Chapter 289: Musk Wants To Be Nasa Director Too?
The Russian delegation came with the will to cooperate and left in shock.
Apollo Technology’s Lunar South Pole landing not only shocked the Russian experts greatly but also greatly shocked NASA.
Because Russia learned that Apollo Technology achieved autonomous navigation for a soft landing on the Moon, with no intervention from any ground control center in between, which means America also learned it.
In the past, NASA was like a sieve to the Soviet Union, with no secrets at all, but now, the Russian Space Agency is like a sieve to NASA, and the offensive and defensive positions have already swapped compared to thirty years ago.
NASA’s new Director Melroy is discussing in the meeting room with the team how to respond to Apollo Technology’s Lunar South Pole landing.
The last Apollo Technology command module launch already took out half of NASA’s high-level officials, and this Lunar South Pole landing naturally makes Melroy worry about being taken out himself.
And in the meeting room, Musk rarely appeared here; NASA wasn’t in a hurry, but the White House was, so much so that they even called Musk.
You know, Musk has been criticizing the Donkey Party and Old Bai a lot on Twitter recently.
This Apollo Technology launch caused a huge uproar on Twitter and Reddit.
The more thorough NASA’s previous promotion of the edge of the Shackleton Crater at the Lunar South Pole was, the stronger the dissatisfaction it has now triggered.
The r/space community on Reddit was quickly ignited by Apollo Technology’s achievement.
A post titled “Apollo Technology Successfully Lands on Lunar South Pole!” rushed to the top of the hot list within hours, gaining tens of thousands of likes and thousands of comments.
Users shared news links and passionately discussed technical details and future impacts.
Among them, the popular comments include:
User SpaceNerd01: “Wow, Apollo Technology has achieved this level, no wonder it’s a team led by the Professor, stronger than NASA in ways I can’t even fathom, this is truly unbelievable! Shackleton Crater, how advanced must this technology be, Apollo Technology has taken a huge step on the road to a Moon Base!”
On the external network, a former NASA employee who worked at Apollo Technology returned to New York and said during an interview with the New York Times at a nursing home that Randolph Lin likes others to call him Professor, while Buzz Aldrin is a PhD.
Therefore, on the external network, especially in aerospace-related sections and discussions, Professor often refers to Lin Ran.
Reply below: “Right, and it’s a reusable rocket; with China’s production capacity and the Professor’s planning, they will quickly cover the edge of the Shackleton Crater with creations from Earth.”
User LunarDreamer asked: “Will this make NASA accelerate the Artemis program? We have to compete with China! If we wait until China builds the infrastructure needed for drone clusters on the lunar surface, it’ll be too late!”
Someone pointed out sharply: “Yes! Don’t think we might cooperate with China; Moon resources are certainly enough to share, but good spots like the South Pole are rare!”
User TechGeek99: “Has anyone seen the landing video? Want to see how high their navigation precision is and how they avoided the Lunar South Pole illumination problem.”
Reply: “Apollo Technology’s official website has photos, with astonishing clarity, details of the crater edge visible in full view.”
In the r/geopolitics community, the discussion focused more on the strategic level.
A post titled “Chinese Private Aerospace Moon Landing: Highlights NASA’s Incompetence!” sparked fierce debate.
User GeoStrategist: “In the past, we only faced competition from China Aerospace, but Apollo Technology’s rapid rise clearly indicates that it is a company with higher efficiency than China Aerospace, stronger technology research and development strength, and much more aggressive advancement strategy.
If we continue to rely on NASA, we will see Congress’s budget constantly consumed, but what we get is one delay after another; admit it! NASA is no longer the NASA that pioneered the Moon landing in the sixties; it has degenerated into an institution no different from the Indian space agency!”
Reply: “Yes, NASA’s parasites think all day about how to drain Congress’s budget, how to give the budget to institutions they are close to, and then those institutions give dividends back to NASA high-level officials; project initiation is one budget, project advancement is another budget, every delay requires NASA to request additional budget, and even more terrifying is that after the additional budget, it announces failure, completely stops, and then auditing the entire project requires yet another budget.
People always ask why NASA is failing; just one project can ask Congress for money several times, no wonder NASA is failing!”
“Even a great scientist like the Professor works every day, and after completing manned Moon landing, continues to advance; I don’t know what NASA high-level officials have the face to go on vacation while everyone is locked at home not allowed to go out.”
User SpaceXGreat posted: “The current situation is very bad; if China can find water ice and complete extraction, then even without an electromagnetic launch tower, they can build a fuel supply station on the Moon, and then rely on the fuel supply station to explore the entire Moon.”
User PolicyWonker: “How will America respond? Cooperation or confrontation?”
Reply: “NASA might publicly congratulate, but privately definitely accelerating to catch up; South Pole landing, it’s hard to accuse them of stealing NASA’s technology, after all NASA hasn’t achieved it themselves.”
