Chapter 229 Podcast Response and Space Station Progress
After Nikola's podcast was aired, it caused a huge response on the Internet.

The full English interview will be streamlined to a certain extent by self-media when it is transmitted to China.

After all, only a few people are truly capable of watching the entire interview in English.

In this age of entertainment to death, only a few people can finish watching a movie with subtitles.

In America, netizens' attention is all focused on Blue Origin's approach to Light Armor Aerospace to purchase space station modules.

"The Chinese stole SpaceX's nonexistent space station technology."

"One day, smuggling space stations to the Federation will be more profitable than smuggling new energy vehicles, although the only thing the two have in common is that they are both made in China."

"In 2024, the sales of American auto brands in China will exceed 300 million, while the sales of Chinese brands in the American market will be almost zero. In the near future, we will see that the sales of Chinese space stations in the American market will exceed those of Chinese brands of new energy vehicles."

"We should accuse China of having overcapacity in its space station!"

"Rest assured, the White House will tell Americans: I will make sure none of you know that our tech giants bought the Chinese space station."

"I went to Shenhai earlier this year. For confidentiality reasons, Guangjia Aerospace's office building in Shenhai had no logo or any other signs. When I passed by, the security personnel around me saw that I was a foreigner and followed me with their eyes.

Light armor aerospace is not the only sign of China's high-end manufacturing. With China's speed of innovation and world-leading manufacturing output, they will not only dwarf the United States, but also the entire free world."

The lower-class people cannot enjoy China's high-quality and low-cost new energy vehicles, but the commercial aerospace companies of the top wealthy people can purchase China's top technological products in large quantities.

This divided reality has caused dissatisfaction among the people.

It's no surprise that Bezos accepted the questioning.

This is just an excuse, but it is also a real problem.

There are more and more cracks showing in America's blockade, most of which are opening from the inside.

"Wright, nice to meet you."

The white man sitting opposite Chen Yuanguang had gray hair and obvious age spots on his face. The empty T-shirt on his body made him look particularly thin.

He passed through numerous security checks before he appeared in front of Chen Yuanguang.

At this time, Chen Yuanguang was in Yenching. A large number of meetings were held in Yenching recently, including the annual academician conference, lectures to the bigwigs, and meetings with Chris Cummins.

The space station project of Guangjia Aerospace has attracted widespread attention from the outside world. Before the project was even launched, a large number of contracts were offered to it. At a price of US$20 billion, these institutions did not even blink an eye.

This price is something that not only developed countries but even the vast majority of third world countries can afford if they grit their teeth.

Not to mention the EU, ASEAN, under the leadership of Lion City, also wants to buy a space station module from Guangjia Aerospace.

After the news came out, some Chinese netizens joked: "In the future, the United Nations should not be located in New York, but directly in the space station of Guangjia Aerospace. After all, every country has a base there. The great unity of the international community has been realized in the face of advanced productivity. What does it mean to be far ahead?"

However, the actual progress is not as good as expected, or to be more precise, far less than expected. There are many reasons for this, but the fundamental reason is that there is no one leading person in charge of the entire project.

Since Chen Yuanguang lived in Mianyang for a long time, the efficiency of remote control was very low, especially when it came to a lot of internal and external cooperation.

In addition, Chen Yuanguang's ambition is too big. He wants to build a space station that is very different from the past and technologically advanced at one time, which further increases the difficulty.

Therefore, Guangjia Aerospace urgently needs to find a suitable project leader from outside. Originally, they wanted to poach someone from the China Aerospace Research Institute. Later, the leader of the aerospace department came to find Chen Yuanguang in person, and the general meaning was:

"Stop digging. If you keep digging, we will be poached by Light Armor Aerospace. You have 8,000 people, and at least 3,000 of them were poached from the aerospace industry. We only have two or three people who can lead the construction of the space station project. We really can't let you poach them. Please let us go."

There is no way to attract people to the Light Armor Aerospace. If Light Armor Aerospace wants to dig with a hoe, the treatment and management model of the aerospace department will definitely not be able to retain people.

Chen Yuanguang didn't want to break up with his former boss, so he had to turn his attention overseas. With the introduction of an employee of Guangjia Aerospace, Chris Cummins became one of the targets.

He was one of the leaders of the construction phase of the International Space Station project and became a co-founder of Nanoracks after retiring from NASA.

Nanoracks is a space startup and one of the earliest companies to attempt to commercialize the space industry.

Just one year after their establishment, they built their first laboratory on the International Space Station. Their business covers remote sensing technology, deployment of microsatellites and cubic satellites, and transformation of space station airlocks and space experiment equipment.

NanoRacks has a complete commercial deep space research platform on the International Space Station.

Chris single-handedly leads Nanoracks' commercial space lab.

Simply put, it is someone with extensive experience in space projects, and such people are hard to find.

