Chapter 103 Launch Success
It is easy for investors to lose confidence when competitors are too strong.

Oriental Space is Yao Song’s second venture. His first venture went smoothly, and he eventually sold the company for over 100 million yuan. While completing the initial accumulation, he also understood a lot of truths.

When you are trying to attract investment during the process of starting a business, if you meet ten investors and they all reject you, it’s okay. As long as the eleventh person is willing to invest in you, then you have succeeded in attracting investment, and its success rate is 100%, not 9%.

But this time, the eleventh person also rejected him, and all investment institutions said they would wait and see.

Even Matrix Partners and Sequoia Capital, which invested in them in the angel round, said they would wait and see.

"Yao Song, you also know that Guangjia Aerospace is moving too fast. I have been telling you before that you should speed up the research and development progress.

You must complete the launch of the reusable solid rocket before Guangjia Aerospace so that you can have enough capital for the next round of financing.

The previous steps to prove myself were still far from enough compared to Chen Yuanguang." Wu Liang, a director and executive of Matrix Partners, said when Yao Song approached him about investment.

Yao Song previously worked as a partner at Matrix Partners, and Wu Liang was his direct supervisor, so his words were somewhat heartfelt.

He founded Oriental Space because he saw a large number of commercial space projects when he was working at Matrix Partners.

Wu Liang continued, “You know we are the investment institution that invests the most in commercial aviation projects, and our entire internal investment research mechanism is very complete.

Compared with Guangjia Aerospace, your advantages are limited. If you cannot prove yourself as soon as possible, it will be difficult for you to obtain follow-up investment.

If Guangjia Aerospace's announcement is true, they will be able to complete the development of large-scale reusable rockets next year, so you only have a one-year window.

They are about to carry out their first round of launch. If it is successful, you will have to make huge concessions for subsequent financing, and investors will need to obtain more shares.

This will be the last round of financing. If you fail to catch up before Guangjia Aerospace successfully launches its rocket next year, there will be no next round of financing.

The investors will unite and push Guangjia Aerospace to acquire you. If Guangjia Aerospace is unwilling, then we will push the remaining commercial aerospace companies that make reusable rockets to merge and promote listing after the merger." Wu Liang was very straightforward.

With the A-share capital market, or projects with high technological content such as commercial aerospace, it is much easier to promote listing.

This ensures that they will not lose money no matter what, and may even make a fortune. As for whose money they make, only those who understand will understand.

Yao Song stared at the computer screen, his conversation with Wu Liang emerging in his mind. Matrix Partners, as his former employer, was already his most confident investment institution, and the result was always the same.

He had no hope for other investment institutions. No, there was another one, Yao Song thought to himself. He almost forgot about MiHoYo.

MiHoYo has a huge amount of cash and has negotiated with them several times, expressing its intention to participate in this round of financing for Oriental Space. However, Yao Song does not think highly of this kind of investor who only has money but cannot provide other help.

Now it seems that miHoYo is really the only life-saving straw.

(In reality, miHoYo participated in Oriental Space’s Series A round of financing.)
"Do we still have to rely on the power of the second dimension in the end?" Such a sentence flashed involuntarily in Yao Song's mind. He looked at the black screen full of barrage and smiled bitterly.

It’s not easy to fool miHoYo either, especially since Light Armor Aerospace has been promoting it heavily on various media platforms.

On Bilibili, Tik Tok, and YouTube, no matter whether the rocket launch is successful or not after this round of live broadcast, it will definitely be a hot topic on Weibo.

Besides, miHoYo’s investment research team is no pushover. How can they fool them into believing that Oriental Space can compete with Light Armor Aerospace?

The 2D world is rich, but it is not stupid.

Just like it is not easy for up-masters on Bilibili to monetize, it is not because the b-friends are poor, on the contrary, it is because the b-friends are too shrewd, so it is difficult for the up-masters to make money from them.

Yao Song felt a headache and prayed silently in his heart that the rocket would fail. It would be best if it exploded in mid-air and set off a big firework.

Seven o'clock in the morning of Yanjing time is three o'clock in the afternoon of San Francisco time. Musk was also watching the live broadcast. He complained:

"Why doesn't Wright create an account on X? He can also live stream on X."

"Do you think they can succeed?" Musk asked.

