Starlight landed vertically on the tarmac, surrounded by four blue plumes.
Surrounded by the ground crew, the two astronauts walked down the ladder and waved at the reporters in the distance. They then got into a commuter car and went to the infirmary for a simple examination.
The 72-hour flight mission was successfully completed!
This test flight was a textbook success.
It turned out that Lu Zhou's conclusion was correct.
Even though there was still a certain deviation from the theoretical data, Starlight's working fluid consumption was significantly reduced during the low-Earth orbit return to the atmosphere.
This was especially true during the dense atmosphere.
Not just that, but because the spacecraft's speed was reduced to a relatively low level, the spacecraft's heat production during the return phase was also reduced. This indirectly reduced Starlight's maintenance costs.
After the successful test flight mission, Starlight would officially enter service at the Jinling launch site, sharing the Earth-Moon transfer orbit launch mission with Skyglow.
On the other hand, the day after Starlight completed its 72-hour cruise, Skyglow, which was on a lunar orbit mission, landed on the runway of the Jinling launch site.
When Nie Yun and the others left the lunar orbit, the Moon Palace core module had been in service for two weeks. During this two-week observation period, the core module was operating very well, and there were no possible scenarios that were considered in the emergency plan.
Academician Yuan Huanmin, who was standing in the command tower, looked at the two astronauts, Nie Yun and Nie Yan, and he finally sighed in relief.
Over the past three days, he and his students, as well as the engineers and technicians from the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation, lived and ate at the Jinling launch site.
Now that the Moon Palace was finally on the right track, they could relax a little.
On the other hand, China wasn't the only place enjoying the scenery. The United States, on the other side of the Pacific Ocean, was also celebrating.
Space-X's BFS spacecraft successfully left the Earth-Moon system and carried three astronauts to Mars, which was tens of millions of kilometers away.
This was the first time that humans had left the Earth-Moon system.
It was also the first time that humans had colonized a planet other than Earth.
Even though China took over the Lunar Orbiting Space Station, NASA reestablished its advantage in interplanetary navigation technology. On the other hand, NASA stated in an interview that the Ares program wouldn't affect the funding of the Lunar Gateway program.
Not only that, but they also planned to bring forward the Lunar Gateway space station, which was originally scheduled to start construction in 2022, to the second half of 2021. Space-X's Dragon spacecraft was responsible for the launch mission, sending the "Lunar Gateway" core module designed by Atlanta Aerospace to lunar orbit.
If you could do what your opponent couldn't and do what they could, it was undoubtedly the best proof of victory.
The United States seemed to have once again become the light of mankind?
At least in the eyes of China's pro-foreigners and North America's conservatives …
The Moon Palace project and the Ares project had both entered deep waters. The scientists and related professionals of the two countries were treading on thin ice every step of the way.
In this environment, there seemed to be some good news every day, and it seemed that new technologies were born every day.
The competition between the two superpowers in the aerospace field made people feel like they were in the future.
In fact, this wasn't completely an illusion.
Stimulated by the space race, a large amount of money flowed into the research field. Major universities began to set up majors related to outer space exploration and resource development, and related research projects entered the green light lane of rapid approval … These changes were all visible.
The dividends brought about by the technological progress in the aerospace field were also growing at an unimaginable speed in other technical fields.
The most obvious was probably the medical industry.
The second week after the BFR rocket took the BFE Heart of Gold spacecraft to Mars, the Washington Post released another piece of breaking news.
Johnson & Johnson and Blue Origin had made major progress in the dormant capsule technology, and they successfully thawed a monkey that had been dormant for 67 days!
After the news came out, it immediately caused a huge reaction in the international community.
Even though the monkey's body tissues were damaged to varying degrees, and it seemed a little demented after waking up, this "resurrection ceremony" still caused an earthquake in the entire clinical medicine and biology community!
Professor Grange from Harvard University was responsible for leading this project. When Nature highlighted Grange's article, they even used the phrase "the first controllable nuclear fusion in biology" to describe this groundbreaking research.
In fact, even though biological frozen dormancy sounded like science fiction, it wasn't impossible to find real examples in nature.
Take the Siberian salamander as an example. The salamanders that lived in Yakutia would actively crawl into the cracks in the permafrost after the harsh winter environment, and they could stay there for a long time.
As for how long this was, according to the literature, the longest recorded time was 90 years.
In theory, creatures could survive harsh environments through frozen dormancy, achieving a time jump from the past to the future. Many insects in extreme environments more or less had abilities similar to Jin Huachu's.
