On the Moon Palace, hundreds of thousands of kilometers away, an aerospaceplane shaped like a bird slowly approached this majestic space fortress.
The alloy tube, which acted as a gangway, extended from the Moon Palace and was inserted into the open connection port on the side of Starlight's nose. Starlight, which had its power system turned off, successfully entered the port.
The alloy tube began to fill with air.
As the alloy doors on both sides opened, six astronauts in spacesuits grabbed the handrails on both sides of the corridor. They slowly floated across the gangway and entered the buffer room of the Moon Palace.
Liang Youcheng stopped in the buffer room. He looked at the Moon outside the porthole with a trace of fascination in his eyes.
"I heard on Earth that you can see the ILHCRC collider and the Guanghan Special Economic Zone from the Moon Palace."
"You definitely can't see it from here." Captain Xu Zhenghong, who was responsible for sending the five astronauts to the Moon, walked to Liang Youcheng's side and said with a faint smile, "But maybe you can see it in another hour."
"Have you been to Guanghan City?"
"I have been there twice."
"What's it like there?"
"It's developing very fast!" Xu Zhenghong looked at the Moon outside the porthole. After recalling for a while, he said, "I remember the first time I went there, we were transporting supplies to the surface. At that time, there was nothing on the surface. There was only a lonely scientific research station and a few scientific researchers stationed there. My deputy and I even wondered if they would be able to survive on that. "
Liang Youcheng asked, "What about the other time?"
"The other time was when 4.27 tons of lunar ore, 50 kilograms of wheat, corn, potatoes, and some biological reagents and scientific research specimens produced on the moon were sent back to Earth … I remember it very clearly because I was the one who counted the goods."
A smile appeared on Xu Zhenghong's face as he said, "The current Guanghan Special Economic Zone can not only rely on the lunar ice under the surface to independently produce fresh water and oxygen, but it can also cultivate space crops in independent planting units. It can even produce rare earth minerals that are rare on Earth. I heard that there is a space hotel that is open to ordinary tourists, but it is still relatively expensive. "
"I really want to go there and take a look."
"There will be opportunities." Xu Zhenghong said with a smile, "You seem to rotate every three years. When you come back from Mars next time, I will probably pick you up. I will take you around Guanghan City."
Liang Youcheng smiled and extended his fist.
"That's a promise. Don't be someone who doesn't come."
"How could that be?" Xu Zhenghong smiled as he extended his fist and bumped it with him. "A man never goes back on his words. When the time comes, you must be careful over there. Don't let anything happen to you. "
"Don't worry." Liang Youcheng put his fist on his chest and said with a faint smile, "I promise there will be five of us when we go and five of us when we come back."
…
The disturbance caused by the engagement did not last long.
Gossip was like the wind. It always came in waves, and as it spread, everyone got tired of it.
Two days later, a few more celebrities would get married and break up. Very soon, the netizens would go from one hot topic to the next, eating other people's melons.
Later, as the "day of departure" was getting closer and closer, compared to the lifelong event of all mankind, Professor Lu's marriage was obviously not worth mentioning.
The last day of March.
Under the watchful eyes of the public, the colonists of the Mars landing plan finally appeared in the public's view.
For various reasons, the Mars landing office did not announce the identities of the colonists going to Mars.
It was not until the five people successfully arrived at the Moon Palace hundreds of thousands of kilometers away and were about to land on the Xu Fu colonial ship that they were given a full shot. Their names and photos were also announced.
What surprised people was that in the "Mars landing road map" and the manned Mars landing plan previously announced by the Mars landing office, there were only three first colonists mentioned in the drawings and written text.
Because of this matter, many people on the Internet were discussing that the Mars landing office was actually imitating NASA's "New Virginia" plan.
But now, the first batch of people to disembark had changed from three to five.
This sudden change was a little surprising for both the netizens who paid attention to the Mars landing plan and NASA.
After all, bringing one more person to Mars was not as simple as adding a seat to the spacecraft. This not only required the artificial ecosystem deployed on the surface of Mars to have a stronger carrying capacity, but it also meant that when the colonial ship carried supplies, it needed to consider two more people's supplies.
From a technical point of view, this was not an easy task.
What's more, coupled with the fact that the Mars landing itself was an eye-catching event, its natural political nature made it difficult not to combine with the current international situation.
Just a few years ago, NASA suffered a setback on that fiery red planet and almost brought dangerous Martian bacteria back to Earth, causing a serious ecological crisis. Even now, there was still an astronaut lying in a scientific research station on the Moon who had yet to wake up.
Considering that there were exactly three astronauts on the BFS spacecraft sent by NASA to Mars, China suddenly announced that the number of people on the Mars landing plan had been adjusted from three to five. This special number and special move made people feel strange.
Many people saw this as a provocation by China to North America in the aerospace field.
Some people even interpreted it as China's high-profile announcement that they had won the competition for the future of mankind.
This result was completely beyond Lu Zhou's expectations. He didn't even know whether to laugh or cry.
Void as a witness? He had never thought of such a childish thing.
In the beginning, the arrangement of three people on the spacecraft was only for the sake of one main, one deputy, and one substitute. The three of them were just enough for most of the initial exploration work.
Now it was temporarily changed to five people, and the timetable for the Mars landing plan was arranged within a month. It was just for the sake of the system reward. He wanted to farm more experience if the conditions permitted.
Who would have thought that the international relations experts would be able to decipher so many layers of meaning from the netizens who were watching the show? Not only was Lu Zhou dumbfounded, but Director Li and Director Chang were also shocked after learning about the situation.
Because there were too many people who were obsessed with this detail, in order to avoid unnecessary misunderstandings, the Mars landing plan office had to hold a press conference to make a public response and clarification of these false rumors.
However, what no one expected was that it didn't matter if they didn't clarify it. Once they did, they felt that there must be some unspeakable secret behind it.
On Twitter.
The official account of CNN News reposted the report of the press conference live interview.
In the comments section below the tweet, it had completely exploded.
"This is a blatant provocation!"
"How dare they … How dare they do this!"
"We should restart the Mars landing plan immediately!"
"That's right! If they send five people, then we will send ten people! "
"…"
Of course, there were also many rational voices amidst the excitement of the crowd.
In addition to those who clamored for the Mars landing plan, there were also many people who opposed the restart of the Mars landing plan. They believed that the White House should focus more on Lunar Gateway and the distant lunar settlement plan. They should first catch up with the Chinese on the Moon before it was too late.
In fact, this was the case.
So far, NASA had not completely cleaned up the mess left by the last Mars landing plan, nor had it recovered from the failure of the New Virginia spacecraft.
Regardless of whether or not limited resources were focused on the exploration and development of the Moon, now was not a good time to restart the Mars landing plan.
But if they just let it go, it would undoubtedly be a heavy blow to the White House's current support rate and national cohesion.
Aerospace was the pride of the Americans.
And this pride had been maintained for half a century.
In any case, this was not something that could be taken lightly.
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