Chapter 285: The Beginning Of The Moon Transformation Plan
“Hello everyone, I’m Lin Ran. Today, I’ll be interviewing our soon-to-be CEO, who is also an old friend watching the video on screen—Tencent founder, Pony.
Starting today, I plan to host a program myself. The program’s name is Burning, taken from my name. Its format might be interviews or me explaining things myself; it won’t be limited to a fixed form.
The first episode of the Burning program begins with my conversation with Pony.”
News like Pony leaving Tencent to serve as Apollo Technology, with maximum news value and certain influence globally, had no reports released beforehand.
It was Apollo Technology’s own official account that announced this news.
Surely Tencent board of directors members knew where Pony went? Surely these members wouldn’t tell their relatives and friends, leading to the news leaking?
Including the staff helping with video editing—this interview video couldn’t possibly be edited personally by Lin Ran or Pony; the news would definitely leak in the process.
The media would naturally obtain the news through various channels.
But no one released it.
Even on Zhihu answers, anonymous responses about Pony going to Apollo Technology had their weight reduced.
This is when the difference between an established tycoon and a newly risen tycoon becomes apparent. If it were other new money, the news would have spread everywhere long ago.
“Let Pony say hello to everyone first.” Lin Ran gestured with his hand.
Pony waved at the camera: “Hello everyone, I’m Pony. I’ve been working in the internet industry before, more precisely, I’ve never left Tencent.
This is my first time trying a new field, fully devoting myself to a new company.
Just like Lin Sheng’s lifelong dream has been to go to the Moon—he chose aerospace major as an undergraduate, selected Apollo Moon Landing for his graduation project, and returned to China to start Apollo Moon Landing at the first opportunity when capable.
In my mind, Lin Sheng has always been someone whose talent, ability, and execution are all maxed out.
My dream is also space. I’ve loved the feeling of gazing at the starry sky since childhood. When I was young, my father used his 4 months’ salary, which was 700 yuan, to buy me a quasi-professional astronomical telescope. With that telescope, I observed Halley’s Comet, wrote an observation report, and sent it to Yanjing, winning third prize in Yanjing’s astronomical observation contest, with a bonus of 40 yuan.
After achieving success in my career, the first thing I thought of was building an observatory. The universe makes me feel so small.
Even our WeChat startup screen is the Earth photo taken by Apollo 17 astronaut with a Hasselblad camera on the Moon; this photo is called Blue Marble, implying Earth is like a marble.
The photos Lin Sheng took on the Moon make me feel breathtakingly beautiful; his photo with Aldrin on the Moon makes me envious.
I never thought in the past that I would do entrepreneurship in the aerospace field, because I always felt this field was too difficult, too difficult.
But fortunately, with Lin Sheng’s appearance, in my view, his genius level exceeds human imagination limits.
With Lin Sheng, I believe entrepreneurship in the aerospace field doesn’t seem so difficult; with effort, we can still achieve some different achievements.
Therefore, I’m very happy to start my new entrepreneurial journey in the second half of my life in the field I love, and my partner is so young and excellent.”
Pony’s smile was genuinely heartfelt.
Lin Ran took over: “I must declare that Pony recommended himself.
I think from a management perspective, Apollo Technology’s scale will grow rapidly. Last year we had 2,000 people, and now just half a year later, our scale is rapidly approaching 10,000.
Pony is our investor, so I asked if he had any suitable CEO candidates to recommend, and he said he himself is the most suitable candidate.
We hit it off immediately. Just as Pony fully believes in my professional abilities, I fully believe in Pony’s management abilities.”
Pony said: “I think we should stop praising each other. Using current popular internet slang, is this called commercial mutual blowing?”
Lin Ran: “Exactly. Alright, let’s talk properly about our vision. This is both an interview video, and for you watching the video, you can also treat it as a recruitment ad.
A recruitment ad shot by me and Pony can let you interested in Apollo Technology understand our company better, generate interest in us, and come to our official website to submit your resume.”
Pony added: “Exactly, we welcome classmates from all industries to join our ranks.
When I decided to participate in Apollo Technology, which may be this century’s greatest company, I chatted with Lin Sheng many times.
We need to build a foundation of mutual trust, define management boundaries, reach certain consensus on future visions, etc., including detailed communication on what kind of people to recruit for each position.