On the X platform, #ApolloTechnology, #Professor, and #LunarSouthPole tags quickly became global trends.
Users shared news, videos, and sticker packs.
NASA’s official account posted: “Congratulations to Apollo Technology for successfully achieving a soft landing on the edge of the Lunar South Pole Shackleton Crater; this achievement advances humanity’s exploration of the Moon and inspires us to stride toward the sea of stars together. #SpaceExploration”
Netizens guessed that this post from NASA was gritted teeth.
Elon Musk reposted with caption: “Salute to Apollo! South Pole Moon landing is a remarkable achievement; the space race is getting more exciting, humanity’s future is in the stars.”
Space reporter SarahSpace: “Breaking news! According to our exclusive sources, this China Aerospace Lunar South Pole Shackleton Crater soft landing was fully autonomous, marking that China’s Moon base will likely advance at a speed we can’t imagine; never doubt Chinese people’s infrastructure ability, even if the infrastructure location is the Moon #LunarSouthPole”
Musk replied below: “?”
Related sticker packs are also going viral on Twitter.
A relatively popular sticker pack is an astronaut with Apollo Technology printed on it planting a flag on the Moon, with text beside it saying “We’re here, where are the NASA people?”
Another sticker pack contrasts Apollo Technology’s spacecraft with NASA’s Artemis spaceship, captioned “Reality and toy”
In short, American netizens on social platforms mocked NASA to the extreme.
However, this incident indeed also provoked the White House’s fury and unease.
The last time was already unsettling enough, this time the Lunar South Pole was preempted, and Apollo Technology even claims to build some Moon drone launch base; Old Bai may look like he’s almost senile, but at such times, Cold War memories are awakened, that Irish elite begins to reoccupy the brain again, and under the White House’s personal command, that’s how NASA held a meeting calling Musk.
Melroy spoke in a heavy tone, with a serious expression: “Everyone, the latest information provided by the White House side: Apollo Technology’s Lunar South Pole Shackleton Crater edge soft landing this time was fully automatic, no ground intervention, confirmed without doubt.”
Musk repeated in disbelief: “SarahSpace’s news is real?”
Melroy nodded: “Yes, according to the White House, they had someone inside Apollo Technology who witnessed the entire launch process; they confirmed that the Earth control center had no intervention throughout.”
The meeting room fell into brief silence.
Chief Scientist Allen Stofan broke the silence: “This is incredible; the Shackleton Crater terrain is complex, illumination conditions extreme, fully autonomous landing requires extremely high navigation precision and autonomous driving capability.”
Her tone carried admiration, but her brows furrowed slightly, clearly thinking about the technology gap.
Musk was already speechless; how can work be done well with these people?
Melroy is female, and Allen Stofan is also female.
The former rose directly from deputy director to director after Nelson rolled out.
However, her qualifications are sufficient, with an extremely impressive resume; as an Air Force pilot, she had over 5000 hours of fighter jet flight time, later selected as an astronaut, and became the first female International Space Station commander.
(Melroy at the International Space Station in 2002)
If Melroy is barely competent in Musk’s view, then the other chief scientist Allen is, in Musk’s view, a typical Commissioner Smith, waste among wastes.
Allen’s resume is also quite impressive; she previously served as NASA’s chief scientist and consultant to former NASA Director Charles Bolden, this time brought in by the White House to serve as chief scientist, like recasting.
But she doesn’t understand rockets, nor communication, nor the mathematics used in orbital calculation; she does research in planetary geology, more bluntly, she focuses on the geology of Venus, Mars, Saturn’s moon Titan, and Earth.
This can be NASA’s chief scientist? Musk naturally can’t stand this kind of diversification for the sake of diversity.
What makes Musk even more intolerant is Allen’s revolving door behavior between politics and business; after working at NASA for over 25 years and serving as chief scientist, she went to Washington to serve as vice president of a planetary research consulting company called Proxemy Research, for 13 years.
Among them, a clearly recorded sponsored project numbered NAG5-10263, five-year term, led by Allen, researching Venus’s updrafts and volcanic activity.
(The research report has been finalized, available on NASA’s official website, with Allen Stofan as the head, and the institution is Proxemy Research)
Musk sat in the meeting room feeling like sitting on pins and needles; you two clowns, as soon as Allen spoke, Musk knew she was pure outsider, collected some info from subordinates before the meeting and came to read from script.
Melroy frowned: “This is a wake-up call for our Artemis program; their technology is clearly very mature, we need to evaluate the potential impact on our 2024 manned Moon landing.”
She opened her notebook and began recording, her eyes showing urgency.
Musk was even more speechless; no, do you really believe you can land on the Moon in 2024? Probably Blue Origin’s replicate Apollo program is more reliable than you.
Allen Stofan added: “First, we should congratulate them; this is not only China’s achievement but also a milestone in humanity’s space exploration.
But we cannot ignore the reality of competition; Apollo Technology’s success indicates that global commercial aerospace is rising, we must accelerate innovation to ensure America’s leading position in Moon exploration.”
