Chapter 474: How Did You Take My Spot Again?
Young John Morgan wouldn’t feel any reverence because this statement came from Lin Ran; he would only think the other person was too boring and the style too old-fashioned.
What era is it now? Commercial aerospace emphasizes agile development, relying on iteration, optimization, and high-frequency launches to advance projects.
SpaceX opened this era. To outsiders, Lin’s Apollo Technology pushed this era to a climax: “rapid trial and error, rapid fixes.”
In this new era, traditional aerospace agencies spend years, mobilize massive resources, pursuing one-shot perfectionism—such approaches are long outdated, even institutions like China Aerospace and NASA, which hold vast resources, are chasing the new era’s playbook.
This playbook not only fits the current mainstream but also aligns with financiers’ ideas: failure isn’t failure; failure is preparation for the next success.
If Cold War times had this theory, the Soviet Union would have gritted its teeth and kept N1 running for a few more years before scrapping it.
European Space Agency, Russian Space Agency, Japan Aerospace, etc.—these traditional aerospace agencies are pursuing the incubation of their own domestic SpaceX.
When there was only SpaceX originally, they weren’t in a hurry; after all, America is special.
When China has Apollo Technology, these agencies are all about the mindset that if China can do it, so can we—they’ve all started panicking, urgently supporting their own domestic SpaceX.
In this current era, no country would be spurred to strive because of America’s technological achievements, but they will definitely get the idea “I can do it too” from China’s success.
Take Japan as an example: poaching chief engineers who hosted major projects from Apollo Technology at sky-high prices, helping pay liquidated damages, waiting for the desensitization period—even knowing the ones they poach aren’t key figures, they spare no effort.
“Professor, alright, maybe you’re right. You’re the master, I’m just the apprentice.” Young John Morgan said flatteringly on the surface.
Young John Morgan’s recent days have been very comfortable. His father has risen abruptly within the Morgan family, achieved great feats, led everyone to plunder an entire region’s wealth, returned to the family stage center, and become a pivotal figure.
With General Aerospace in hand, White House tides rise and fall, but Morgan stands firm. No matter how Musk reforms NASA, General Aerospace always gets its due share.
General Aerospace holds Burning No. 1 rocket technology comparable to Falcon 9, holds Saturn V, and has good relations with Apollo Technology—these all determine their status in America’s commercial aerospace field.
This is an era where the Wolf Amendment exists only in name.
“John, give my regards to your father. I haven’t seen him for almost a month. Is he in Tokyo or New York now?” Lin Ran asked.
Young John Morgan’s smile stiffened a bit, because his father seemed to be enjoying himself here and had no intention of returning to New York: “Still in Tokyo, Professor. Thanks for your concern.”
He suspected whether Tokyo’s Kabukicho was too fun and had bewitched his father.
Young John Morgan didn’t continue the topic and instead said: “Professor, NASA has invested resources into the big T base construction in the North Pole. They’re also building an electromagnetic launch rail similar to Lunar Steel Dragon. The deep space gateway space station task has been fully handed over to General Aerospace.
Now, my task is damage control. I need your help.”
No talk of reward—everything was unspoken.
Rewards and such, do they need to be said? For Young John Morgan, even directly transferring all of NASA’s funding to Apollo Technology isn’t big money; he has plenty of ways to recoup at least double from the capital market.
After hearing this, Lin Ran directly asked: “Where do you want to go? This time we’ll occupy the best spot in NRHO.”
NRHO, called Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit in Chinese, the best spot in this orbit means the longest energy window, lowest Earth-Moon communication latency, and lowest orbit maintenance cost.
In lunar orbit, energy relies almost entirely on solar panels.
Therefore, energy window equals illumination window.
Young John Morgan replied without hesitation: “Professor, for this suboptimal position, of course I hope you’ll help us select it.”
Apollo Technology’s Guanghan Palace Gate, from launch to orbit insertion to final assembly, the entire process was exceptionally smooth and fluid.