After my friends learned I was joining Apollo Technology, many wanted to follow me as executives. This reflects my influence, as well as Lin Sheng’s influence.
But I can’t recruit all my friends and old acquaintances. On one hand, they may not fit in terms of ability; on the other, what we’re building is a brand new company, not a Tencent in the aerospace field.
Compared to Tencent, Apollo Technology’s rise is faster, but the situation faced is more complex, because there are no competitors on the market, no external forces forcing progress.
Take reusable rocket and moon landing as examples: if we rest on our laurels, we can live very well just relying on commercial copyright operations of reusable rocket missions and moon landings.
Sitting firmly in the top spot of commercial aerospace is absolutely no problem.
But Lin Sheng’s vision is short-term: establish a permanent base on the Moon; medium-term: have routine flights between Mars-Moon and Earth, establish a small base on Mars; long-term: transform Mars into a planet suitable for human habitation.
Such a vision means we’re competing with ourselves; we don’t have much time to waste.
We’re facing two dilemmas at the same time: first, life is too easy, requiring sufficient internal drive; second, if vision advancement is slow, it’s easy to breed burnout internally.”
Lin Ran waved his hand: “Pony, it’s the same logic I told you before: at Apollo Technology, you’ll never worry about our advancement being slow; our advancement speed is always the wildest kind.”
Pony said helplessly: “Am I not lowering the audience’s expectations?
To avoid our success becoming taken for granted, turning us into public enemies in the public opinion arena after one failure.”
Lin Ran teased: “Why worry about failure all the time before we’ve even failed?
I’ve never thought I’d fail. If we fail, what then? When interviewed or asked, just say we forgot.
What? Have I failed before?”
Pony said: “Lin Sheng is still too young; in today’s terms, he hasn’t been beaten down by society. I’m mainly speaking from experience—I’ve enjoyed uniform accusations from media to netizens to reality, thinking we did wrong.
I don’t know how you think, but I never want to experience that feeling again.”
Lin Ran said: “If the moon landing institution becomes universally hated just because of one failure, it’s not us who are wrong, but the world that’s wrong.
Though indeed, in America’s public opinion, we’re probably at the level of universal enmity. Anyway, from the foreign forum screenshots my subordinates posted in the company group, most say we’re thieves and such.
But fortunately, such accusations can only exist for less than a year, because this year we’ll complete a moon landing method not from Apollo Technology, slapping these doubters hard in the face!”
Pony took over: “Exactly, this time we’ll launch two rockets in two launches, not using lunar orbit rendezvous mode, but directly from Earth to Moon in one go, achieving soft landing directly on the lunar surface.
One is crewed, the other carries fuel; they’ll land successively in adjacent positions, then complete fuel transfer on the lunar surface.
After the crew module transfers fuel, it returns to Earth again.”
Pony was naturally very shocked after hearing this proposal, because it means not only moon landing, but using a brand new proposal—not a simple replicate of Apollo Moon Landing, but with our own understanding.
Of course, if it can’t be done, it’s empty talk; but since Lin Ran proposed this year, Pony believes Lin Ran can do it.
“Lin Sheng, I still want to talk properly about this topic, that is, the brand new proposal we’re advancing now.” Pony asked.
Lin Ran nodded and explained: “This proposal is technically feasible; it requires precise landing on the lunar surface, fuel transfer on the moon surface, and precise control of orbit switching.
Fortunately, these are all our strengths.”
Pony asked: “After studying it privately, I have doubts: intuitively, this seems to save fuel needed, since no landing rendezvous then landing, but can it really save fuel?
Because first, we need to transfer on the lunar surface, requiring special fuel transfer equipment; second, lunar landing also requires thrust for soft landing.
Finally, if the lunar module directly escapes lunar gravity, the acceleration needed is higher than entering lunar orbit.
Can you explain in detail to me and the audience friends watching the video, what are the advantages of this technical route?”
Lin Ran thought to himself, the advantage? The advantage is I’ve done this before.
Back then, hosting the US-Soviet joint moon landing used this technical route—very familiar territory.
Back then my precision could reach 1200 meters; now at least 200 meters. If not worried about the fuel tank being shaken over by the lunar module’s landing, I could even do 5 meters.
