Chapter 489 Struggling Desperately
When the space shuttle Ra re-entered the atmosphere from low-Earth orbit.
At this time, the management of the Local Association also entered the safe house and held a secret video conference.
The spokespersons of the four major forces and Kong De, the president, all looked unhappy.
"According to the technical department's analysis, this spacecraft..." Bill paused for a moment and said, "Okay! Let's call it a space shuttle! It is very large, and its mass is very likely to have reached 20,000 to 30,000 tons."
The four major forces all have means of monitoring outer space and have also obtained some data. Naturally, they did not doubt the data Bill said.
Duke, the spokesperson for the Europa Union, raised his glasses, his face full of solemnity:
"From the appearance of the space shuttle, the weight of the spacecraft on its back is about 40-45% of its total weight. In other words, the load ratio of this space shuttle is 40-45%, which is terrible."
It's really scary.
Because the launch vehicle with the best earth-to-earth orbital payload ratio at present is the latest improved version of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy, with a maximum take-off weight of 1,557 tons, a low payload of 71 tons, and a payload ratio of 4.6%.
When comparing the two, the gap immediately appears.
The gap of nearly 10 times is simply terrifying.
If the gap was 2 to 3 times, they would not be so frightened and powerless, but the gap is nearly 10 times, which really makes people feel difficult to compete and catch up.
The man from the fourth force also spoke up: "Logically speaking, ordinary fuel cannot achieve this load ratio, but our detection satellite did not detect the gamma rays produced by the nuclear explosion. What kind of fuel did they use?"
"There are only two types of fuels with an energy density that is 10 times higher than current common fuels." Duke glanced at everyone and said, "One is all-nitrogen anions, and the other is metallic hydrogen."
"Zhang, I remember that one of your research institutes successfully developed all-nitrogen anions?" Alexander asked .
The man shook his head. "It was successful, but the stability is very poor. There is no way to passivate it for the time being. Moreover, the production process is only at the laboratory level and has not yet reached the industrial standard."
"We need to strengthen our cooperation!" Bill took the opportunity to suggest.
"Of course there is no problem with cooperation, but I don't see your sincerity." The man spread his hands with a forced smile.
Kong De quickly came out to smooth things over: "Cooperation! We must communicate with each other. I heard that the space tower project in Jeju Island has recently built a 500-meter-high airbag. The progress of this project must be accelerated!"
When hearing about the space tower project, everyone agreed to speed it up.
After all, Sapiens has already built a space tower-like project in the Nemanya region and operates suborbital flights every day.
Faced with the increasingly strong pressure from the Homo Sapiens company in the aerospace field, Geo Union also hopes to achieve success in the space tower project.
Geo-Union even regards the space tower project as one of the core means to catch up with Sapiens.
According to calculations, if the space tower project can be successful, the fuel consumption for launching from regional Earth to low-Earth orbit will be reduced by about 20%.
If the 1,557-ton Falcon Heavy is launched on a space tower platform, it means that its payload can be increased by 311.4 tons, the total payload can reach 382.4 tons, and the load ratio will reach 24.5%.
Although it is still not as good as the super space shuttle of the Sapiens company, at least the gap is not too big.
Of course, the management of Geolink is well aware that the load-bearing capacity of the space tower platform on Jeju Island is limited .
According to the design plan, the launch platform of the Jeju Space Tower has a maximum carrying capacity of about 860 tons. After deducting 600 to 700 tons of supporting facilities, the final capacity that can be used to carry the launch vehicle is only about 160 to 260 tons.
With this load-bearing capacity, there is no way to use the Falcon Heavy. Even the Long March 5B, which weighs more than 800 tons, cannot go up there. We can only use some small launch vehicles.
It’s not that the Earth Alliance doesn’t want to do it, but as an experimental project, the first-generation prototype system will definitely not directly build a super-large space tower.
The local union doesn’t have that much money.
If the project fails, the limited funds of the local association will become even more difficult.
At this moment, the management of Geolink was extremely envious, jealous and resentful of the space division of Sapiens.
Looking at the projects I'm working on, I realize that I have to be very careful with my budget and I have to make compromises and haggle internally.
And the Sapiens company could easily build a large space tower platform in the Nimanya area without even blinking an eye.
However, they also have very complicated feelings towards the Homo sapiens company.
After all, without the emergence of the Homo Sapiens Company, the four major forces would never come together to cooperate in establishing the Earth Federation Association, let alone provide the Earth Federation with more than 200 billion US dollars in funding each year.
The existence of Homo Sapiens has indeed brought a huge impact to the entire earth.
This is not just true in the aerospace field, it's also true in other fields.
In order to win over those ordinary people and prevent them from being sucked away by the Sapiens company, all parties are now trying their best, basically using both soft and hard tactics, and using both sticks and carrots.
The tax on the rich in North America has been raised to the extreme. Big families such as Morgan, Rockefeller, Mellon, and DuPont have all gritted their teeth and taken some meat out of their own mouths to give to ordinary people.
There is no choice but to pay now . If the snatching and searching continue, all ordinary people would rather go to work for the Homo Sapiens company than stay and breathe the free air of America.
At the same time, the four major forces began to collude with each other, with money contributing money, mines contributing mines, industries contributing industries, and people contributing people.
Anyway, the goal is to lower the production costs of each link as much as possible and improve the living standards of ordinary people, so that people can be retained.
This is not just a North American and European joint issue.
Instead, the four major forces must achieve high welfare internally, otherwise they will not be able to compete with the Homo sapiens company.
You should know that in the second half of the first year of Galaxy, the number of permanent working families from Asia going to Zhiren Company exceeded 47.36 million, with a total of more than 173 million people.
Adding permanent migrant workers in Africa and Latin America, the number of employees in Sapiens companies is rapidly approaching the 3 billion mark.
Even if a large number of obstacles are set up, there is still no way to stop this trend.
Perhaps many people would think that the idea of the middle class or the small wealthy is that they would like ordinary people to work for the Homo sapiens company and never go back to compete with them.
In fact, the middle class and the small wealthy are now the most embarrassed group. They actually very much hope that ordinary people will stay.
After all, the labor force and consumer market of ordinary people are the cornerstone of the entire social system.
Suppose a city with a population of 1 million, 95% are ordinary people, 4% are middle class, and 1% are rich.
That's the question.
When 95% of ordinary people disappear from this city, can the remaining 5% still maintain their previous decent life?
The answer is that 95% of the 5% will fall back to being ordinary people, 4% of the 5% can maintain a life that is worse than before but relatively decent, and 1% of the 5% will continue to be rich.
Ordinary people are the cornerstone of the existence of the middle class and the rich.
Without ordinary people, how can you maintain a high quality and decent life?
The restaurant had no waiters.
There are no workers in the factory.
There are no farmers on the farm.
There are no migrant workers on the construction site.
There are no ordinary people customers in the market.
Don’t change? The population will be drained by the Homo Sapiens Corporation, and then they will be destroyed without a fight.
Therefore, the four major forces have reached a point where they have to change.