Burning Two precisely delivered the massive space station module body—mainly the core energy and propulsion module—into trans-lunar injection orbit.
Subsequently, Apollo Technology and China Aerospace used their respective rockets to send key components like living quarters, experiment module, docking module, etc., in batches into trans-lunar injection orbit.
Every subsequent module was equipped with high-precision lidar and autonomous docking systems provided by Apollo Technology.
The modules performed precise autonomous maneuvers in near-Moon orbit and fully automatically docked with the core module in NRHO.
The entire process was like assembly line work, eliminating the reliance on astronauts’ extensive extravehicular activities in traditional space station assembly.
With its elegant posture, stable NRHO orbit, and energy consumption efficiency far exceeding external expectations, it overlooks the Moon from lunar orbit.
The whole process was very smooth.
Apollo Technology also specially released a small satellite, which faithfully recorded the assembly process from afar at Guanghan Palace Gate.
But the video and the event itself were just news on the Chinese Internet—a ripple-free piece of news.
News and events are different.
All events are news, but not necessarily reported.
But news isn’t necessarily an event.
An event needs to spark widespread public discussion and commentary.
Yet there was none at all. On Apollo Technology’s official Bilibili video account, the assembly process they put great effort into filming had many views but scant comments.
Isn’t it just a lunar space station? Is that strange?
Gaurav Jodrey is an Indian blogger, mainly operating TikTok and YouTube.
In the past, he mainly did Silicon Valley content; in recent years, he’s gradually expanded to China content, often coming to China on business trips to report on China’s latest technological progress.
He stood in front of a towering skyscraper in Shanghai, holding a cup of coffee, with an exaggerated and helpless expression.
The title of his latest video: “Lunar space station? They didn’t even raise an eyebrow!”
Gaurav faced the lens, tone full of confusion: “Hello everyone, I’m Gaurav! Today I want to talk about a very serious issue.
Just yesterday, China successfully launched a lunar orbiting space station named Guanghan Palace Gate.
This is the first space station on the Moon in human history.
It’s also the most advanced, most efficient space station!
And it completed orbit capture in just four days!
This is an achievement far beyond what other countries can do, right?”
He shrugged forcefully, expression exaggerated.
“But in my Chinese friends and colleagues’ circles, I feel like I’m living in another universe! I asked my Chinese colleagues nearby, ‘Hey, your lunar space station went up!’ They all said: ‘Oh, yeah, we know.’
But from their expressions, I couldn’t see any excitement at all!”
The screen switched to Gaurav sneak-filming his Chinese classmate with a phone lens while the classmate scrolled on their phone.
The classmate was expressionless, watching a video about a pet cat.
Gaurav returned to the lens, lowering his voice with a hint of helpless professional analysis:
“I realized this isn’t indifference; it’s that the threshold has been raised too high!
Just over a year ago, what did they experience? They witnessed the Lunar Surface Dragon.
They saw the first test of the lunar electromagnetic rail, saw an uncrewed spaceship accelerate to escape velocity on the lunar surface! That was real sci-fi turning into reality! That was strategic-level muscle show!”
Gaurav spread his hands, tone full of ironic contrast:
“After experiencing the extreme tension and thrill from electromagnetic cannon launches and deep space rescue spanning days, now you tell them: Hey, we launched a space station that’ll slowly orbit the Moon.
Their hearts are unmoved now, just thinking: Oh, that one that slowly flies up using traditional fossil fuel? Pretty good, infrastructure yeah.
Right, for China now, reusable rockets are like tech from the previous era—already outdated.
Falcon 9 succeeded in recovery in 2015; just 11 years later, this tech is already outdated. India still hasn’t mastered it to this day, nor have most countries in the world.
China lives up to being a top-tier technology power; even something like a lunar space station that could change the global aerospace landscape can’t excite them!
