Rebirth of science and technology academic master

The news about Tianzhou-1 is very hot, and mainstream media have reported on it, attracting the attention of the whole people. Even many people overseas are paying attention to the news about Tianzhou-1.

Although overseas media always cover China, people overseas view China no differently than they did decades ago, so that China represents poverty and backwardness in the minds of many people. But there are still sober people, especially those who have been to China, who are well aware of the rapid changes in China.

Therefore, these people are also paying attention to the news of Tianzhou-1. Once Tianzhou-1 is a complete success, it means that China will become the third country after the United States and Russia to master the ability to transport cargo between heaven and earth, and we must know that Tianzhou-1 Cargo No. 1 is based on the technological research and development of the Shenzhou spacecraft and Tiangong 1. It only transports cargo but not people. The cargo carrying capacity will be 2.6 times that of the Russian Progress M unmanned cargo spacecraft. It is ranked first in the world in terms of functions and performance. advanced level.

At 19:41:35.361 on April 20, the Long March 7 Yao-2 carrier rocket carrying the Tianzhou-1 cargo spacecraft was launched from Station 201 of the China Wenchang Space Launch Site. About 603 seconds later, the spacecraft and the rocket successfully separated and entered the predetermined orbit. The launch was a complete success.

The whole country was shocked and the world was shocked!

The entire launch process was broadcast live, and Tianzhou-1 entered the predetermined orbit, and clear photos were sent back to the earth one after another.

"Awesome! Well done!" Qin Yuanqing was also watching the live broadcast. Seeing the complete success of the Tianzhou-1 launch, he jumped with excitement.

The successful launch means that Tianzhou-1 has entered the second critical step, which is to complete the automatic rendezvous and docking with Tiangong-2. The completion of this step means that the Tianzhou-1 cargo spacecraft can officially transport cargo from the earth to the space station.

"Dad~~ I want to be an astronaut in the future and I want to build a spaceship~~" the baby girl pointed at the TV and said excitedly. At only 4 years old, she spoke with a babyish voice, which was very fun.

"I want it too~~I want it too~~I want to go into space and become a space hero!" Xiong's son also jumped up excitedly.

Qin Yuanqing was very happy when he saw the excitement of the two little guys. He felt that his family education was very successful. The children did not think about being celebrities or young talents, but wanted to be astronauts.

Nowadays, in the entertainment industry, young people are rampant. Top-level traffic allows people to see the ability of young people to attract money. Acting skills are not important, and singing skills are not important. As long as they are good-looking, good-looking, and can operate, that's all. If you don’t have acting skills, you only need to count one, two, and three. In the later stage, you can completely rely on dubbing. You don’t even need to do it in person, just cut out the pictures.

"Okay, when you grow up, build spaceships and become astronauts." Qin Yuanqing smiled happily, picked up a child in one hand, and kissed him on each side.

Playing with the child, at around eight o'clock, Qin Yuanqing told the child a story before going to bed. After putting the child to sleep, Qin Yuanqing came to the balcony, looked up at the stars, and fell into deep thought.

The starry sky is dotted with stars. A star is a star. The vast universe is full of incomparable mysteries. Human beings are full of expectations for the universe. Since ancient times, we have never heard of imagining the starry sky. Whether it is the East or the West, all the same.

However, despite the fact that human society has experienced three industrial revolutions and its productivity has increased significantly, in fact, human beings' understanding of the universe is very small. It is praiseworthy to say that it is superficial. In fact, the understanding of the universe is not even superficial. .

The United States is the only country that has landed on the moon. It has been nearly half a century since the last moon landing in December 1972. In the past half century, NASA in the United States has never carried out any moon landing activities. Although it has used probes to detect Mars, it also launched the Voyager 2 probe, which flew extremely far away.

But in fact, compared to the universe, such detectors are still insignificant. To put it bluntly, even though humans have already had detectors flying out of the solar system, the earth actually knows a lot about the moon, which is the closest to the earth. Few people know much about it, let alone planets that are farther away.

Every once in a while, NASA always announces the discovery of an Earth-like planet, which will be the future home of mankind. What kind of interstellar colonization will then be triggered? There are constantly science fiction novelists full of imagination. Human beings create advanced interstellar battleships and start interstellar colonization. In the colonial era, go mining on the planet and colonize alien planets.

But in fact, current human technology is still far from this step.

In 1964, Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashov proposed using energy levels to divide civilizations into three levels: Type I, Type II and Type III. Type I civilization uses all the energy available on its home planet, Type II civilization uses all the energy of the star its planet orbits, and Type III civilization uses all the energy of the galaxy in which it lives.