He explained: “The fundamental reason is that Apollo Moon Landing involves lunar orbit interaction, so its launch window is very limited, requiring the most fuel-efficient Hohmann Transfer Orbit; secondly, it needs to consider lunar surface illumination, suitable angles, and the lunar module return also needs takeoff at specific times.
Maybe only a few days per month are suitable.
With fuel tank and lunar module separation, the fuel tank can be launched ahead and wait on the lunar surface; with ample fuel, the lunar module doesn’t need to worry much about launch time.
Preparing for our future routine round trips.
We only need to consider illumination.
From a fuel perspective, overall on average, our method also saves more fuel.
We can use Burning One Modified reusable rocket to launch the fuel tank; Burning One Modified’s effective payload is around 8 tons, meaning we can send about 5 tons fuel tank to the Moon.
Even considering various equipment and soft landing on the Moon, we can send at least 2 tons of fuel.
The lunar module needs about this much fuel to take off from the Moon.
This means we can greatly save costs, after all, Burning One Modified is a reusable rocket.
Additionally, the fuel tank will be set as detachable; non-core components can all be dismantled.
The fuel transfer equipment can be reused, with a lifespan of at least 50 times.
More importantly, the metal plates dismantled from the fuel tank itself—our astronauts will nail these metal plates to the ground with long nails; as fuel tanks launch successively, the metal plate area will grow larger and larger.
These metal plates will be the ground for our future Moon rocket launch base; these metals are oxide dispersion strengthened titanium metal newly developed by us and China Aerospace, which combines with moon soil under high temperature during lunar module launch, forming a solid compound.
Even if we build electromagnetic launch towers in the future, these built grounds will be the best takeoff and landing platforms for large Moon drones.”
Moon weaponization—this is a done deal.
Why drones? What do you want to do with drones on the Moon?
When America carries out moon landing, sending drones to track and observe isn’t excessive, right?
As for what you say, how did it collide—this isn’t kids messing around crashing for fun?
Background: this oxide dispersion strengthened titanium alloy was first proposed by NASA, but after China learned of it, they quickly followed up. Whether NASA has made it now is unknown, but China has made it.
After Lin Ran roughly finished, he summarized: “In short, our segmented launch has one benefit: economical. Launch cost is definitely much lower than Apollo Moon Landing.
At the same time, with technological progress, the entire cost will continue to dilute; even when the whole system is fully mature and Moon infrastructure is initially in place, costs can drop to unimaginable levels.
Apollo Moon Landing can only be the initial choice; we’ve never thought we can always stand on predecessors’ shoulders without developing our own technology.
As for whether this technical proposal is feasible, we’ll launch the first fuel tank in August’s moon landing launch window, then another in September; if all smooth, we’ll do the moon landing under the new proposal by year’s end.”
Very regrettably, Qian Fei and Zhao Jianguo still can’t go.
After falling ill, their cardiopulmonary function was affected, and they’re still in recovery.
This mission’s executors are Li Cong from China Aerospace and Wei Xuhang from Apollo Technology.
They will also handle fuel transfer work, and dismantling the fuel tank’s components and precisely installing them on the ground.
Pony showed a yearning expression: “Why do I feel like I could go up there someday too?”
Lin Ran laughed: “Of course, once technology matures, as long as you’re willing to pay, you can go.
The ground built from fuel tank components isn’t just a takeoff and landing platform; transforming the fuel tank itself into a small Moon hotel is also part of Apollo Technology’s business.
Pony, as Apollo Technology’s CEO, you must have discounts, right.”
Pony sighed: “So, if you’re watching this video and willing, we absolutely welcome your joining!
Apollo Technology needs every excellent talent to join.”
Obviously, this interview program created by the new top stream and the not-yet-faded top stream is equivalent to dropping a huge bomb across China’s social media, with heat even hotter than Tokyo.
Lin Ran and Pony have enough traffic; Pony leaving Tencent to fully join Apollo Technology has even more traffic; Lin Ran’s mention of another moon landing this year, using a brand new method, and the highly feasible first step of Moon transformation, maxed out the topic degree.
Time-wise also very close—now is June, July is coming soon for fuel tank launch.
Weibo hot searches, Bilibili rankings, Bilibili views, Zhihu headlines—all social media you can think of, headlines are Lin Ran Pony interview.
