Chapter 170 I had no choice before
“Recently, officials from the Bolivian Space Agency will come to watch the launch of Trailblazer 2. We received a satellite launch order from Bolivia last year, and almost all their officials this time Everyone will come, including the director, deputy director, etc.
They want to talk to us about deeper cooperation," Lin Jia said.
Bolivia is a country in central South America.
After hearing this, Chen Yuanguang remembered that Guangjia Aerospace had introduced executives from Huawei in terms of investment promotion, Zhou Danjin, the former president of Huawei's Latin America region. After he joined, he quickly attracted orders from the Bolivian Space Agency.
The order was only US$50 million, which was a test at best, so Chen Yuanguang still needed to recall the details before he could remember them.
"They are so bold. It seems that Joseph's shooting case has no impact on them." Chen Yuanguang said.
The Joseph case at best made France angry for a while, but there was no follow-up after the anger. They stopped the whole thing after catching the murderer, and did not dig deeper into the deeper things under the water.
Lin Jia said: "I am also curious about this question. I asked Zhou Danjin before, and his statement was that Bolivia has always had a bad relationship with America and is closer to China.
They rely heavily on trade with China, and they have extensive cooperation with China in the aerospace field
Starting in 2013, their first satellite was designed by China and launched from our rocket launch center in Xichang. For Amerikan, Bolivia’s aerospace market has always belonged to China, so there is no lost order. ”
The actual situation is more complicated than Lin Jia knew. The cooperation between Bolivia and China goes far beyond launching satellites.
China’s first ground satellite station in South America Just put it in Bolivia
“So that’s a good thing, just let them see our brand new Trailblazer 2. "Chen Yuanguang laughed after hearing this.
The last launch failure was still fresh in her mind. She said helplessly: "You have been busy topology semi-metal recently. Light Armor Aerospace can only participate in meetings remotely. Some specific The work is all handled by the employees below, so I really don’t have much confidence. ”
She continued: "If the launch fails in front of so many people, although it will not affect the current orders, it will not be a good thing after all."
In the end, far more people came than Lin Jia imagined. , Lin Jia received news from Bolivia that officials from their space agency were coming. As a result, space agencies from most countries in South America organized a group to come, and the entire visiting group was dozens of people in size.
Among them, Argentina, Venezuela and Pakistan have sent people.
Zhou Danjin talked one by one, switching back and forth between English and Spanish, sweating profusely.
"Bureau Wu, didn't you say it was only Bolivia? Why did so many people come at once?" Lin Jia asked.
Director Wu is the leader of the Aerospace Port, and one of his responsibilities is to be in charge of external affairs.
“Because they want to have more choices.” Wu Ju stopped and said nothing more.
Zhou Danjin was also puzzled over there. He finally found a chance to talk to Javier alone. Javier is the deputy director of the Bolivian Space Agency. Zhou Danjin had known Javier before when he was still at Huawei.
"Javier, I don't quite understand why the battle is so big this time. Almost all countries in South America that have good relations with China are here." Zhou Danjin asked.
Javier nodded: "Yes, because everyone had no choice before, many times they had to choose SpaceX. They do have an advantage in launch costs.
Take Argentina, for example. Previously, Argentina's Satellogic company, their core business was to build a network of 300 remote sensing satellites.
After the network is established, remote sensing observations can be carried out on a weekly basis.
Previously, Satellogic has been using China’s Long March rockets, Da Mao’s Soyuz rockets and Europe’s Vega rockets for satellite launches. Among the 22 satellites that have been launched, 14 are using China’s Long March rockets. .
However, SpaceX’s cost and quotation are much lower than Long March, and they have the advantage of killing multiple stars with one stone. Therefore, Satellogic switched to SpaceX two years ago.
SpaceX can launch 36 satellites for Satellogic at one time, which is difficult for China to achieve. ”
After listening to this, Zhou Danjin still had some doubts. Since SpaceX has such advantages, why don't they always cooperate with SpaceX?