Tom, a core researcher at SpaceX who is responsible for developing rocket engines and has worked at SpaceX since its inception, said: “I don’t know, I don’t know anything about their rockets.

I can't make a judgment.

But if the launch fails, will anyone be held accountable for its failure?"

Tom was very curious about this. He had dealt with Chen Yuanguang and in his opinion, Chen Yuanguang had a good temper, much better than Musk.

He felt that this might only be the case when facing them, and not necessarily the case internally.

Musk said helplessly: "No, Tom, you are wrong. Jim was not driven away. He wanted to leave on his own."

The president of Sea Launch mentioned above left Sea Launch in March 2006 and joined SpaceX as CEO, but left after the failure of the Falcon 3 launch in December.

Tom kept joking that it was because Musk put too much pressure on him that he attributed the failure of the Falcon 9 launch to Jim Mather.

Musk has always denied it.

Tom was noncommittal: "Well, maybe you're right."

Musk said: "Jim is leaving because he has a better opportunity, not because I want him to take the blame for the Falcon launch failure and help me bear the pressure from investors."

Musk muttered, “Wright shouldn’t have such concerns.”

The two sides did not speak anymore and watched the trajectory of the rocket launch in silence.

"It looks good. Their rocket has entered low-Earth orbit and was more successful than our first launch," said Tom.

Because Pathfinder 1 is not big, it does not put too much pressure on Musk.

He was able to see it from the perspective of a spectator: “Yeah, I remember when the Falcon 9 static test fire went wrong.

It seemed that the turbo pump had failed at that time.”

Tom nodded. "Yes, one of the valves didn't receive the command to open."

He continued: “Because of that mistake, the launch of the Falcon 9 was delayed by three months.

It seems that our Chinese counterparts are doing a better job than us, right? "

As the rocket successfully entered the preset orbit, ten minutes after launch, the first stage returned to the target landing point, successfully completing the vertical recovery in space.

Yao Song looked dejected as he watched the live broadcast. The performance of the Trail Blazers' No. 1 could be described as perfect.

Before, I thought that even if I could recover, I wouldn’t be able to do it so accurately, to recover it to the target point.

As a result, this low-probability event happened, and Pioneer 1 not only achieved rocket recovery, but also achieved precise recovery.

After the first step is completed, the next step is to expand the rocket's carrying capacity and upgrade the engine, power, and control system.

The work from zero to one has been completed, and with SpaceX leading the way, the subsequent work from one to one hundred is nothing more than investing manpower and money.

Light Armor Aerospace is good at both. The problem is that Dongfang Space has not even completed the first step. Yao Song feels that it is doomed. Their plan is to launch a recoverable solid rocket next year at the earliest and achieve precise recovery the year after.

Now your biggest competitor is two years ahead of you. How can you catch up? I'm afraid it's not easy to fool the ACG world.

"Our Chinese counterparts are doing a good job, much more smoothly than Bezos' Blue Origin," Musk complained.

He and Bezos have always had a bad relationship. The source of the bad relationship is that they are both engaged in commercial aerospace, Bezos with Blue Origin and he with SpaceX.

They often make sarcastic remarks on Twitter. When Bezos' Blue Origin announced that it would launch 3,000 satellites to build a global network, Musk commented directly: "Plagiar dog" and directly @Bezos.

It's like not giving any face at all.

Tom said: "China has always had an advantage in the aerospace field. They have a large number of engineers."

Musk laughed and said: "Fortunately, we don't have to compete with them, and we don't have to worry about their progress no matter how fast they progress."

SpaceX will not be able to get a piece of China's cake anyway, and Guangjia Aerospace will not get any orders from NASA either.

There is not much competition between the two parties.

Unless we can go to Mars in the future.

“Dear audience, this is a thrilling dream-chasing journey. It is my first time to witness a rocket launch in person, and I was personally received by Chen Yuanguang – the God of Light.

It fulfilled all my fantasies!"

The rocket launch day was on Monday, December 12th. The footage was recorded on Monday morning and edited and released by Tim’s team on Tuesday afternoon.

Tim looks very excited at the beginning of the video:
"The God of Light has always been a very mysterious existence in the outside world. We rarely hear him talk about what he is doing. Most of the time we see some trivial news in the news, which seems to be related to him. How much of a correlation is this is completely unknown.

