Chapter 57: Chapter 55 This Pie is both Fragrant and Big_1

The conference the next day began with the presentation of the experimental manned spacecraft by the national space agency, which had now completed its basic design and had begun trial manufacturing.

As the largest manned spacecraft with a takeoff weight of 21 tons and capacity for 6 people, the design was very similar to the plans once provided by the system, which finally piqued Lin Ju’s interest.

The presentations by the national team ended there, and it was finally the turn of the private teams.

It’s unknown whether it was intentional, but New Yuan Aeronautics was scheduled to present last, after two companies that had just registered this year and had nothing to show but PowerPoints.

However, the projects they showcased lacked the hyperbolic designs and Ceres missions from Lin Ju’s memories. Instead, their exhibited projects were very similar to the active rockets of New Yuan-1 and Sky Fork, suggesting they were influenced by the butterfly effect.

Finally, it was time for Chief Designer Androff to take the stage.

Lin Ju, who had been sitting in the front row, finally had the chance to turn his head and observe the reactions of the crowd. As expected, all eyes were on him, though it was unclear whether this was good or bad.

Since it was a symposium, there would be a Q&A session after the presentation, and one could imagine the number of questions Androff would receive.

"...I am Androff, Chief Designer of the New Yuan-1 modification, New Yuan-2, New Yuan No. 3, and New Yuan No. 4 series of rockets, as well as the Deputy Chief Designer of the H1 and H2 spaceplanes; I will now present to you New Yuan’s future aerospace plans:

New Yuan-2...

New Yuan No. 3...

Lastly, the super-giant rocket we’re preparing for Mars and deep space missions, New Yuan No. 4:

The diameter of New Yuan No. 4’s rocket body will be the same as that of New Yuan No. 3, but its first stage will be changed to 27 of the 240-ton-class, full-flow staged combustion liquid oxygen and hydrogen engines, placed in a triple-ring layout of 17+9+1, and it will be bundled with 4 four-stage solid boosters, each with a 2800-ton thrust, providing a lift-off thrust of 17,680 tons and a takeoff weight of 15,500 tons!"

When New Yuan-2 was mentioned, with its lift-off thrust of 1600 tons, the audience was quiet;

when New Yuan No. 3, with its lift-off thrust of 7000 tons, was mentioned, the audience was still quiet;

but as soon as New Yuan No. 4 was laid out, no one could stay seated. A murmur arose and lasted for a full minute before subsiding.

The Big Shot on the stage was drinking water and was choked by the data, now clutching his throat to catch his breath.

"Cough cough, quiet! Listen... cough, let Chief Designer Androff continue!"

The Big Shot, now recovered, felt his mind racing with mythical beasts. They had planned for both New Yuan-2 and No. 3; it wasn’t surprising that New Yuan had ambitions, but what kind of behemoth was New Yuan No. 4? Its takeoff weight compared to that of two missile destroyers?!

Unaffected, Androff continued to describe his astonishing vision:

"The low Earth orbit capacity of New Yuan No. 4 will reach an unprecedented 800 tons, and for Mars orbit, 200 tons. Just two rockets could launch a 300-ton spacecraft to Mars!

Well, now it’s time for questions."

Whoosh.

Looking around, there were hands raised everywhere, like a thicket of palms.

Androff casually pointed to someone, as he didn’t recognize anyone there.

A young man stood up:

"Chief Designer Androff, according to your design for the three types of launch vehicles, they will utilize liquid oxygen and methane engines, kerosene engines, liquid hydrogen engines, as well as solid rockets, with liquid engine thrusts ranging from 80 to 380 tons, and you’ll even need solid rocket engines with 700 tons of thrust to achieve your goals.

How much funding and manpower is New Yuan prepared to invest in the simultaneous development of four types and five thrust strengths of giant rocket engines?"

This question directly voiced the thoughts of everyone present. Developing a large-thrust engine could take nearly a decade to design and perfect, and New Yuan was launching so many projects at once—it was like bragging without the need for a draft!

"Your question touches on the commercial secrets of my company. However, I can tell you that the liquid oxygen and methane engine, codenamed M220, completed its prototype testing on New Yuan’s test stand five days ago, achieving a test thrust of 223 tons; the 380-ton kerosene engine K380 and the 240-ton liquid hydrogen engine H240 are also about to enter the prototype manufacturing phase."

