Spark

"Huaxia will build a large electric vehicle factory in Shanghai, and Tesla will enter the game?"

"The news is confirmed! Musk said: Thank you for the opportunity provided by Huaxia officials. Tesla will try its best to promote the development of Huaxia's new energy industry and spread advanced design concepts."

"There may be a larger transaction behind the Shanghai factory, involving SpaceX?"

"Exchanging heavy rocket technology for new energy market opportunities? Is it a profit or a loss?"

"SpaceX news: will cooperate with Huaxia in the field of LITV technology!"

The news of SpaceX's cooperation with China was soon made public. After all, in an "open" market environment like the United States, it is basically difficult to hide news that can affect stock prices.

The relevant departments in Huaxia didn't care about this - they only heard that they had to keep their technology secret from others, but they hadn't heard of people who took technology from others and kept it secret.

If that's the case, it's called stealing, not exchanging.

However, while the official is advancing the plan step by step, many doubts have erupted in the public opinion about the content of this transaction.

The core point is, is it worthwhile to cut off a large part of the new energy vehicle market in exchange for the LITV technology?

The market for new energy vehicles is huge as far as the naked eye can see. After all, even without considering the factor of superconducting materials, just an almost unlimited nuclear fusion power is enough to subvert traditional industries.

What is LITV in comparison?

Ordinary people may only know that this is a technology that can improve rocket transport capacity, but no one can tell how much it can improve and what changes it can bring to the world.

——

In fact, even if they are not ordinary people, some technicians in related fields are not optimistic about LITV.

Discussions about this technology have progressed to a very professional level on the forum.

". LITV technology is actually more like a method to improve the engine's thrust deflection capability. Its core is not in the direction of solid-liquid conversion——Of course, I don't deny that this technology has a great impact on solid-liquid conversion. There are certain inspirations, and there are multiple similar technical modules, but the problem is that it is not that simple to actually realize the application.”

"Even if we can get SpaceX's technology, at most we can solve the problem of liquid propulsion vector control. How to solve the overall complexity? How to solve the liquid supply and storage system? How to solve the efficiency of the additional load of the equipment?"

"I have had some exchanges with SpaceX before, and as far as I know, these issues have not been resolved so far."

"So from the perspective of astronauts, I think we are still at a disadvantage in this exchange."

After the netizen whose profile picture was a space cat posted this post, other people in the forum quickly followed up, and their wording was much more intense than that of a space cat.

"It's not a relative loss, it's a big loss."

"LITV itself is a trap technology, otherwise SpaceX would not be able to suddenly marginalize this project after five years of research and development, and turn to research on rocket recovery technology."

"It's not a question of whether it's feasible or not. Of course, objectively speaking, as long as you're willing to spend money, this thing can definitely be built."

"However, from a technical point of view, its marginal benefit is less than the marginal cost. Frankly speaking, this thing doesn't make any sense."

"If the domestic new energy market is really exchanged for LITV, I think the government is really stupid. But the problem is, I don't think the government can be that stupid at all."

"So, there is a high probability that this is just a smoke screen, and who knows what kind of deal is behind it."

This comment provided netizens with a new perspective, and thinking about it from this perspective, things seem to be less difficult to understand.

Yes, LITV is indeed worthless, but in exchange, is it really just the technology itself?

Perhaps, there is a bigger game behind it, which has not been dug out

Of course, if you think about it carefully, even if you exclude LITV and only look at the so-called Shanghai factory, it is actually far from being as bad as some people subconsciously think.

Tesla's aggressive entry into China, can it really divide the market?

Perhaps, it is more like a catfish that was actively put in, the purpose is to stir up the water.

After all, although the core technology of electric vehicles is indeed batteries and motors, this does not mean that it is enough for a car to run and run.

At the end of the day, it's a commodity, and a commodity is meant to fit the market, and Tesla does a really good job at that

As a result, the wind direction reversed immediately.