My god, I feel like I have to report humanity successfully immigrating to Mars to get my Chinese friends to raise an eyebrow! They’re used to miracles!”
At the video’s end, Gaurav downed the coffee from his blue deer antler coffee cup, as if using caffeine to accept this harsh reality.
Dragon-Elephant Conflict: now the elephant is lagging way behind; the dragon has taken off.
Fortunately, Indian netizens are mainly here for the fun.
For American netizens, though, it’s not like that.
For them, this is utterly terrible news.
Because the spot NASA carefully selected has been taken by Chinese people again.
Traditional media didn’t report it, but on YouTube, among the aerospace channels that have risen in recent years, various bloggers are very dissatisfied, commenting on this as yet another failure, every face incredibly heavy.
Jack Corbin is a former Boeing engineer who was humanely handled by Boeing during the virus outbreak.
In layman’s terms, he was fired.
His position was replaced by an Indian-descended engineer whose salary was only one-third of his.
A bunch of such old white male positions replaced by minority ethnic groups became a pretty number in Boeing management’s report to the board of directors on cost reduction and efficiency improvement.
A bunch of such people, originally white leftists, but after this experience, naturally became big T supporters.
Jack Corbin is the same.
During Donkey Party times, Corbin focused on sharp criticism of NASA, but now, after Elon Musk took over NASA, he rarely criticizes NASA, generally emphasizing objective difficulties.
Facing China’s achievements, he emphasizes how formidable the opponent is, rather than criticizing NASA’s bureaucratic system as worthless.
He wasn’t like that before.
Before, facing the miracle of a moon landing in one year, Corbin’s line was NASA incompetent, White House useless.
But this time, he unusually launched fierce criticism at NASA.
Jack Corbin faced the lens, face ashen, with an NRHO orbital diagram on the background screen, where a perfect spot was occupied by a bright red Guanghan Palace Gate icon.
Jack Corbin’s tone heavy, full of anger:
“Folks, today we’re not talking about SpaceX’s new test; we’re talking about an unavoidable, heartbreaking fact.
China’s just-completed Guanghan Palace Gate deployment isn’t just an engineering success; it’s a public humiliation of America’s space strategy!”
He suddenly pointed at the orbital diagram on the screen:
Jack Corbin said loudly: “Everyone look clearly: this orbital point they occupied wasn’t picked randomly! This is the NRHO optimal point that NASA and ESA jointly spent years of computing resources on, invested millions of US dollars in analysis, to finally determine!”
“Why is it the best? Because it provides the longest energy window.”
“Spacecraft in lunar orbit face two main illumination blockage risks.
The first is lunar eclipse, when the spaceship is blocked by Earth, entering Earth’s shadowed region, losing illumination.
The second is the Moon’s own blockage, when the spaceship is blocked by the Moon body, entering the Moon’s shadowed region.
And on NRHO orbit, due to the spaceship constantly moving on a long elliptical path around the Moon, it inevitably experiences periodic blockages.
Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit is an extremely unstable three-body problem orbit with high eccentricity; one end very close to the Moon, the other very far.
This requires precise calculations to find a specific variant in the NRHO orbit family with unique geometric characteristics, allowing the spaceship to be above or below the Moon’s polar axis most of the time, thus avoiding the huge shadow cast by the Moon body near the equator.
Additionally, the orbital period is optimized to perfectly match the Earth-Moon orbital phase, so the spaceship avoids Earth’s shadow when passing perigee or apogee.
Such a position likely exists only as this one, and it’s been taken by China just like that.
Time in shadowed region too long isn’t just no photovoltaic power generation as everyone thinks; it also means thermal management becomes incredibly complex.
With China having established a permafrost laboratory in the lunar shadowed region, everyone should gradually realize that in places without air, temperatures drop to below zero.
Similarly, if entering shadowed region for too long, with prolonged blockage, temperature plummets to minus 150 degrees, meaning massive energy consumption to heat equipment and maintain system operation.