“I think I roughly understand that they want to see what price Guangjia Aerospace can offer.” Zhou Danjin said.
Javier shook his head: "No, you are different from SpaceX. Although some people may suspect that Wright Chen has too close a relationship with the Chinese government, which will lead to unsafe factors in light armor spaceflight.
But This is fundamentally different from SpaceX's naked threat that small countries have to cooperate with Amerikan on some issues if they want to get priority for rocket launches.
In the past, Bolivia did not choose SpaceX even if it had to bear higher rocket launch costs. , not all countries are Bolivia, like Argentina, which chose SpaceX because of cost issues
However, everything that happened in the past two years made them want to find partners again. ”
Of everything that has happened in the past two years, the most critical thing is that SpaceX has been deeply involved in geopolitical conflicts. It has never played such a big role in geopolitical conflicts on the European border.
SpaceX's Starlink makes it impossible for Da Mao to destroy Er Mao's nationwide network connection, allowing Er Mao to always maintain network communications on the battlefield. Communication is crucial to modern warfare
This matter is undoubtedly in line with Ameri. Although national interests are also commercial behaviors, it also brings about the general concerns of these small South American countries. SpaceX’s extra-commercial atmosphere is too strong, and their business is no longer just a simple commercial behavior.
Including. The relevant personnel of SpaceX’s commercial department stated during the contact that you should cooperate with Americen on some matters and we will provide you with more convenience in rocket launches
Incidents such as this, combined with SpaceX's involvement in geopolitical conflicts, force everyone to find new partners.
At the same time, South America has produced figures like Che Guevara. The zuoyi movements in their past history have made them naturally wary of America.
The closer you are to Amerikan, the more antagonistic you will be towards it. In the past, Amerikan has had countless direct sponsorships and interventions in South America. In recent years, the U.S. dollar diplomacy through the International Monetary Fund has made these The region directly rebelled.
Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Ecuador and Cuba are the five countries with the most violent resistance.
Compared with several other countries, Bolivia is one of the few countries that has localized shzy and achieved economic success.
It is precisely because of this that they are naturally close to China.
Zhou Danjin: "I believe that Light Armor Space's Pioneer 2 will not disappoint you."
This time they will launch a total of six communication satellites for Bolivia, using the newly revised version The Trailblazer II.
After Bolivia signed a contract with Guangjia Aerospace last year, space port officials from other South American countries successively approached Javier to inquire about the situation. These South American countries are very interested in cooperating with China in the aerospace field.
A very simple example, if China monitors them or steals their data, then the global media will help them come forward. But if Amerikan does this, it will be treated as if nothing happened.
Before the rocket was launched, Yang Jiashan explained the Trailblazer 2 to them:
“This is our Trailblazer 2, which uses the same bundled engine as the Falcon 9. Design.
We cooperated with the French Safran Group and purchased the Vulcan engine from them, and then modified it based on the Vulcan engine."
"Sorry, can you tell me. Have you made any modifications to the Vulcan engine? ”
Everyone is relatively familiar with Vulcan. They have all heard of it before. Vulcan is one of the few legacies left over from old Europe that is still valuable today.
Argentina once wanted to buy this technology from France, but was rejected.
“Let us first make one point clear, that is, the engine must go through iteration, because the Vulcan engine was a product more than 20 years ago, and it was designed for the previous situation.
It is difficult to adapt to the current needs of strap-on rockets.
Just like the Falcon 9 uses Merlin engines, they have gone through at least two rounds of revisions, from Merlin 1D to Merlin 1D+ and Merlin 1D++. >
Our transformation mainly focuses on the fuel of the engine. We did not continue to use liquid oxygen-kerosene propellant, but used low-temperature hydrogen and oxygen, and adopted a closed-cycle method of staged combustion.
The previous vacuum thrust of the Vulcan engine was 1145KN. After adopting low-temperature hydrogen and oxygen and staged combustion, we sacrificed part of the thrust and improved its stability, allowing us to more perfectly control different Vulcans. Thrust between engines to achieve a balance. "
The experts here were in an uproar, because this sounds too complicated, and it is almost like redesigning the engine.