Musk couldn’t hold back and interjected: “Our top priority now is not these, but to figure out what technologies they used, like whether they used the latest TRN technology.”
Musk paused; he estimated these two women don’t know what TRN is, he explained: “Terrain Relative Navigation technology, and deep learning algorithms, real-time avoiding obstacles at the crater edge.
NASA and SpaceX are also researching this technology, but they seem to have actually applied it.
We need to figure out exactly how they did it.
Apollo Technology can use our technology proposal for Moon landing, why can’t we use their technology proposal for Lunar South Pole soft landing?
Let’s not talk first about whether Artemis can land on the Moon; if we can figure out how they did it, we should prioritize launching uncrewed spacecraft for soft landing in Lunar South Pole craters.
Compared to chasing on manned Moon landing, our more important task now is to avoid the advantageous positions at the Lunar South Pole all being occupied by Chinese people.
Since the White House can know that Apollo Technology used fully autonomous driving for Moon landing, it should go further, get more technical details, best are algorithms, sensors, and data collected by China on the Moon.”
From Tesla to SpaceX, Musk was not the first founder role, but in the end he bound these companies tightly to himself, becoming the founder in the public subconscious.
He is a person who will use any means to achieve his purpose, or rather, most people who achieve great worldly success are this type.
Therefore, listening to Melroy and Allen here spouting official rhetoric, after listening for a long time he really couldn’t hold back.
Writing reports, applying for budgets, bidding, in the end 100% a mess.
Budget spent, companies brought in, result is nothing produced.
Musk spoke rapidly, without any pause: “Next we need to determine if the Shackleton Crater contains water ice, which is crucial for future Moon bases.
If Shackleton really contains water ice, then we can pressure China on Earth, or even launch spacecraft to land in Shackleton; we cannot hand over a water ice-containing area to Chinese people.
At least not let them obtain the best position without paying any price.
While we have to painstakingly search for water ice resources in other craters, when Shackleton was clearly found by us first.
When they start resource extraction, I think NASA even wouldn’t rule out launching spacecraft to deliberately crash at China’s base construction location to delay their progress.”
Musk flipped through the lunar topography map on the table, pointing to the Shackleton Crater location.
Allen retorted: “Mister Musk, mind your identity; you are a consultant, not NASA Director; we invited you to give suggestions, not to assign work!”
Allen was very dissatisfied with Musk’s behavior, because her original words were: Apollo Technology’s success indicates global commercial aerospace is rising, we must accelerate innovation to ensure America’s leading position in Moon exploration.
How to maintain innovation? Support more commercial aerospace agencies; now only supporting SpaceX this one is clearly not enough; we need more budget, then through finance support, give to these commercial aerospace agencies.
As for how to give, naturally NASA decides, of course respect the White House’s opinion.
Anger flashed in Musk’s eyes; he naturally understood the other’s subtext; this White House just screwed Tesla on new energy vehicle finance subsidies, now pulling this again: “Madam Stofan, forgive my bluntness; although I’m not NASA Director, my ability absolutely surpasses anyone here to be more qualified for NASA Director position!”
If Lin Ran heard, he would definitely laugh and say: Elon, you want to join the dance too?
Originally Melroy was expressionless, but after Musk said this, anger flashed in her heart; you’re great at business, but to be NASA Director, you’re far from qualified!
Musk didn’t care; he was originally half-fallen out with the Donkey Party, and he came this time also thinking of making a final effort: “If we want to compete with Chinese counterparts, we’re already behind now; to catch up, the best way is to make me NASA Director.
But under the current situation, it’s probably not possible, so let me act as shadow director, with me making decisions and NASA executing, that would be the only way!”
Melroy stood up, tone firm: “Alright, everyone, we have work to do.
Mary, gather the lunar science team, analyze their landing data and technical details.
James, you handle evaluation of potential adjustments to the Artemis program.
Allen, prepare the statement, and communicate with the White House side to ensure our response is appropriate and strategically significant.”
She paused, showing a complex expression: “Mister Musk, thank you very much for coming, and thank you for your contributions to NASA, but Apollo Technology is just a challenge to us, but also an opportunity; it will prompt NASA to wake up, and we will advance the Artemis program at the fastest speed.
We will learn from private aerospace agencies while picking up NASA’s past excellent traditions, advancing our goals.”
Team members nodded one after another, the meeting room filled with busy murmurs and keyboard tapping sounds.
Musk didn’t speak; he looked outside the window, Washington’s sky was overcast; he thought to himself: “This White House has no hope; relying on this White House, NASA will only degenerate further; I have to do something to change the status quo.”
When Chinese people are about to build a base at the Lunar South Pole, NASA is still thinking about how to fish budgets from Congress; the two excellent women in charge of NASA simply cannot shoulder this heavy responsibility.
No moment can surpass this one in Musk’s desire for the NASA Director position.
