The rise of nanometers

In the low-Earth orbit about 800 kilometers away from the Blue Star surface, it is the Tianmen Space Station that has adjusted its orbit many times.

This behemoth currently has a mass of 18,372 tons, a huge truss system and ancillary space capsules, forming the largest space station in history.

In order to ensure the safety of this space station, the space agency even installed a lot of defense facilities on it.

For example, laser cannons, cushioned foam steel armor, magnetic cage systems, etc.

This is not to defend against Noah's society or the like, but to defend against space junk. Although the space agency has been cleaning up space junk in low-Earth orbit in recent years, the space junk left by humans in the last century is really Too much.

If it is a large piece of space junk that remains relatively intact, you can also use a one-time cleaning robot to capture the space junk and push it into the atmosphere for destruction.

But some space junk is items with a diameter of only a few centimeters or even smaller. These tiny space junk are the real invisible killers.

For example, in the last century, NASA once threw hundreds of millions of copper wires into low-Earth orbit for a project. A large part of these small copper wires are still floating in low-Earth orbit.

In addition, there may be some nuclear equipment in Lao Maozi's abandoned military satellites. These things did not exit with Lao Maozi, but continued to be in orbit.

These old antiques did not consider returning to the Blue Star system at the beginning. If nothing happens, they can still operate in low-Earth orbit for hundreds, even thousands of years.

The space agency has no choice. Noah may not care about these things, but he cannot ignore them.

If any small fragment hits the Tiangong Space Station, Tianmen Space Station, or the Tianzhou spacecraft in flight, serious losses will be caused.

Just three months ago, a scientific research module of the Tiangong Space Station was hit by a solar panel fragment with a diameter of 2.7 centimeters, causing an equipment worth 5.2 million yuan in the scientific research module to be scrapped on the spot.

If it had hit the living module at that time, it might even have endangered the lives of the astronauts.

Fortunately, in order to deal with this danger, when designing the Tiangong Space Station, the Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation set up the living module in the middle, surrounded by the scientific research module and the functional module.

Only then did debris hit the living cabin.

This is not the first time that space debris has attacked a spacecraft. From 2010 to the present, a total of 7 related space debris attacks have occurred.

Even the patchwork International Space Station was hit once at the beginning of last year, causing a solar panel to be punctured.

As for Greater China, which has a larger number of spacecrafts, the probability of being attacked by space debris will also continue to increase due to the increase in scale.

In order to deal with this situation, the space agency has to strengthen the cleanup and monitoring of space debris.

The Tianmen Space Station is even more important than the Tiangong Space Station. It has to assume the functions of a space shipyard, supply station, transfer station, and repair station in recent years.

If it is damaged by space junk, the direct economic losses will be too great and it will seriously slow down the progress of the space strategy.

Therefore, the space agency can only strengthen its defense forces to ensure the safety of Tianmen.

The Tianzhou-3 components that were just launched today were transported to the Tianmen orbit by the Chang-11 carrier rocket. After an hour of adjustment, the two sides quickly completed the docking.

The mechanical arms and gantry cranes on the Tianmen gantry remove the spacecraft components from the launch vehicle and then transport them to designated locations.

As for Chang 11, which only had the first core left, with the cooperation of the astronauts from the Tianmen Space Station, it quickly left the Tianmen berth and began to return to Blue Star.

In fact, due to the continuous advancement of technology and the use of the Golden Wing Dapeng to replace the role of the core stage in the atmosphere, the 11-long core stage can be efficiently recycled and reused.

For example, in this launch mission, this core-level aircraft has carried out 23 consecutive launch missions.

According to the evaluation of the space agency, this type of core level can be reused more than 80 to 90 times if there are no accidents.

This reuse rate has a significant effect on reducing the overall cost of the launch vehicle.

Although there have been several accidents during the period, based on the evaluation and calculation of the China Space Administration's ever-increasing number of launches and the total payload launched, the launch success rate of the China Space Administration still remains at a high level of 96.2%.

Compared with NASA's 72.4% launch success rate at this time, it is already an order of magnitude higher.

When this launch vehicle completes its mission.

In less than five hours, another Chang 11 carrier rocket was launched from the Nansha Space City and arrived at the Tianmen Space Station, which also contained components of the Tianzhou 3 spacecraft.

Currently, eight space cities in Greater China can carry out launch missions.

This effectively avoids launch delays in a single area due to weather factors.

After all, from a layout perspective, Mobei, Jiuquan, Taiyuan, Tanegashima, and Xichang at mid-to-high latitudes are easily affected by snowstorms and sandstorms in winter.

Wenchang and Nansha are easily affected by typhoons and heavy rains.

Dasha Space City is relatively better than other space cities in terms of latitude and weather conditions. It has an annual launch window of about 240 to 260 days.

This kind of low-latitude desert area is hard to find anywhere else except the coast of the Sahara Desert. Australia is indeed unique in many aspects.

Nowadays, the space agency's launch missions are basically full, and even feel a little insufficient. This is not an illusion, but a calculated result.

Among the eight aerospace cities, the infrastructure of two aerospace cities, Taiyuan and Xichang, is relatively backward and their scale is relatively small.

The scale of the other six space cities is currently sufficient, but the launch mission does not require ground driving, so there is a window period.

As the space strategy continues to advance, the space agency discovered that Huang Xiuyuan's previous statement that space transportation capacity might be insufficient actually happened.

Fortunately, Huang Xiuyuan supported Dasha Space City and Nansha Space City at that time and set the scale of their design to the maximum limit.

At present, Dasha Space City has a total of 12 launch sites planned, 6 are in use, and 6 are under construction; while in Nansha Space City, there are 8 launch sites, 4 are in use, and 4 are under construction.

It is this kind of foresight that has prevented the emergence of space launch missions and launch sites such as launch vehicles.

In particular, the three aerospace cities of Wenchang, Tanegashima and Nansha on the seaside are crucial for the launch of large launch vehicles. Several aerospace cities in the interior can only launch small and medium-sized launch vehicles unless they have supporting factories.

Of course, Dasha Space City is an exception.

Because this space city has an independent super-large railway, which is a specially built railway that can transport launch vehicles weighing about 5,000 tons.

This is the advantage of Western Australia. It has a vast land, sparsely populated areas, and flat terrain. From Dasha Aerospace City to the seaside, there are desert plains all the way.

Now that the space agency has more and more launch missions, it has to consider future needs. If current trends are followed, the number of launch sites can ideally be increased to 120 to 140.

Only in this way can we meet future needs, and the expansion of the aerospace industry has also increased the siphon effect on social talents.

Currently, the number of personnel serving the aerospace industry in Greater China has once again set a new record, reaching an unprecedented 7.52 million.

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