Vol 2 Chapter 1631: Space travel on the Von Carmen line

Yes, yes, just stingy.

In the eyes of outsiders, Wu Hao and others are indeed very stingy, but for them, especially for those engaged in technology, cost control is often one of the most important factors that determine the success of a project.

No matter what technology or product, it is inseparable from cost control. The key to deciding whether to continue research and development of this technology is actually cost control, that is, capital investment. Whether the funds you have prepared can support the development of this technology, if the investment is too much, resulting in excessive costs, then it is difficult for the products that are not to be competitive in the market.

Therefore, the cost control of related technology research and development projects has always been the focus of Wu Hao and the others. This is especially true in the field of aerospace technology.

The aerospace field is a high-tech industry with high investment, high risk, and high return. The initial investment is very huge. Therefore, it must be especially strict in cost control. Otherwise, the funds will not be fully utilized, and no amount of investment will be in vain.

Moreover, investment in this field generally takes many years, so that it will gradually bear fruit. Therefore, the early stage greatly tested the affordability of enterprises, which is a technology- and capital-intensive industry. The development of technology depends entirely on the investment of funds. No funds are absolutely impossible. Therefore, Wu Hao and the others were prepared for a protracted battle from the beginning, and naturally they were stricter in terms of cost management.

In addition, for their commercial aerospace projects, the most important thing about commercial aerospace is cost control. If the research and development costs are too high, then the market competitiveness of their aerospace products will be weak, and there will be no competitive advantage compared to official and other companies.

In addition to strictly controlling the cost of R&D investment, it is also necessary to control the cost of the product itself. This is why they are vigorously developing recyclable aerospace products, such as reusable rockets, fairings, reusable spacecraft return capsules, and so on.

Take the manned spacecraft Walker this time as an example. The manned spacecraft Walker is divided into two parts, namely the return cabin and the service cabin. Among them, the service cabin is not recyclable, and it is mainly responsible for the power part, energy and resource supply part of the spacecraft. When the return capsule returns to the earth, the service capsule will break away from it, then slowly descend, and finally fall into the atmosphere and burn.

The return capsule for astronauts can also be referred to as the crew cabin, which can be reused, and it can be used by most of the new spacecraft. Through the modular design, it can be landed in the return cabin and undergo related maintenance for the next task.

The same is true for Wu Hao and the return cabin of the Walker II. Their outer surface uses a detachable modular thermal insulation layer, which is also sprayed with their new thermal insulation material. Under normal circumstances, it is possible to repeat the second manned space mission without undergoing overhaul and merely performing supervised maintenance.

After maintenance, it can be reused more than ten times. In this way, the cost of the spacecraft that is evenly allocated to a single mission will be reduced a lot. This is also a major market competitive advantage of their spacecraft. Obtaining some astronauts and material transportation lists through low prices will also prepare for the next step in the development of civil aerospace tourism projects.

Low-cost launch technology and low-cost space shuttle technology are the development trends in the field of space technology in the future. Therefore, major aerospace science and technology companies in various countries are also engaged in research in this area, and they have achieved very good results.

Who would have thought that the cost of launching a single satellite has dropped from the previous tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of kilograms to several thousand dollars per kilogram.

At present, some companies have already spoken about their efforts to reduce the transportation cost of rockets to just under one thousand dollars. If this is achieved, it will undoubtedly further reduce the cost of going to space. In this way, it will attract more countries and enterprises to join and share the space dividend.

The reduction of rocket launch costs will also further promote the further reduction of the cost of manned spacecraft, which is different from before. In addition to some official missions that commercial aerospace is targeting, more markets are actually in the private sector.

However, there are only a few private individuals who spend a huge amount of money to realize a space travel. Therefore, if commercial manned space flight is to develop, it is necessary to further reduce the cost, thereby reducing the cost of space travel. Only in this way will it attract more tourists to experience tourism.

This is what Wu Hao and the others have to do. On the one hand, they are now catching up with those colleagues who have ran ahead of them, and on the other hand, they are also advancing side by side with these colleagues.

Although everyone's time to enter space is long and short, this is not the focus of everyone's attention. What everyone is concerned about is to see who can control the cost first, so as to seize this huge market with broad prospects.

It is precisely because of this consideration that, in addition to the conventional manned space projects of the major aerospace giants, some companies have taken a different approach. They did not choose to develop expensive conventional manned space technology projects, but developed technical difficulties and A low-cost suborbital space tourism project.

Suborbital generally refers to the airspace at an altitude of 20 kilometers to 100 kilometers above the ground, between the highest flying altitude of existing aircraft and the lowest orbital altitude of satellites, and is also called adjacent space or aerospace transition zone.

This altitude space mainly includes the atmosphere stratosphere region, the middle atmosphere region and part of the ionosphere region. UU read www.uukanshu.com so this area does not belong to the category of aviation, nor does it belong to the category of aerospace.

Formally because of this, it has great prospects for the development of intelligence collection, reconnaissance and surveillance, communications support, air-to-ground operations, and space tourism.

If we don't talk about the previous items, we will talk about space tourism projects. This is one of the main development directions aimed at by major aerospace technology companies. They will use rockets or airborne spacecraft to send tourists to an altitude of about 100 kilometers, continue to fly for ten minutes or tens of minutes, and then return to Earth.

Why is it controlled at one hundred kilometers? Because this height is exactly the von Kamen line, the so-called von Kamen line is currently recognized by most as the boundary between outer space and the earth’s atmosphere. At this height, people can basically be in a microgravity environment, which is what we call a sense of weightlessness.

The main space tourism project promoted by these commercial airlines to tourists is to travel in space and experience weightlessness.

Compared with other feelings in space, weightlessness is obviously the most felt, and it also reflects one of the characteristics of space, so this has also become a marketing gimmick for these commercial suborbital tourism space companies.