However, the problem was, how could they make warm-blooded mammals do this!
When researchers researched this technology, they found that when freezing and resuscitating animal cells, there was an obvious dangerous temperature zone, which was the range of 0 to -60 degrees Celsius.
During this period, if the organism didn't survive, it would lead to permanent death.
How to survive the dangerous temperature zone and safely reach -120 degrees Celsius was the core difficulty of the entire technology.
Professor Grange, who worked for Johnson & Johnson, used a frozen slow-release agent. After the organism was anesthetized, it was soaked in a special slow-release agent, and then the freezing process was started.
So far, this technology had been sponsored by the Alcor Life Extension Foundation. Many billionaires and royal families in the Arab world had shown a strong interest in this technology!
Most of the sponsors expressed in interviews that they hoped this technology could send them to the distant future.
And according to their point of view, in that distant era, perhaps human society had developed to the point of eliminating most diseases and achieving immortality in a complete sense, entering a utopia in a complete sense.
At the same time, a member of the royal family from the desert said that he would consider dividing his wealth into seven parts before entering the dormancy program, which would be handed over to four different fund companies and three banks for management.
If the situation was optimistic, when he woke up, he could still continue to be a rich man in the era of technology explosion.
In fact, after centuries of accumulation, he would become one of the richest people in the world …
That was if inflation wasn't particularly exaggerated.
Of course, although the rich and transhumanists were generally optimistic about this technology, this technology had caused many libertarians and sociologists to worry.
In particular, Professor Angus Deaton, a well-known Nobel Prize in Economics, said in an interview that this technology was not as beautiful as imagined. The ordinary use of this technology was likely to exacerbate the solidification of social classes.
If everyone dreamed of the future, then no one would build the present.
In particular, when the 3% of people who dreamed of the future controlled 97% of the world's social resources and wealth, the problems brought about by this would not be as simple as the solidification of the social class. It might even push the global economy into the lane of counter-growth, and eventually lead the global society to a dystopian end …
Professor Angus Deaton won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2015 for his "research contributions on consumption, poverty, and welfare". He was a master at using mathematical tools to establish economic models. He was currently a professor in the Department of Economics at Princeton University. He was an outstanding microeconomist.
His remarks might sound a bit alarmist, but because of Professor Angus Deaton's reputation in the academic field, it attracted the attention of many insightful people.
The Human Liberation Organization in North America even arranged a protest in front of the White House, calling for legislation to ban this research, just like how human cloning was banned …
Of course, for people in North America, who treated protests as a way to earn extra money, the so-called protests might not have any real meaning.
Especially when the entire upper class was envious of this technology …
On the other hand, Lu Zhou, who was far away at the Jinling Institute for Advanced Study, also saw Professor Grange's highlighted article in the latest issue of Nature.
When he finished reading the article, he couldn't help but mutter to himself.
"The last time I saw this in the newspaper, Johnson & Johnson said that the relevant technology was still in the technical demonstration stage. I didn't expect that in just a few months, they even finished the clinical trial."
Yang Xu was sitting on the sofa in his office and drinking tea. He looked up at Lu Zhou and spoke with a smile.
"Looks like they're pretty tight-lipped."
"Yeah, but it seems like it was necessary. At least it saved them a lot of trouble." Lu Zhou put down Nature and contemplated for a bit. He looked at Yang Xu, who was sitting on the sofa drinking tea, and asked, "What did Hengrui Medicine say?"
Yang Xu: "They are very interested in our proposal and agree that cryonics technology will have great potential in the near future … However, they also expressed a lot of doubts about the risks of the project."
Lu Zhou smiled and asked, "They're worried that it won't work?"
Yang Xu shook his head and said, "Not really, they're worried about the policy."
Lu Zhou frowned and said, "Policy?"
"Yeah." Yang Xu put down the teacup in his hand and said, "The international research on human cryonics dormancy is still very ambiguous. Not only is there a lot of debate in the academic community, but civil society organizations are also joining in on the fun. I'm guessing there will be a lot of noise. Hengrui Pharmaceuticals is worried that China will ban the research of cryonics technology for diplomatic reasons and international image considerations. "
After hearing Yang Xu's words, Lu Zhou smiled and shook his head.
"Is this considered a risk?"
Yang Xu made a helpless expression and said, "You haven't done this before, so you might not know. After all … this kind of thing has happened before."
"Then tell them for me that their worries are completely unnecessary." Lu Zhou paused for a second and smiled. He said, "As long as my eyes are open, no one can stop me from researching."
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