Chapter 82: Establishing Authority
“Everyone, do you know what the most common word I saw after flipping through NASA’s report was?
It’s Precious!
That’s right, it’s Precious!
Although Vanguard TV3 failed, it accumulated Precious experience.
Pioneer 1 failed, failing to reach the Moon as per the expected design, but it accumulated Precious experience.
Pioneer 4 failed, failing to reach the Moon as per the expected design, but it accumulated Precious experience.
I’m very curious, why do we have to accumulate Precious experience, but the Soviet Union doesn’t.
Since this experience is so Precious, they should have failed too.”
If saying at the beginning that everyone was Trash lit a flame in the hearts of the NASA high-level officials present, then now Lin Ran comparing them to the Soviet Union was nakedly Heartbreaking.
And with this mocking tone, rubbing salt into everyone’s wounds.
They also had reason to argue, because the Soviet Union’s Luna series probes also failed to achieve landing; the Soviet side just took photos of the Far Side of the Moon.
“Sorry, I find it hard to understand, the White House finds it hard to understand, and America public even more so!
The entire NASA has over ten thousand employees, plus the supplier teams cooperating with our work; with so many people, we have to rely on constant failures to accumulate Precious experience.”
Lin Ran slammed the black North American oak desktop, emphasizing the word Precious, and the atmosphere in the entire tiered meeting room became unprecedentedly solemn.
“Director James Webber has been communicating with me since taking office, saying we need to strive for more budget for NASA, expand NASA’s scale, to cope with the increasingly intense Space Race.
But when we look at NASA’s history report, we all doubt whether reporting such a historical record to Congress would get approval from the congressmen. If I were a congressman, I would think NASA striving for more budget isn’t to win this Space Race, but to absorb more ‘Precious’ experience!
Director Von Braun, at the beginning of last year I exchanged with NASA’s GS-6 level engineer Haines, and I told him items 4 and 5 of the Earth’s Gravity Gravitational Perturbation Model, and told him that the Moon also has gravitational perturbations.
On this basis, can NASA guarantee that the next Pioneer will successfully impact the Moon with the spacecraft, achieving landing?”
Von Braun was expressionless; in his heart, he was comparing the young man of Chinese descent in front of him with the colleague in his impression who had already returned to China, and compared to the colleague in his impression, the other’s aggressiveness was much stronger.
He really couldn’t imagine that saying everyone present was Trash came from a man of Chinese descent; he quickly brought his thoughts back to Lin Ran’s question itself:
“Professor Lin, sorry, we internally conducted an estimate; even considering the gravitational perturbation factor, its precision still cannot achieve the effect of landing on the Moon, and there will still be a certain deviation.”
Lin Ran was clearly unsatisfied with such an answer, especially since he came this time to establish authority: “So what is the specific number, compared to the actual situation.
And have you even calculated, if the gravitational perturbation factor is included, how much deviation there is in the distance from Pioneer 4 entering the Moon landing orbit, and is there any way to avoid such deviation?”
Von Braun said: “We already have a plan.
After President Kennedy announced manned Moon landing, we abandoned the Pioneer Moon landing technical route, because this route can only achieve hard landing, not soft landing.
We plan to adopt a brand new technical route, adding controllable propulsion system and solid rocket deceleration system to the spacecraft, to achieve a soft landing.
Additionally, we will improve the radio system to reduce latency, allowing our command center on Earth to perform real-time command adjustments to the landing module.
As for the specific deviation, that has to be asked of Arthur Rudolf; he is the head of the propulsion system.”
Von Braun was very clear that Lin Ran came to establish authority, coming with the momentum of Liberty 7 crashing, and what he asked was also an open scheme.
Moreover, Von Braun was certain that this number was definitely not easy to calculate, and as a top mathematician, Lin Ran had already calculated the answer.
At this time, it was time to let Rudolf take the heat; who told you to offend Lin Ran.
Not only did Lin Ran’s gaze turn to Rudolf Arthur, but the gazes of all the high-level officials present also uniformly turned to him.
Rudolf immediately broke out in sweat: “Director Lin, sorry, because Pioneer is an abandoned technical route, we did not calculate its deviation after introducing new parameters.”
Rudolf wasn’t stupid either; he knew the spearhead was pointed at him, so at this time he had to address the position, with tone as flattering as possible, apology as sincere as possible.
“So where is the value of Precious experience?
Pioneer failure experience is unusable, and still Precious? Our flight model team doesn’t even do the most basic calculations.
If calculation shows that we could achieve hard landing on Pioneer just by introducing more parameters, at least we could first catch up with the Soviet side on probe Moon landing?
Arthur Rudolf, if this is your work attitude, then I think you are fired!”
When Lin Ran said this, he finally understood why old Trump liked saying this on the Apprentice program, because it really felt great.
Lin Ran waved his hand, and the military personnel standing on both sides of him stepped forward to take Arthur Rudolf away.
Arthur Rudolf’s struggles had no effect at all in front of the personnel prepared in advance.
In 1960, he tried to take Lin Ran away like this, and now he was sent away by Lin Ran in the same way.
No matter how unwilling Arthur Rudolf was, he was helpless; with Lin Ran holding great power, squashing him was too easy.
Once he leaves Redstone Arsenal, there are plenty of squid outside waiting to take his life.
Lin Ran didn’t even lift an eyelid to give Rudolf half a glance; he continued: “If this is NASA’s work attitude, then we will never catch up with the Soviet Union; Precious experience will only remain in reports, and in reality you don’t take the results of burning through massive budget seriously at all.
Today I came to give everyone a lesson on how to introduce the perturbation model, through multi-scenario simulations and optimization inputs on the ground, plus further precision in the launch window, Pioneer can achieve hard landing on the lunar surface.”
Lin Ran stood up, and military personnel dragged the already prepared blackboard from behind Lin Ran to the center.
“Your trajectory calculations are merely based on the classic Kepler orbit model, without fully considering lunar gravity perturbations and Earth’s non-uniform gravity field.
Here, through the Laplace method to introduce perturbation theory, manually calculate the deflection effect of lunar gravity on the trajectory, then use higher-order Taylor expansion to improve prediction precision of initial velocity and angle.”
Apart from the initial establishing of authority, Lin Ran spent the entire half day lecturing on hard-to-understand mathematical models and formulas, but none of the engineers present were impatient; everyone listened with keen interest.