The only requirement Chris had for taking over was that he had to meet Chen Yuanguang first.

After hearing this, Chen Yuanguang felt that in order to recruit these high-end talents, it seemed that meeting him had become a standard requirement, and he had become a rare animal like the giant panda.

"Hi, Mr. Chris, I read about Nanoracks in a magazine when I was in school, and I was thinking how great it would be if I could have my own space station one day.

I didn’t expect that more than ten years later, I would actually have the opportunity to own my own space station.

And the chance to work with people I had seen in magazines when I was young.”

Chris grinned, his skinny face looked a little ugly, "Nanoracks is a failed project." "Why do you say that?

In my impression, Nanoracks should be a very successful commercial aerospace project." Chen Yuanguang asked curiously.

The reason why Light Armor Aerospace considered Chris to be a suitable candidate after internal evaluation was because Nanoracks' experience was in line with Light Armor Aerospace's requirements.

As we all know, the goal of Light Armor Spaceflight is space mining, and the space station will become a transit point for space mining.

Nanoracks is already the commercial space project most aligned with the goal of a space mining hub.

They once used the International Space Station to quickly and densely deploy small cube satellites around it, and once deployed 48 cube satellites at a time.

Space mining also requires the rapid deployment of satellites to capture the movements of small celestial bodies.

They also have working modules outside the space station, which is an even more rare and valuable experience. After the space station is launched into space in the future, Guangjia Aerospace will need to intensively deploy robots into outer space to collect data.

You must know that as a world-renowned company, Guangjia Aerospace has never lacked talents, and not everyone who wants to meet Chen Yuanguang will be allowed.

In the list of candidates for Guangjia Aerospace, there are many candidates from Da Mao who are more experienced than Chris.

It is precisely because Nanoracks has so many innovations in commercial aerospace that are similar to the needs of space mining that Chris has become the number one target candidate for Light Armor Aerospace.

Chris murmured, “In fact, I had the same idea as you back then, hoping to use the International Space Station to build a true space city.

The International Space Station is just our first step. We will have our own part on the International Space Station, expand this part into a complete module, and then allow this module to operate independently from the International Space Station.

Finally, take the time to slowly expand it into a huge space city.

This was my plan when I decided to team up with Jeffrey to start Nanoracks.

It's just that we failed, but you still have the possibility of success."

Chen Yuanguang was very interested after listening to it: "Why did it fail?

Is it because you find some insurmountable difficulty in such a plan?"

Chris said: “The reason we failed was that the shareholders behind us felt the risk was too great.

Because in order to proceed according to such a plan, not only do we have to invest the money we earn, but we also have to bring in new investors from outside.

Hundreds of billions of dollars was just the starting price, and the overall environment was not mature at the time.

Our business faced some competitors. NASA began to take on some experimental commissions personally, and Neon also built an experimental cabin.

The difficulties in reality caused our plan to be shelved and nothing happened.”

Chris seemed very melancholy: "In the current environment, if we want to start again, an investment of tens of billions of dollars is not enough. More importantly, the talent pool of American in the aerospace field is also shrinking rapidly.

It can only be maintained with the help of SpaceX, and there is very little fresh blood overall.

Perhaps only Light Armor Aerospace can realize my dream of building a space city."

Chen Yuanguang can understand it very well. He has studied for a doctorate at MIT and knows some people there. The top talents study finance and medicine, while Indians and Asians go to study aerospace. This is not empty talk.

NASA is unwilling to accept Chinese engineers, Indians are prone to causing big trouble, and the proportion of white engineers is shrinking rapidly. This is an almost unsolvable problem.

In the past, NASA had the energy to reach out to the community and carry out a series of public relations activities to encourage a large number of young people to join the space industry. Now NASA is only thinking about how to outsource orders to commercial aerospace companies.

"Mr. Cross, I believe you will see this happen in your lifetime.

Just based on your past resume, I am very satisfied with you.

The only question I have is that if you work for Light Armor Aerospace, you will face unprecedented difficulties when you return to America in the future. You may need to reconsider this."

Chris said calmly: "I thought about it the moment I stepped on the flight, and it was not a problem for me.

My wife has passed away, I am in my seventies and I don’t have many years left to live, and my children have immigrated to England and the Land of Kangaroos respectively. If I take this job, I don’t think I will ever return to America.”

"That's great, welcome to join Light Armor Aerospace.

It just so happens that we have the rare opportunity to meet in person, so we can discuss some technical issues at once.

Generally, a space station is sent into space one module at a time and then assembled.

This time, Guangjia Aerospace plans to use the unique carrying capacity of Pioneer 2 to send multiple modules into space at one time and allow them to be automatically assembled in orbit.

This results in higher requirements for our control systems and lower tolerance for errors.”

"That's right. Too many years have passed since we built the space station. We don't necessarily have to use the logic of the past now."

(End of this chapter)