This time we will go to Jiuquan to find out for ourselves!"

The number of views exceeded one million in just one hour, and exceeded ten million in four hours.

The entire video is filled with barrages.

B friends were jubilant:
"Punch in"

"witness the miracle"

"Fuck the Light God"

"China's own reusable rocket"

"Happy New Year"

“I hope asteroid mining can be realized soon”

There are too many comments, I can’t read them all.

The comments below the video are full of positive energy:

"There are not many jewels left in the crown of human technology. China has limited opportunities to grab them. Guangjia Aerospace has already caught up. Other companies should hurry up and catch up. The crushers of developed countries are not kidding you!"

"There have been voices saying that SpaceX's reusable rockets are the true future development direction of aerospace, and we have taken the wrong path. Now it seems that this path is not that difficult to take."

"Another miracle created by the God of Light. When I woke up at 7am on Monday to watch the live broadcast and saw the second stage rocket enter orbit and the first stage rocket fall off, I knew it was stable.

Although there is still a lot of room for improvement in launch cost, power, and carrying capacity, we have made a good start and we will eventually catch up."

"When we surpass SpaceX, can we let Huawei take the title and invite CEO Yu to hold a press conference? I'd like to be the leader and let others just listen!"

Some domestic commercial airlines ask Heilan Home to sponsor their rocket launches.

"Please don't flatter China's commercial aerospace industry. There is still a gap between the two sides. I hope Guangjia Aerospace can catch up."

"Guangshen, I'm sorry, I was careless. When I saw that SDIC invested more than 10 billion yuan in your aerospace industry, I said that they were investing without any research. The idea that man can conquer nature is deeply rooted in their bones, and they made the decision on the spur of the moment.

I didn’t expect that you really understand aerospace. You led the team to develop a reusable rocket in just one year. Although there is still a gap, you are much ahead of other commercial aerospace companies that have been working on it for several years without any results.

Of course, it's not all encouragement, there are also cynical voices. There are many gods on B station who can't stand China's technological progress. When they see similar videos, they will come out and say a few words:

"Forget about it. SpaceX completed the second stage orbital launch and first stage vertical recovery in 2015. Your little rocket was seven years later than SpaceX. What's there to be proud of?

Is this already so far ahead? You rabbit friends are so funny. "

Of course, there is rational discussion under this kind of speech: "Don't talk nonsense if you don't understand.

It took SpaceX four years to successfully launch the Falcon 9, five years for Blue Origin's New Shepard, and only one year for Light Armor Aerospace's Pioneer 1. If this isn't a huge lead, what is? "

“Before you said we were 40 years behind, now it’s become 7 years. I think it will gradually become 5 years, 3 years, 1 year, until we are ahead.”

Some even directly criticized: "Those who are not patriotic, get out!"

There are also people who support this statement: "B friends are too patriotic. It's not certain whether this technology was stolen from SpaceX."

In short, you can see opinions of various positions under the popular videos on Bilibili.

It’s not that b friends have a high concentration of patriotism, but that they have a rich diversity of species.

This type of person is more or less the type of person whose Huawei PTSD is triggered by the fact that the company is so far ahead.

After this video was broadcast, it was far ahead in terms of playback volume and firmly occupied the top spot on the trending search list.

At the same time, it also sparked a lot of discussion on Zhihu.

“How do you rate Pioneer One?”

Netizens were equally enthusiastic in their responses:

“Thank you for the invitation. At present, Guangjia Aerospace has made rapid progress in rocket recovery. If it continues to develop at this pace, SpaceX’s advantage will not last long.

According to what Guangshen said during the interview with Tim, SpaceX's advantage will last for a maximum of three years.

The biggest difficulty in reusable rocket technology lies in precise control and navigation.

It must go through a complex dynamic process when returning to Earth, including re-entry into the atmosphere, deceleration, and precise landing. This requires highly precise control systems and algorithms to ensure that the rocket can return safely and accurately to the intended landing point.

This time, Pioneer 1 has perfectly achieved this goal. All that’s left is repeated launches to optimize it to the limit.

The outlook is optimistic, but there are still some problems to be overcome. The biggest difficulty is:

　I procrastinate, I just finished coding now, sorry
　　
　
(End of this chapter)