Chapter 705 Celebrating New Year's Day in the Sky

Moscow.

Federal Security Service.

A man in a gray leather jacket sat at the back of a desk, pointing at the desk with a pen in his hand, while looking at the report on the desk.

At this time, there was a knock on the door from outside the office.

Stopping the movement of his hands, the man sitting behind the desk looked towards the door.

"Please come in."

The door opened, and a thin-faced man walked in.

"The latest report from the Foreign Intelligence Service, as well as the news from the Federal Space Agency," the thin-faced man continued, placing the information in his hand on the table, "It seems that the Chinese have indeed succeeded."

The index finger tapped lightly on the table, and the man sitting behind the desk picked up the document and turned it page by page.

About five minutes passed.

He put down the information in his hand and turned his eyes to the detective standing at the desk.

"Is this the only information?"

The detective nodded solemnly and continued.

"The local army patrols too closely, and there are reconnaissance planes patrolling at high altitudes in the nearby airspace. It's too easy to be exposed when approaching rashly. We can only observe from a distance."

The man in the gray leather jacket nodded, not embarrassing his subordinates too much.

After a pause, he slowly stood up from his office chair and took the document and the previous report into his arms.

"I will report this matter to Mr. Vladimir, the latest news of the auspicious ship, and let the Foreign Intelligence Bureau keep an eye on it. Once there is any new discovery, report it to me immediately."

"Especially the propulsion system they employ..."

"I need to know what that is!"

...

There was one thing that Lu Zhou didn't guess right.

Although the ground command was really chaotic for a while after finding out that he was missing, after learning from Nie Yun that Lu Zhou was staying safely on the Auspicious, those who were in a panic gradually calmed down.

After all, people are already in the sky, so it's useless even if you are in a hurry.

It's impossible to make the half-launched space shuttle turn a corner and come back, right?

Therefore, after confirming Lu Zhou's safety, Hou Guang quickly regained his composure and took up the task of ground command.

The cruise time is 5 hours and 27 minutes.

When passing through the sky above Huaguo, according to the original plan, the auspicious aerospace plane contacted CTV through the transfer of the ground command and sent a 25-second New Year's Day congratulation video.

Originally, this video was planned to be shot by two astronauts, but now there are not only two people on the auspicious ship, Nie Yun and Nie Han are also embarrassed to think that Lu Zhou does not exist, and Lu Zhou is naturally embarrassed to refuse such an interesting Things, so the video originally scheduled for two people to appear was changed to three people in the same frame.

At the end, Lu Zhou, who was standing in the C position, bowed his hands to the camera, on behalf of the astronauts and the ground command and other staff, congratulated the people of the whole country on a happy New Year's Day, and ended the whole video.

Just when Lu Zhou smiled and sent the video back to the ground command, North America, which was 13 hours later than BJ, finally ushered in the early morning of New Year's Day.

However, last night, I don't know how many people lost sleep because of the news that Columbia TV suddenly reported.

According to Twitter's official statistics, in the first half of the night on December 31, the football game is entering the climax of the final competition. However, almost one-third of people in North America are discussing the space plane launched from the opposite side of the earth.

This is extremely rare...

The pride of being an aerospace power has always been written in the bones of Americans, and has even become part of the culture. Not just because only Hollywood can make true sci-fi blockbusters, but because no country has ever surpassed the United States in spaceflight since the Cold War.

Impossible in the past and impossible in the future.

However, now that the strangely named aerospace plane was successfully launched, this pride fell to the ground.

Especially when people heard that the rumored auspicious ship used electric propulsion!

This kind of shock and unbelief born from the bottom of my heart is even more difficult to express in words...

Especially practitioners in the aerospace field, especially engineers working in aerospace giants such as Space-X and Blue Origin, can hardly believe their eyes after seeing the news on TV.

NASA's most advanced electric propulsion technology can't even throw an egg into the sky. The star technology that provides "technical services" for lithium batteries actually uses electric propulsion technology to the sky? ? ?

Is there anything more sci-fi than this?

Rather than believing the fact, they would rather believe that this is an April Fool's joke four months in advance...

Aside from the engineers who work at Space-X and Blue Origin, the biggest headaches are probably NASA employees.

Originally they should take their annual leave comfortably at home, and take their wife and children to Hawaii to enjoy the warm sunshine, but now they are all pulled from their vacation because of the damn space plane across the Pacific Ocean. come out.

That's fine. Since last night, outside the NASA headquarters building, it has been surrounded by the broadcast trucks of major media, and it did not disperse until the next morning, so many people came to work. They were all blocked at the door, and it took a lot of effort to ask the reporter who passed the microphone to squeeze into the building.

In order to get rid of these annoying reporters, NASA was forced to hold a press conference, invited all the reporters present into the reception hall in the building, and left this daunting task to the intern who had just finished induction training. pregnancy.

Amid the unprepared turmoil, the press conference barely started.

Because there were so many reporters present, the order at the scene was extremely chaotic.

There was no time left for the speaker to speak. The reporters in the lecture hall swarmed over and frantically handed out the recorder and microphone in their hands.

"This is a reporter from Columbia TV. I would like to ask you, is it true that the space shuttle Xiangrui launched by Huaguo uses the latest electric propulsion system?"

"...Does the successful launch of the auspicious auspicious mean that China has caught up with us in the aerospace field?"

"...I want to know where the 40 billion annual funds are spent!"

"We did receive a notification about the launch of a new space shuttle from China, but they did not specify in the notification what kind of launch technology they used," NASA's press spokesman said while turning the ballpoint pen in his hand. He said quickly, "We will keep a close eye on the further development of the matter, there is nothing to say at this time."

"But what I want to say is that a successful launch does not mean that it is a successful launch, from the launch of the spacecraft, to the orbital operation, to the final return to the atmosphere... Only when this series of operations is completed can it be counted as a It was a successful manned space flight."

As soon as this sentence came out, it immediately caused a small-scale commotion on the scene.

The reporter from The New York Times keenly heard the words of the speaker, and immediately handed over the microphone and asked sharply, "You mean, the Xiangrui, which uses the latest electric propulsion technology, may fail during the reentry stage? May I ask this? Is it NASA's point of view?"

"I didn't say this," the spokesperson opened his mouth, but he didn't say anything negative, but expressed his point of view in an ambiguous way, "Whether the auspicious ship uses the The electric propulsion power system has yet to be confirmed, in the same way, whether this launch of Huaguo can be called a successful launch depends on whether they can bring the astronauts back safely.”

When hearing this sentence, the eyes of the "New York Times" reporter suddenly lit up.

Not just reporters at The New York Times, but reporters from other media outlets as well.

A loud noise spread from the scene, and the atmosphere was suddenly pushed to a peak.

Big news!

NASA predicts that the design of the Xiangrui is flawed, or it will crash into the atmosphere? !

Standing on the stage, the speaker who emphasized quiet was sweating profusely, and he was beginning to feel a little overwhelmed.

Sure enough, the intern was still too young.

Although the words have been leaked, they still give reporters an opportunity to interpret them from other ideas.

However, even if the press conference site is already in a mess, NASA has no scruples on the other side for the time being. Compared with how the outside media interprets this matter, they are obviously more concerned about the situation of the Xiangrui in the sky. How's it going……