Chapter 488 Pull
Suez region.
Kharji Oasis, Kharji Space City.
On six tracks with a width of 10 meters between them, a huge machine is moving slowly.
Dr. Mikoyan looked at the huge object in front of him and felt a sense of relief in his heart. This was the super space shuttle he had worked so hard to develop - Pull.
The full load reaches 32,000 tons, the payload is 15,000 tons, the fuselage weight is 9,600 tons, and the special fuel is 7,400 tons.
This is one of the most violent spacecraft ever built.
Dr. Mikoyan picked up the intercom: "Sit, the shuttle is about to arrive at the refueling station."
"Roger that, Doctor."
The shape of the space shuttle is very strange, a bit similar to Lucia's Buran space shuttle. Its body itself is an aircraft, and the payload is on its back.
From the outside, it looks like two space shuttles stacked on top of each other, and the upper one is slightly smaller than the La space shuttle.
7 minutes later.
The space shuttle entered the refueling station, which is also a processing plant responsible for the production and processing of submetallic hydrogen particles, but the processing plant is hidden deep underground.
Liquid oxygen has been injected into the space shuttle's liquid oxygen storage tank.
The injection of submetallic hydrogen particles is not as simple as liquid oxygen.
To ensure safety, the temperature must be maintained at minus 180 degrees Celsius throughout the process to ensure the stability of the submetallic hydrogen particles.
The super refrigeration system inside the space shuttle, powered by the powerful electricity from nuclear batteries, is running at full capacity.
In order to prevent the submetallic hydrogen particles from sticking together at low temperatures, a layer of film is coated on the surface of these submetallic hydrogen particles to ensure a smooth and non-stick surface.
The container for storing submetallic hydrogen is also specially designed. The interior of the entire container is composed of many pipes. Electromagnetic acceleration rails and magnetic attraction devices are buried in these pipes. Submetallic hydrogen is filled in these pipes.
The reason for this design is very simple.
Because submetallic hydrogen is a superconductor, it can be easily accelerated and ejected through electromagnetics. If other ejection methods are used, their efficiency, reliability and adjustability will not be as good as electromagnetic ejection.
After an hour and a half of filling, all the submetallic hydrogen particles were finally stuffed into the storage tube.
Dr. Mikoyan immediately picked up the intercom: "All departments should immediately conduct a final inspection."
"receive."
In fact, this type of inspection is very quick, because the interior of the space shuttle La is densely covered with a large number of biological sensors, and any abnormality will basically not be missed.
The inspection was completed in less than ten minutes.
"Report, the cryogenic containment system is operating normally."
Dr. Mikoyan took a deep breath. He knew that the launch had to be as soon as possible. Even because of the existence of the ultra-low temperature containment system, submetallic hydrogen could not be preserved for more than 300 hours, so a quick victory was necessary.
He immediately ordered : "Fire immediately."
"Received, start the launch procedure."
"Warning! All personnel within 1 km of the space shuttle please enter the dedicated bunker immediately."
"Runway confirmed for takeoff."
“It was a clear day with no major cloud cover.”
"We have obtained the launch permission from the Space Division..."
After a while.
The shuttle enters the runway.
This is a runway that is angled slightly upward and its direction is east-southeast in order to take advantage of the earth's angular velocity.
In addition, there are 6 rails on the runway . These rails are all magnetic levitation super-heavy rails and electromagnetic catapults. The purpose is to prevent the space shuttle from contacting the ground and reduce the friction caused by contact with the ground.
"The shuttle arrives at the electromagnetic acceleration region."
"The magnetic levitation system is activated..."
"The electromagnetic acceleration push plate connects to the space shuttle..."
The shuttle La floated up slightly, less than a centimeter, and the six specially designed electromagnetic accelerator thrusters at the back were already stuck on the shuttle's landing gear.
"Electromagnetic acceleration system activated..."
The base's huge nuclear power was quickly injected into the electromagnetic acceleration thruster.
Driven by six super-large electromagnetic accelerators and with the space shuttle itself in a state of magnetic levitation, it soon began to speed down the runway.
This 12-kilometer-long electromagnetic acceleration rail will increase the space shuttle's takeoff speed to about 1.5 kilometers per second, or about four times the speed of sound.
On the wings of the space shuttle, a large number of micro-winglets are constantly fine-tuned to make full use of air lift.
Although it is not as abnormal as the Phoenix passenger aircraft and Jinpeng transport aircraft, doing so can at least increase lift by about 11% to 13%.
The 12-kilometer guide track is neither long nor short.
For the space shuttle, which was speeding up, it soon reached the end.
The space shuttle soared into the sky from a ramp at a 33-degree angle.
The moment it left the ramp, the shuttle's autopilot system ejected the first blast of submetallic hydrogen particles.
The explosion chamber has been heated to several hundred degrees Celsius.
When submetallic hydrogen and liquid oxygen are sprayed in, a chain reaction is triggered instantly.
boom!
In an instant, energy equivalent to 260 tons of TNT was released.
However, this explosion is not the end, but the beginning.
Boom boom boom…
A steady stream of submetallic hydrogen particles and liquid oxygen is sprayed into four detonation engines.
The terrifying shock wave of the explosion made the space shuttle faster and faster. Combined with the adjustment of the lift direction of the wings, the space shuttle began to rush towards the Karman line at an angle of 48 degrees.
It took about 57 seconds for the shuttle Ra to break through the Kármán line.
This behemoth weighing more than 20,000 tons rushed out of the Karman line under the watchful eyes of the whole world.
The Ra space shuttle did not separate from the Sun space shuttle on its back at this time, but continued to carry the Sun space shuttle.
It was not until the Homo sapiens space station reached its 1,500-kilometer orbit that it separated from the Sun shuttle, and then the La shuttle turned around and returned to Earth.
That's what's so scary about the super space shuttle.
To be precise, it is submetallic hydrogen.
Without submetallic hydrogen as fuel, such a huge payload cannot be pushed into outer space, let alone have enough energy to return to Earth on its own.
At this time, there was about 27.3% of fuel left on the Rafale, which was enough for it to slow down and brake when re-entering the atmosphere.
However, for this launch mission, the Space Business Division also arranged an additional space mission for the La space shuttle.
That is to go to Space Junk Station No. 3 in low-Earth orbit and bring a batch of scrapped satellites and previously collected space junk back to Earth.
These scrapped satellites include those owned by Sapiens Corporation, as well as those of forces such as Lucia, America, and the Europa Federation.
For example, some of the hundreds of scrapped communication satellites of Space Exploration Corporation were concentrated in one area by space recovery satellites and then compressed into cubes.
Now the space shuttle Ra is about to bring these things back to Earth.
Although it is a scrapped satellite, it contains a lot of rare metals and radioactive materials that must be properly handled.
Soon the space shuttle Ra arrived at Space Junk Station No. 3.
With the help of the large space debris recovery satellite, dozens of tons of space debris were stuffed into the built-in transport cabin and secured and weighted.
Then the space shuttle La started its engine again from 420 kilometers in low-Earth orbit.
However, this time when starting the engine, it is just to accelerate slightly, and it does not require too fast a speed. After all, this is re-entry into the atmosphere, and the earth's gravity and gravitational force will help accelerate.