Even on Xiaohongshu.
The only exception is Douban, which is discussing movies—do not disturb.
“No way, why am I already feeling thrilled?” Li Yiqing asked after watching.
Xu Xian replied: “I’m thrilled too, mainly this progress feels like takeoff; going again this year.
From a technical perspective, there’s really no issue. Rather than command module and lunar module every time, with the lunar module discarded on the Moon with no one to manage after moon landing.
Better to use Ran Shen’s technical proposal; at least the fuel tank can be repeatedly utilized.
Not even talking about how much cost to transform fuel tank into hotel, whether realistic—I can just leave the fuel tank on the Moon as my fuel storage device, which is better than Apollo Moon Landing’s lunar module becoming unusable after moon landing.
Moreover, I consulted our friend studying aerospace; this indeed greatly avoids the limited moon landing launch window issue.”
Li Yiqing added: “I asked my friend too; his point is, if going enough times, with mature automatic navigation system, not only avoiding, but achieving no window—even perfect landing in dim Moon light.
Xu Xian murmured: “No way, is it that we wasted too much time before, or Ran Shen is too awesome? With him coming, moon landing feels like drinking soup? No one mentioned this technical route before; now thinking about it, it feels awesome everywhere, like the current best technical route?
Burning One Modified, which just succeeded recently, is directly used; Saturn V launches large lunar module, Burning One Modified launches fuel tank.
Later develop a slightly larger reusable rocket, or even directly use that to launch lunar module.
This cost compared to NASA, who knows how much lower.
Even if Starship succeeds, can Starship to Moon really have lower cost than Ran Shen’s technical proposal?”
Li Yiqing said: “I always thought Ran Shen was replicating; compared to SpaceX’s originality in aerospace, still a bit short.
If this moon landing succeeds, I think he’s more awesome than Musk.”
Lin Ran came to Yanjing to receive academician title, accept interviews, meet big shots; stole time to have a meal with Xu Xian and meet.
Xu Xian took the chance to post on Moments showing off his relationship with Ran Shen, captioned: “Closest to academician”
Below, his classmates’ comments all begging for Apollo Technology offers; his mentor even privately messaged asking if he can go to Lin Ran for a postdoctoral or even PhD—not embarrassing, academician’s direct disciple is natural buff for evaluations.
Li Yiqing heard plenty about Lin Ran’s feats from Xu Xian; as two familiar with Lin Ran, they were still shocked after the interview—let alone the broad netizens.
“Thinking carefully, the proposal Ran Shen mentioned in the interview is really feasible, and it’s a sustainable proposal that fits our Chinese people’s innate farming talent.
NASA’s proposal is one-shot flow, Musk similar—big rocket, large payload capacity, go all at once; while we farm, everything I launch up must be utilized; can’t launch too much at once, so split into multiple times slowly; anyway, farm.
Farm Moon done, go farm Mars; Mars farmed, then slowly explore outward.
This is the romance unique to us Chinese people.”
“We must admire Pony’s courage to cross fields and innovate in the second half of his life, and also admire Ran Shen’s spirit of continuous striving without resting on the unprecedented moon landing achievement; their cooperation, I believe, will open a new chapter in China Aerospace development.”
Anyway, social media is uniformly praising; external network uniformly focused on whether China’s this moon landing can succeed.
Everyone shocked by Apollo Technology’s this plan; all aerospace enthusiasts’ gazes concentrated on July’s fuel tank launch.
Fuel tank launch is just soft landing; for Apollo Technology that has achieved moon landing, not high difficulty; everyone more concerned about year-end manned moon landing and whether this technical proposal is feasible.
But in China, everyone even forgot about Fields Medal.
This year’s Fields Medal award ceremony is July 5 in Helsinki; organizers naturally dare not risk universal condemnation, not awarding him just because Lin Ran himself doesn’t come.
Final winner list still has Lin Ran; organizers warmly invited him to give remote acceptance speech.
Total four winners; Lin Ran replaced not Hur Joon-ho, but James Maynard.
Mainly because everyone’s directions relate to number theory; even James Maynard himself specializes in primes.
James Maynard was unlucky, encountering a Star of David fully surrounding him competitor.
Lin Ran just didn’t expect to be directly called out by other winners at the award ceremony.
