Chapter 56: Becoming An Alternate
Listening to the cold and calm words of the staff member in front of him, Sun Yu felt as if a big hammer had smashed heavily onto his head, leaving him somewhat bewildered for a moment.
Uncle Zhao’s company mobilized so many people, sparing no cost or investment.
Uncle Zhao dragged his sixty-plus-year-old body and endured more than twenty hours.
I couldn’t afford to rest, driving almost with the accelerator floored all the way, barely delivering these wire materials within the stipulated time.
So many of us worked so hard for so long, responding to the nation’s call with fervor and disregard for personal safety, all the things we did… Could the final ending really just be lying in the scrap yard to be treated as garbage?
Looking at the slightly bewildered Sun Yu, the staff member smiled and shook his head, then gently patted Sun Yu’s shoulder.
“Young man, hurry and go rest.”
Sun Yu stiffly raised his head: “Knowing full well there’s a 95% chance of it being discarded in the end, you… are still producing so desperately?”
Along the way, he saw people hurrying with quick steps, heard the roar of machines, saw workers in the restroom who casually shoveled down a couple bites of food before returning to the production line with bloodshot eyes…
The production atmosphere here was even more solemn than at the wire material factory.
The staff member smiled and said: “Why not?
Does a product being discarded in the end mean it has no meaning?
No.”
He pointed to the discarded parts in the scrap yard: “They have meaning too.
Without so many parts as alternatives, how could we select the best-performing and most stable parts for subsequent production?
Being one of the candidates selected gives the upper-level assembly factory more choices, and that in itself is the meaning of our work.”
The staff member turned and left, leaving Sun Yu standing there in a daze, as if he understood, yet also as if he didn’t.
……
One after another distributor the size of a briefcase came off the production line, underwent rigorous inspections by the workers, and were finally carefully packed into wooden boxes, transported by helicopter to the higher-level assembly factory, where most were discarded, and the rest assembled with parts from many other factories into sets of hydraulic modules.
These hydraulic modules were then transported at the fastest speed to the secondary assembly factory, where most were again discarded, and the survivors assembled with numerous other highly integrated and complex module systems into the heart of the Giant Spirit God II Heavy Launch Vehicle, the engine.
When the rocket launch happens, liquid hydrogen liquid oxygen or kerosene liquid oxygen will burn inside it, generating scorching high-temperature high-pressure gas jetting out to propel the massive rocket with a total mass of over 1000 tons to break free of Earth’s gravity and head into the vast starry sky.
In the past, rocket engine production was an extremely complex and cautious process. During this process, people would conduct hundreds to thousands of various tests on each module, consuming hundreds of days.
But at this moment, all these processes were omitted.
People followed the “layered scrutiny” principle, choosing to trust the parts sent from upstream factories, directly assembling them into the engine body, thereby saving a lot of time.
At this moment, the first rocket engine from this secondary assembly factory had come off the line.
It was 3 meters in diameter, 3.5 meters tall, with a huge nozzle at the bottom, and a total weight of about 3 tons.
It was covered with dense pipes, cables, and sensors, looking incredibly complex.
At this time, it would undergo its first overall test since its birth.
Test bench workshop.
The white-haired chief engineer looked at the head of the construction team in front of him, his lips trembling slightly: “Do we really have to demolish it?”
The head nodded: “This test bench is too small to be used for test-firing such a large engine; it must be temporarily expanded. That means… the equipment on both sides has to be demolished.”
The chief engineer murmured: “This complete set of test bench facilities took us two years to build, costing over a billion… After this modification, though it can temporarily handle large engine test-firing, afterward it will be… ruined…”
Temporarily handling large engine test-firing requires a lot of temporary auxiliary facilities, at extremely high cost.
And this temporary mission lasts only five days. After five days, even if the temporary auxiliary facilities are dismantled, this test bench cannot be restored to its original state.
It will be completely scrapped.
“This is an order, and a necessary cost.”
The chief engineer turned his head in pain, murky tears streaming down his face.
The head of the construction team then issued the final order.
“Get to work!”
When the first large engine arrived, the temporary modification was complete.
Fuel pipes connected, ignition command given.
Boom—
Amid the enormous roar, fierce flames jetted out from the nozzle, scorching heat waves burning everything nearby.
In this intense jetting, numerous sensors precisely recorded the engine’s operation status.
But this jetting lasted only a few seconds; moments later, for some reason, the flames suddenly vanished, and large amounts of firefighting foam jetted onto it.
“Detected internal fuel leak with explosion risk; per emergency procedure three, I executed emergency shutdown and firefighting operations.”
The engineer responsible for this engine’s test-firing nodded calmly and issued the command: “Unit one test-firing failed, scrap it.
Proceed with unit two.”
This massive engine, which consumed countless people’s efforts and unknown amounts of manpower and resources, with every part being the best of the best, thus became garbage.
People didn’t even attempt to investigate the fault or repair it.
If it can’t even pass the test-firing, it’s not worth repairing.
The second engine was quickly brought in and underwent testing again.
This time it passed smoothly.
It was then sent into the vacuum tank.
It was a huge room with an internal volume of hundreds of cubic meters, walls lined with metal.
The vacuum pumps started working, quickly evacuating it to a near-space vacuum environment. Liquid nitrogen hidden in the walls began flowing, soon dropping the room’s interior to over minus 260 degrees Celsius.
In this extreme low-temperature vacuum environment, the rocket engine began its second test.
After this, there were vibration table tests, comprehensive electrical tests, and several other environmental simulations or tests.
Once everything was complete, it returned to the test bench for a second time, igniting again to test whether it could still operate normally after so many “trials.”
Amid the roaring shockwaves, the test engineers marked “Qualified” in the Tianji System.