From this perspective, human civilization is now close to but not yet reaching Type I civilization.

These three levels of civilization are also called parent star civilization, planetary system civilization, and star system civilization.

Judging from the latest research, a home star civilization refers to a civilization at this level that has the planet as its core and can dominate the total energy of the entire planet. No species can challenge the position of planetary hegemony. From eating hair and drinking blood to the nuclear energy era, they all belong to the development stage of this level of civilization. This civilization is also destroyed in the most diverse ways, ranging from infectious diseases, to wars, resource shortages, natural disasters, nuclear wars, even asteroid or comet collisions, artificial intelligence rebellion, drastic changes in solar activity, etc., all of which have the ability to return civilization to zero. , the current human beings on the earth have at least passed a few levels, at least to the stage of nuclear war and artificial intelligence.

Planetary civilization refers to the collection of all celestial bodies orbiting a star, including planets, satellites, asteroids, meteoroids, comets and cosmic dust. The solar system is a planetary system. This civilization has the ability to exploit the resources of the entire galaxy. It can develop any planet among the galaxies to immigrate or settle. However, in the event of rebellious silicon-based life, or after the sun ages and dies, or when a nearby supernova explodes, It will cause the civilization in the entire galaxy to return to zero.

Stellar system civilization can shuttle back and forth between all stars, the resources of the entire galaxy can be accessed at will, individuals can walk on the sun, and machine workers can hollow out the interior of an entire planet into a factory. It has already begun preliminary interstellar research. The strength of the war, but the failure of the war, or the explosion of ultra-high-energy stars, the Big Bang, and the dissipation of consciousness, an explosion, or a whimper, will eventually lead to destruction.

So no matter which aspect you look at it, human civilization on Earth is almost equivalent to a 0.5 parent-star civilization, and there is still a long way to go before we can reach a truly complete parent-star civilization.

At least now, if human beings face a nuclear war, human civilization will basically end. If an asteroid or comet collides, human beings will just lie down, do whatever they have to do, and then wait for everything to return to zero.

Qin Yuanqing's consciousness was immersed in the system, looking at the space shuttle in the system mall. The space shuttle is a reusable spacecraft that travels between space, the universe and the ground. It combines the properties of an airplane and a spacecraft. It can take off vertically like a rocket, orbit like a spaceship, and land horizontally like an airplane.

At present, there are only a few types of space shuttles on the earth, namely the American space shuttle Columbia, the space shuttle Challenger, the space shuttle Discovery, the space shuttle Atlantis and the Soviet Union's space shuttle. The space shuttle Buran.

There is no doubt that these space shuttles carry about 7 astronauts, including 3 crew members and 4 scientific and technical experts. If they are crowded, they can carry 8 astronauts.

Theoretically speaking, the space shuttle is undoubtedly more advanced than the spacecraft. The spacecraft is a one-time return manned spacecraft. It has a small volume and is limited by the number of consumable materials it carries. It does not have the ability to resupply and cannot be reused. The space shuttle is a winged, reusable spacecraft. It can not only send satellites and other spacecrafts into space on behalf of the launch vehicle, but also operate in orbit like a manned spacecraft, and can also fly in the atmosphere like an airplane. With mid-gliding landing, the space shuttle provides a high-quality tool for humans to freely enter and exit space, greatly reducing the cost of space activities.

Of course, the spacecraft is not without its advantages. The biggest advantage is that it is cheap. After all, the space shuttle is too expensive. One launch costs about 450 million U.S. dollars, which is still the previous U.S. dollar. This reason is mainly due to immature technology, which makes maintenance and repair extremely complex and expensive. Because the technology is immature and the system is too complex, the risks are high, as both the Challenger and Columbia accidents have proven.

Although spacecraft cannot be reused, single-launch recovery is much cheaper, and the technology is much smaller than that of the space shuttle.

Therefore, China decided to carry out its own aerospace engineering independently. After weighing the pros and cons between the choice of space shuttle and spacecraft, it finally chose the spacecraft. It is precisely because of this that China has made rapid progress in spacecraft. In just a few years, it has carried out manned spaceflight and achieved a huge breakthrough. Today, China has carried out several manned space missions and initially established a space station.

It can be said that if China had chosen the space shuttle, then perhaps by now, the space shuttle would have been far from being completed, let alone sending people into space and establishing a space station.

Therefore, China's original choice was not wrong, it was the right path. But now, we actually have to think about the development of space shuttles. After all, compared to space shuttles, spaceships have obvious limitations, and once mature technology is available, the cost of using space shuttles will indeed be lower than that of spaceships.