The so-called "Big Banner Theory" has gradually spread, and even Musk, who is far away in the United States, has seen these comments.

In the NASA office, while scratching the tablet in his hand, he smiled and said to Nelson:

"These Huaxia netizens are really interesting. They probably won too many times, and they have formed some kind of inertia?"

"It's obviously just a simple business transaction, but it's said as if we were fooled."

"Actually, the benefits we gain from entering the Chinese market far exceed their imagination."

Hearing his words, Nelson shook his head helplessly.

He actually doesn't agree with Tesla's deep binding with China, because once this factory is completed, at least 50% of Tesla's profits will be locked in it.

As a politician, he understands better than Musk that in many cases, it is not equity but "control" that can influence the direction of a company.

After all Tesla's chips are invested in China's gambling table, will Musk have other choices?

Yes, you may keep winning, you may keep getting what you call "benefits", but what if there's no way to take those benefits off the table?

Then what it represents is just a good-looking number.

However, he has no way to tell Musk about this.

The stance has changed—NASA is no longer the funder, nor has the power to "advise".

So, instead of answering Musk's topic, he asked:

"So is LITV technology really meaningless? Is it possible that they have really developed a practical technology based on cooperation and achieved a leapfrog development of aerospace technology?"

"How could LITV technology be a dead end."

Musk shook his head mockingly, and continued:

"In fact, all countries are engaged in LITV, after all, its potential is really great."

"However, the projects launched at the same time as SpaceX have basically died."

"The reason is also very simple, because we have reached the end of this road."

"But China hasn't—their aerospace technology is more than 20 years behind ours, so they will naively think that we can't do it because we haven't done it well enough."

"They're just toddlers who don't listen to adult advice."

"That's good news for us, though, isn't it?"

"The more mistakes they make, the better our chances. If we can land on the moon before them, we may get back everything we lost before."

"Indeed."

Nelson nodded emphatically.

In fact, at this stage of development, the competition between the two sides on the matter of "landing on the moon" has long been no longer a purely technical dispute, but has been endowed with additional symbolic meaning.

This is a "bodybuilding competition" with the moon as the stage. Those countries that are still swaying and hesitating are waiting for the result of the competition, and this result will determine their final choice of camp.

China, which has mastered new technologies, or the United States, which has laid a solid foundation in the old era?

Nelson suddenly felt that the situation in front of him seemed familiar.

In the cold war that year, the two poles of the world were also competing to fly into space

The ever-changing things on the ground are decided by the never-changing bright moon in the sky. Does this sound a bit ironic?

He sighed and continued to ask:

"Anyway, this is the limit of what we can do."

"It is impossible for us to hinder China's technological development through other means, but we can only speed up the process of returning to the moon plan as soon as possible."

"Remember, we've got to put people up, we've got to have a base on the moon."

"It's only when we do that that we truly ... win."

"I know."

Musk replied:

"The Artemis program will be carried out simultaneously with the return to the moon program, and equipment and personnel will be landed at the same time."

"After arriving on the moon, the first batch of 'explorers' will immediately start to build a living base to achieve long-term stationing on the moon-in fact, I am very curious if the Chinese people find out that a simple manned moon landing plan has actually turned into What kind of expression will they have when they get the moon base construction plan?"

After thinking for a while, Nelson suddenly smiled and said:

"They probably won't have any expression because at that time, they can only complete the launch of Chang'e 3 at most."

"They are still not on the same level as us, so they can only applaud us?"

The two looked at each other with a smile, and ended the topic tacitly.

Musk looked out the window, where a giant rocket far larger than any previous spacecraft was already under construction.

According to the plan, it will launch its first expedition in about 6 months.

And at that time, it was time for my "space journey" to become a reality

Chang'an, in the laboratory of the solid-liquid conversion engine project.

Li Bingzhong looked at the latest technical documents, and frowned directly.

