Die on Mars

There are still thirty seconds before the first stage rocket breaks away.

Thirty seconds later, the two Raptor 3C engines of the Eagle spacecraft will run out of propellant and then separate from the payload bay of the upper stage. The next lander will enter the unpowered taxiing stage. Once it enters the unpowered taxiing stage , then the Eagle spacecraft will fly completely according to inertia, like a thrown stone, and the instructions issued by Kunlun Station will have no effect.

You shout "Fly! Fly!" at a free-falling stone. No matter how hard the stone tries to struggle, it will be powerless.

The timer on the computer screen ticked by the second.

The small green light in the upper right corner of the screen has turned red. It has not flashed for a long time. This means that the Kunlun Station has not received a signal for a long time. The last time the Eagle spacecraft reported its situation was two minutes ago. This means It's like when their children are drafted into the army and go to the battlefield. The two parents, Tang Yue and Lao Mao, stay at home and become anxious if they don't receive a letter from home for a month.

One hundred and eighty seconds after launch of the Eagle spacecraft.

There are still twenty seconds left before the first stage rocket breaks away.

If nothing else happens, the lander at this moment should be flying at a speed of 3,000 meters per second at an altitude of 280 kilometers from the surface of Mars.

The old cat stared at the predicted trajectory on the screen, the dotted line and the last short section.

The end of the dotted line is the orbital injection point.

The parking orbit injection point of the Eagle spacecraft is at apogee, which is the highest position from the ground in the entire orbit, with an altitude of 350 kilometers. Two Raptor 3C rockets will send the payload module into it at a speed slightly lower than the orbiting speed. At apogee, immediately after the first-stage rocket breaks away, the lander becomes an unpowered iron lump. This iron lump will fall from the highest point of 350 kilometers to the perigee of 150 kilometers. Just like a free fall, the gravitational potential energy is converted into kinetic energy. .

Then from the perigee at a height of 150 kilometers back to the apogee, like a roller coaster, the kinetic energy is converted into gravitational potential energy again.

This is the parking orbit of the lander, which is drawn as a large ellipse.

"Let the storm come more violently!" Tang Yue's shout came from the old cat's earphones. Within a few minutes, this idiot's mind had jumped from Long Yingtai's peripheral vision to Gorky's "Haiyan".

"I know you are anxious," the old cat said, "but please be normal when you are nervous."

"I am using the wisdom of my predecessors to soothe my excited heart. Why is this abnormal?"

"Then please recite the Purifying Mantra silently."

"Heart-purifying mantra? Heart-purifying mantra... Taishangtaixing, constantly adapting to changes! Exorcise evil and bind evil spirits, protect life and body! Wisdom is clear and peaceful, the mind is peaceful! The three souls are eternal, and there is no soul to lose!" Tang Yue opened his mouth and said one word He was chanting a mantra one sentence at a time, and he was inexplicably powerful. He was holding an antenna and wearing a bright light armor and yelling in the storm, like a villain from the devil's sect, "Urgent like a law!"

The old cat held its forehead silently. It didn't know that Tang Yue really knew how to recite this mantra, otherwise it would change its mind and ask him to recite the Diamond Sutra.

"Is there no news about Xiaoyingzi yet?"

"No." The old cat shook his head, "Why are you so nagging like a mother? You have to have confidence in the lander... Shouldn't parents trust their children? You have to believe that the Eagle spacecraft is an obedient and good boy. daughter."

"Good daughter?" Tang Yue was startled, "No, no, no, Xiao Yingzi is obviously a son."

"Why does it have to be a son?" asked the old cat.

"Of course it has to be a son!" Tang Yue said, "If it's a daughter, who would be willing to let her go out? Have you ever seen anyone let their daughter go to the battlefield?"

Lao Mao chatted casually with Tang Yue while staring at the screen.

According to common sense, there would be no problems with the Eagle spacecraft at this time. In the eyes of old cats, the biggest problem during launch was the storm, but they were very lucky. They happened to hit the low-pressure area of ​​the cyclone, and the wind speed dropped to every Below thirty meters per second, wind speeds of this level will not have any impact on the lander.

When the Eagle spacecraft lost contact with the Kunlun Station, the former had already risen to an altitude of 20 kilometers. The altitude of 20 kilometers on Mars is almost the same as a vacuum. The atmosphere is extremely thin and there is no activity at all.

In other words, it was a basically perfect launch with minimal external environmental impact.

There are still ten seconds left before the first stage rocket breaks away.

The computer has started counting down.

The green light in the upper right corner of the screen suddenly flashed. The old cat's eyes narrowed, his pupils shrank, and he shouted loudly: "Shut up, Tang Yue! Stop talking nonsense, adjust the antenna back one degree! Increase the positive elevation angle by fifteen degrees." !”

"receive!"

Kunlun Station suddenly caught a faint signal. Old Mao noticed it very keenly, and asked Tang Yue to fine-tune the direction of the antenna back.

The strength of the signal suddenly increased. The broken line on the computer screen that was close to the To a few KB, although this network speed is too slow for chatting and video, it is enough to report the parameters.

"Tang Yue, hold on!" Old Mao shouted.

Data transfer speeds were going up and down, from just a few bytes per second at lows to thousands of bytes at highs, slower than the oldest days of dial-up Internet access on earth, but the old cat was nervous and excited.

Kunlun Station and the Eagle spacecraft once again established a fragile communication channel. This was a fragile kite line more than two hundred kilometers long, swaying in a sandstorm of forty meters per second.

The countdown on the computer timer continues.

There are still five seconds before the first stage rocket will detach.

There are still zero seconds before the first stage rocket will break away!

The old cat was stunned.

zero? Why does it jump directly to zero after five? What about four, three, two and one?

Before the old cat could react, a warning suddenly popped up on the screen, and a huge red exclamation mark began to flash crazily—the preset flight trajectory did not match the actual parameters of the Eagle spacecraft!

Lao Mao saw the data sent back by the lander.

The first stage of the rocket has detached.

Altitude 285 kilometers.

Two hundred and eighty-five kilometers? The old cat's eyes widened. The first-stage rocket had been abandoned. How could the altitude of the lander be only 280 kilometers?

According to the preset flight procedure, when the first-stage rocket breaks away, the altitude of the Eagle spacecraft should be 350 kilometers!

The computer detected that the actual parameters reported by the Eagle spacecraft completely did not match the preset orbit, so it interrupted the countdown and started an alarm.

This is just like the arduous Battle of Stalingrad is finally over. The official sent a notice to your family, telling you that the battle is over. Your children should have returned victoriously, successfully evacuated the battlefield, and embarked on the train back home. , just wait for your son at home.

Just when you were sharpening your knives and preparing to welcome your son back to your hometown, a letter from your son arrived. He told you: "Dear Mom and Dad, I was captured by the German devils and will be arrested soon." Shot."

Let me rub it... Did you successfully evacuate the battlefield as promised? Did you agree to get on the train back home?

Lao Mao, the father, looked confused.