"What!"

As soon as Androff finished speaking, a startled shout emerged from the front seats, only to see Tang Weitian being held down in his chair to prevent him from standing up.

Those sitting nearby heard Tang Weitian’s words clearly:

"A 220-ton single-chamber methane engine has already rolled off the line, and we’re still messing around!"

"Calm down, Mr. Chief Engineer Tang."

"I can’t calm down ahhhh..."

It was not only the sixth department that went crazy; the successful test of the 220-ton methane engine had sparked chaos throughout the event. Even the highest-ranking officials above asked the grizzled chief designer next to them:

"Isn’t this 220-ton engine behind our YF480?"

"We have four nozzles, and they only need one, the thrust of a single combustion chamber is double ours."

"So can we make one too?"

"This... will need financial support, and we have never made a methane engine, but we should be able to figure it out by 2025."

"..."

The superior understood and sat back down with a stern face, not saying a word.

In the first round, Chief Designer Androff won by a landslide.

The next speaker was someone Lin Ju knew, the deputy chief designer for the future heavy crewed rockets.

"Hello, Androff. I see that your rockets have a lot of first-stage engines, reaching 9, 19, and even 27. All tightly clustered together; operating up to 27 engines at once will cause strong vibrations to the rocket body and extremely high risks.

If the reliability of a single engine is 98%, then the overall reliability falls to 58%. How do you ensure the rocket’s reliability? We all know the cautionary tale of the N1 rocket that clearly demonstrates the dangers of using many engines in parallel."

If it were anybody else’s PowerPoint presentation, the audience wouldn’t care whether your tall tales held up; it was only because New Yuan was too preposterous, and due to their previous performance, that people seized the opportunity to critique.

Moreover, bringing up the N1 rocket was very representative; it had 30 NK15 liquid oxygen kerosene engines on its first stage, and as a result of four consecutive failures, it became a well-known cautionary example within the aerospace community.

But Androff wasn’t worried at all, he was confident in the system’s parameters being absolutely reliable, so there was no need to worry during its design.

"I need to correct that, H240’s reliability isn’t 98% but 99%. Therefore, the rocket’s overall reliability is 76%, but that’s not important. Let’s consider it another way:

The New Yuan No. 4 rocket’s control system allows for up to four engines to shut down. The remaining engines will correct the course through gimballing and output a minimum of 6000 tons of thrust at 108% power. With redundant fuel, they will still be able to complete the mission.

The probability of having at least 26 working engines out of 27 is 94%, and having at least 25 working engines exceeds 96%. And right now, we are only requiring that at least 23 remain functional, this probability is already close to the reliability of a single engine."

After Androff finished, the room fell silent, followed by people turning on their computers to start calculations.

The questioning deputy chief designer was also shocked; his first thought was: Can rockets really be operated like this?

But it seemed they indeed could.

The fuel for each stage of the rocket is overfilled, providing a certain leeway in case of unexpected circumstances, which is common knowledge.

Short-term overpowered operation of rocket engines is the norm, and an output of 108% is considered average, not at all exaggerated.

So thinking in reverse: the control system doesn’t need to ensure all 27 engines work perfectly, it just needs more than 23 to complete the mission.

With a failure rate of 0.01 for an engine, the probability of four engines failing at the same time is indeed low enough to be negligible.

It could be said that as long as the rocket doesn’t explode into a big firework display, the mission can almost certainly guarantee absolute success.

It’s not half a century ago anymore, the N1 rockets back then didn’t have the powerful control systems of today, and the Union’s production quality has always been a matter of concern. The approach of the New Yuan No. 4 is completely feasible.

Pushing rocket engine reliability to 99% is much simpler than ensuring that 27 engines all work perfectly.

The others were also elites, and soon they all came to this incredible conclusion:

The reliability of a rocket with 27 engines could be higher than that of rockets with fewer engines!

No one knew who started it, but then the applause grew more and more vigorous, with any doubts about Androff transforming into admiration.

Only Lin Ju knew that the H240 was based on the H500 Giant Hydrogen Oxygen Engine provided by the system, and the latter’s reliability wasn’t 99%

but 99.2%.

Although this series of engines had not yet had its first ignition on Earth, in reality, it had been used successfully thousands of times and undergone countless improvements, nearly representing the pinnacle of optimized design for hydrogen oxygen engines.