"Mr. Yang, I would like to ask, your transformation should require redesigning the engine. Design combustion chamber and nozzle? ”
“Yes, we use ablative nozzles on the gas generator cycle. ”
"There will be very high requirements on the strength and toughness of the material, including the turbine pump, which requires a very high-performance turbine pump to compress and transport low-temperature hydrogen and oxygen. So are you using brand-new materials?"
This is an issue that everyone is very concerned about. With the continuous release of room temperature superconductors and topological semimetals, Chen Yuanguang’s status as a top scientist in materials science has been determined. They all believe that such a radical design method must be used. What new material.
Otherwise it would be too easy to explode.
Yang Jiashan: "Sorry, this is a bit too specific, I can only say that we use a special Invar alloy because it has an extremely low thermal expansion coefficient, good low-temperature toughness and corrosion resistance. Of course The materials we use will be more special.”
“How do you control the thrust?”
Yang Jiashan continued: "We added an external tank to the engine, and the low-temperature hydrogen and oxygen propellant is obtained from the external tank, so we only need to control the external tank.
By controlling the external tank To control the hydrogen and oxygen propellant and thus the thrust.
After the launch, the entire first-stage rocket engine will be separated from other parts and then recovered. ”
Experts from various countries here listened. I feel very itchy and want to see the complete design drawings.
This is a bit too advanced. It is more in line with the needs of modern industry than the Falcon 9's powerful model of flying bricks. It is refined and highly controllable.
“In order to surpass Falcon 9, Trailblazer 2 has made a series of technological innovations. In addition to the engine upgrades just mentioned, we also used lighter materials for the entire rocket body to increase its load capacity.
A lot of technological innovations have also been made in terms of intelligence, autonomous navigation and multi-mission adaptation to meet a wider range of launch requirements and mission scenarios.”
After the entire introduction, return. Behind the hotel, this group of experts from different countries in South America were still discussing with each other what they had seen during the day.
I’m really excited to see it. Although I don’t know if this rocket will explode, the technical content is already full from the introduction. The thrust is greater than that of Falcon 9, and the control is precise. Down to each engine, the level of intelligence far exceeds that of the Falcon 9.
Although everyone does not have the capital to research recyclable rockets, they have more or less visited SpaceX's Falcon 9. With Falcon 9 as a reference coordinate, they are very clear about the value of Trailblazer 2.
"If tomorrow's launch goes well, I think SpaceX will start studying the next generation Falcon 9. China's Trailblazer 2 is really far ahead."
"It's normal for the Chinese people to do this in recent years. Technology is developing so fast. They have even developed room-temperature superconductivity. Isn’t it normal for the rocket to be more advanced than the Falcon 9 ten years ago? "
"Can you imagine that? Vulcan engine? Why is it completely different from the Vulcan engine I saw in France?
The French have taken advantage of it. I know the engine experts from Safran and they signed a contract with China. It is a framework cooperation agreement, which means that the transformation of the Vulcan engine requires technology sharing between them."
"Is it possible for us to buy this technology?"
"I'm afraid we won't be able to make a bid."
While experts from South America were waiting to watch China's rocket launch, Amerikan went off in person in Iran and Gaza.
The whole world fell into turmoil. This time the global capital market plummeted. Big A did not get out of the independent market, but plummeted along with it.
The capital market is panicking, and all investors pessimistically believe that the S3 season is coming.
I believe that China's series of breakthroughs in cutting-edge technology have caused Amerikan to feel strongly uneasy, so he couldn't help but commit suicide personally.
Reports from the Chinese media will think that Amerikan can't hold it in anymore, while Amerikan's local media will all exaggerate that Amerikan's behavior is to defend freeworld.
In fact, the order they lead does not include the entire world, nor is it freedom.
The 200 billion special treasury bonds issued for this purpose were snapped up in the capital market.
“No, this is not an invasion, we are trying to restore regional balance and stability.”
(End of Chapter)