Rowan on the opposite side was also full of bitterness. While shaking his head, he said:

"The technical documentation shared by SpaceX is much better than we expected, but the results are a bit less optimistic"

"They have been working on it for 10 years, but they still haven't been able to solve the vector control problem of the liquefaction nozzle. I even suspect that this document is a fake."

Hearing his words, Li Bingzhong sighed.

"The possibility of falsification is very small, and their research path can basically be verified from the published papers."

"It can be judged that they have indeed tried many different solutions, and they have indeed made some progress."

"But the thermodynamic effect inside the solid-liquid conversion engine is too complicated. In layman's terms, it is necessary to insert a syringe needle into a piece of solid gunpowder, and then use the liquid ejected from the needle to control the gunpowder. The burning rate of the gunpowder, and even the range of gunpowder burning.”

"It's not just that there are super high requirements on the needle material, the control accuracy is even more outrageous, and a simple algorithm can no longer meet the demand-you see, in 2011, they even tried to introduce artificial intelligence systems to Real-time agile regulation."

"But even so, the effect is ridiculously poor."

"It's no wonder that Russian technicians are generally not optimistic about this direction—we really chose the highest mountain to climb."

"Compared with this direction, the organic propulsion direction is much simpler, but unfortunately it cannot be adapted to our fuel choice."

"I'm kind of helpless, it feels like this is a dead end."

"Although it looks like there is a road, there is a stainless steel gate at the end of the road, and we haven't made the key to this gate yet."

Rowan nodded in agreement, and then said:

"To solve the problem of controlling the liquid injection system, we must first have a set of more sophisticated monitoring instruments. This thing alone has exceeded the upper limit of current technology."

"In addition, the complexity of the thermodynamic effects of the solid-liquid conversion chamber has almost reached the edge of a 'chaos-like system'. The current computing power of a small computer simply cannot support us to intelligently control it."

"And if you want to go to the mainframe, the load becomes a problem."

"Without a mainframe, the data transmission rate is also a threshold that cannot be crossed."

"I said, how could SpaceX turn to rocket recovery at the moment when the technology is almost mature-this technology is simply a trap."

"In the early stage, the flowers are full of flowers, one step at a time, but what happens later?"

Luo Wen didn't continue talking, but Li Bingzhong could already hear the pessimism in his words.

The two sat silently facing each other. After a long time, Li Bingzhong asked:

"How is the atmosphere in the project team now?"

"No, two technicians from Russia have already announced their withdrawal. At first they thought that we were going in the direction of organic solvents, so they chose to join - of course, they were originally in the field of organic compounds, so the reasons for quitting are actually very good .”

"But objectively speaking, their withdrawal has dealt a blow to the project team. Even our own people's confidence in this technology is also declining."

"We urgently need some small results, but here comes the problem: the problems that can be solved, SpaceX has already solved them in the early stage."

"It can't be solved, and we have nothing to do in a short time."

Li Bingzhong nodded thoughtfully, his fingers tapped the table rhythmically, and after a while, he spoke:

"Even if there is no way, you can't do nothing."

"Since we have chosen this path, our superiors have agreed, and even Xinghuo has expressed support, it shows that this path has a bright future."

"In this way, you first make a list of our current technical barriers."

"It's a big deal. Let's do it one by one. I don't believe it. With so many people, can't even solve a problem?"

"Understood, I will hand it over to you as soon as possible."

Rowan replied.

At this time, he had quickly gone through all the problems that urgently needed to be solved in his mind.

There must be at least twenty or thirty of them.

It seems that there are not many?

"It's really not that much."

In the office in Chengdu, Chen Nian and Li Bingzhong almost finished reading the documents submitted by SpaceX at the same time.

Unlike Li Bingzhong's pessimism, in his heart, there is only the secret joy of picking up a big deal.

Needless to say, the scientific researchers of Laomei really have a few brushes.

They have done almost all the things they can do, and those so-called barriers are actually just because of the limitations of the times and technology, they have no way to break through.

But now, it's in my hands

All the problems, no more problems