Longest energy window means lowest energy consumption, also lowest thermal management difficulty.”
After the science popularization, Corbin slammed the table:
“And now, this golden spot has been snatched by China! Snatched by Apollo Technology! They beat us by two years, nailing their space station there!”
This was also whitewashing NASA.
The subtext telling his audience: we’re only two years behind China.
Actually, two years is impossible, because NASA’s golden point was calculated in 2019; NASA’s Lunar Gateway space station’s first component was planned for 2022 launch and orbit insertion.
Now it’s 2026, nothing, zilch, delays have become habit.
Without Apollo Technology pressuring NASA, Young John Morgan’s General Aerospace would continue happily taking NASA’s money yearly without working.
(NASA lunar space station concept diagram)
“Do you know what this means? It means NASA now can only seek suboptimal orbits.
Suboptimal orbit means our astronauts and cargo transport will consume more fuel, bear higher risk.”
He clutched his head with both hands, then heavily dropped them, sadly saying: “Worse, like with Shackleton Crater, this spot was one we carefully calculated.
After widespread opinion solicitation and meticulous analysis, we formally selected L2 Southern NRHO as the target orbit for the lunar orbiting space station.
Back in 2019, we released a detailed white paper, voluminous, providing a 15-year NRHO reference trajectory.
This white paper was originally intended to guide our own engineering design and international partners’ mission planning.
NASA back then was so proud, so blindly arrogant!
They thought America’s tech advantage was so huge that competitors had no ability to catch up technically.
They weren’t afraid at all that competitors would preempt this golden orbit; in their strategic blueprint, China might need a decade for a heavy rocket to accomplish this task.
But what is the reality?
Reality is, Guanghan Palace Gate has arrived at L2 Southern NRHO.
We’ve essentially handed over the orbital geometry, energy window, eclipse avoidance timing—all the hardest calculations and optimizations—completely openly, like a public textbook, to the Chinese people!”
Jack Corbin continued: “We basically hand-held told the Chinese people that position is the best; if you want to build a space station on the Moon, go there.
They didn’t spend a dime on chaotic dynamics calculations, didn’t spend a dime verifying the best energy window; they just needed an engineer who can use a search engine, then it’s a contest of engineering power and speed.”
He hammered the table heavily.
“This is no longer a technology gap problem; it’s a failure of strategic thinking.
We handed over the most precious, scarcest strategic information.
This is NASA under Donkey Party leadership: besides arrogance, they know nothing!
Don’t tell me the 2019 president was big T; even if the president is big T, NASA remains Donkey Party’s traditional stronghold—they firmly control NASA.
These are the stupid decisions made by Deep State-controlled NASA.”
Finally, Jack Corbin summarized: “We have the world’s top-tier engineers, the strongest science budget, but we lost to speed and decision-making.
Chinese people saw an opportunity, immediately mobilized national will and private enterprises, took direct action.
And what are we doing? Still in meetings discussing contract review, redundant design, and political correctness.
America is losing the ability to turn grand visions into immediate action.
Lunar orbit isn’t international waters.
Once occupied, it’s permanent.
We missed the first-mover advantage, missed the energy and efficiency edge.
On the Moon, we’ve already lost the starting line of this competition.”
Why does international public opinion think America is becoming a big India, even India’s insightful people think so.
It’s because there are too many people like Corbin.
Too many who talk big but don’t want to work in factories.
Accusing is too easy, while actual action is too hard.
Take Corbin as example: with his Boeing engineer resume, finding a similar job is very easy.
Even if not easy during the virus outbreak, it’s easy now.
But being an engineer isn’t as fun as being a YouTuber.
Like Jack Corbin doing YouTuber, he can live in Thailand, earn US dollars from Google, income no less than at Boeing, without going to the factory daily smelling of motor oil.
So no matter how much Corbin complains in videos, he’s never thought of returning to frontline aerospace engineering posts to contribute even a tiny bit for this country.
