creation Another miracle. When I got up at 7 o'clock on Monday morning to watch the live broadcast, I knew it was stable when I saw the second-stage rocket enter the orbit and the first-stage rocket fell off.
Although the launch cost and power were low. , there is still a lot of room for improvement in terms of carrying capacity, but with a good start, we can keep up."
"When we surpass SpaceX, can we let Huawei name it and put Mr. Yu on it? Come and hold a press conference? Just because this one is far ahead, others will cough!”
Some domestic commercial airlines ask Heilan House to sponsor their rocket launches.
"Please don't praise China's commercial aerospace industry. There is still a gap between the two sides. I hope Guangjia Aerospace can catch up."
"Guangshen, I'm sorry, I was hasty. I saw SDIC at that time They invested more than 10 billion in aerospace for you. I said they invested blindly without any research. The idea that man can conquer nature is deeply rooted in their bones and they made a decision in a flash.
I didn’t expect that you really understand aerospace. The team was able to develop a recyclable rocket within one year of leading the team. Although there is still a gap, it is much ahead of other commercial aerospace companies that have been working on it for several years but have yet to achieve results."
Of course, this is not all encouragement. There are also sarcastic voices. There are many gods on site b who look down on China's technological progress. When seeing similar videos, I have to say the following:
"Save it, SpaceX completed the second level in 2015 With the addition of first-stage vertical recovery, your little rocket is seven years behind SpaceX. What’s so proud about it?
Is this far ahead? The rabbit friends are so funny. "
Of course there is a rational discussion below this kind of statement: "Don't talk nonsense if you don't understand.
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 took four years from project establishment to successful launch, Blue Origin’s New Shepard took five years from project establishment to successful launch, and Light Armor Aerospace’s Trailblazer 1 took It only took one year from project establishment to successful launch. Isn't this far ahead? ”
“Before you said you were forty years behind, but now it’s seven years. I think it will gradually become five years, three years, one year, until you are ahead”
Some directly sprayed: "Get out of here, you unpatriotic people! ”
There are also those who support this statement: "B friends are too patriotic. It is not certain whether this technology was stolen from SpaceX."
In short, you can see various kinds of videos under the popular videos of B station. a position of speech.
Friends, it’s not that the concentration of patriotism is high, but the diversity of species.
This is more or less the type of patient who triggers Huawei’s PTSD when seeing him far ahead.
After this video was broadcast, it was far ahead in the number of views and firmly occupied the top position on the hot search list.
At the same time, it also triggered a lot of discussion on Zhihu.
“How do you evaluate Trailblazer One?”
Netizens’ answers were equally enthusiastic:
“Thank you for the invitation. Let’s look at the progress of Guangjia Aerospace in rocket recovery. It's so fast. If it develops at this pace, SpaceX's advantage won't last long.
According to what Guangshen said in his interview with Tim, SpaceX's advantage will last for up to three years.
The biggest difficulty in retrievable rocket technology is precise control and navigation.
It must undergo a complex dynamic process when returning to Earth, including atmospheric re-entry, slowing down and precise landing. This requires highly precise control systems and algorithms to ensure that the rocket can safely and accurately return to its intended landing site.
This time the Pioneer One has perfectly achieved this goal, and the follow-up is nothing more than repeated launches to optimize it to the limit.
The outlook is optimistic, but in reality there are still some problems that need to be overcome. The biggest difficulty is: "
I'm procrastinating and I didn't finish coding until just now, I'm sorry
(End of this chapter)