The video was a shot of the spacecraft in orbit, only a minute and fifty seconds long.
The video portrayed a semi-circular landing capsule separating from the Heart of Gold spacecraft, falling toward the thin Mars atmosphere, and eventually disappearing…
Just like Lu Zhou had predicted, the second the landing was successful, NASA announced the news on their official website and posted the Heart of Gold video on the Internet.
What happened next was nothing out of the ordinary.
In just ten minutes, this less than two minutes long video went viral, reaching number three on the YouTube trending page.
After watching the video, everyone in the conference room had gone silent.
After a while, Chen Yunhai broke the silence.
“We should discuss our countermeasures…”
“Nothing to discuss, I’ve said from that beginning that we should focus on doing our own project well.”
Lu Zhou closed his laptop and looked at Academician Yuan Huanmin. He then asked, “How long until the Moon Palace life capsule is ready?”
Academician Yuan paused for a second before replying, “It is already ready. The tests will take another week.”
“Then we’ll launch in two weeks’ time!” Lu Zhou shoved his laptop into his bag and stood up. He then said, “Let’s all get to work, meeting over!”
…
The success of the Heart of Gold spacecraft earned the United States a huge amount of respect from the international community. The entire country was celebrating.
The video posted by NASA on YouTube was being bombarded with comments from all over the world.
It was almost like The New York Times was taking revenge on the Moon Palace’s cooling system debacle. They deliberately posted a boxing glove with a star and stripes pattern in their news report, as if they were mocking China.
Even the Washington Post said that this was “a great step for mankind”.
Other than the American media outlets, other media outlets also reported this hot topic.
The BBC stood from a neutral standpoint, and it pointed out that there was no doubt that NASA had the upper hand in this space competition.
So far, it seemed like the Moon Palace program was no match for the Ares program.
Compared to the helium-3 resources on the Moon, the rich methane resources on Mars could be used as an energy source for liquid oxygen methane rockets.
It turned out that chemical propulsion technology was far from being bottlenecked. This could be seen from the BFS rocket. The colony on Mars would become a starting point for NASA to send other spacecraft to other planets.
The future of ion thruster propulsion systems was bright, but it seemed like chemical propulsion rockets were still putting up a fight.
Space-X announced a contract with YouTube to regularly post Mars colonists videos for the public to watch for free.
Elon Musk promised in an interview that all advertising revenue generated would be invested in space projects.
On the other hand, the White House and NASA released a message, asking the public to vote for the name of the Mars colony.
The public was quite enthusiastic at voting; even those who were uninterested in aerospace decided to put in their votes.
Within a day, more than 30 million people had voted online.
Finally, the White House announced that the first Martian colony would be called “New Virginia”.
This was where the British settlers first settled in America.
Naming the Martian colony after this was quite a meaningful choice.
NASA also announced the next step of the Ares program.
Before sending more migrants to Mars, the current colonists stationed on Mars would survey resources such as methane gas reserves and metal deposits and expand the scope of geological exploration activities to areas that were previously unreachable by remote-controlled Mars rovers. They would explore the Mars polar carbon dioxide reserves, assess the feasibility of repairing the Mars atmosphere, and most importantly, exploration of underground water.
So far, it seemed like the Americans had the victory secured.
Across the Pacific Ocean, the Lunar Orbit Committee was under a lot of pressure.
At the beginning of the space station program, there was a lot of controversy on whether to place the space station in lunar orbit or in Earth orbit. Now that the Ares program proved to be successful, the debates were getting louder.
However, Lu Zhou, the chief designer of the Lunar Orbit Committee, didn’t seem to care.
The launch for the Moon Palace life module was going to happen, regardless of the American’s success.
After the life module had been completely assembled, the Moon Palace, which contained the function module, node module, and experimental module, would be used as a complete lunar space station, floating in the “NRHO” orbit.
This was the final stage of the Moon Palace first phase…
…
White House.
President’s office.
The president had just returned from the congress. He sat in his office chair while reading through the meeting notes enthusiastically.
The expressions of the opposition MPs brought a smile to his face.
A week ago, the opposition MPs were attacking him for the excessive funding for the aerospace program, and very few people believed that he was right.
But the Ares program was proven to be successful!
They were winning the space race!
He was leading the Americans to a better future!
He signed his name on the document and remembered the congress member who told him to reduce funding. He couldn’t help but grin.
“What don’t these idiots understand? Sure, NASA is spending a lot of money, but they’re creating jobs and helping the economy, what are they complaining about…”
Roosevelt’s dam boosted American’s economy, aerospace was no different.
He shook his head and left the budget document aside. He then picked up a document regarding the California nuclear power plant project.
He was just about to read it when he heard a knock at the door.
He put down the document and said, “Come in.”
When he saw Director Carson appear at the door, the president’s face was full of smiles.
“Director Carson! It’s nice to see you, take a seat!”
Carson looked at the cheerful president and felt a little weird.
“Mr. President, it’s nice to see you too…”
The president leaned in his office chair and asked, “Do you have good news for me?”
“No… Not quite.” Director Carson gulped and said, “Our colonists are in a bit of trouble…”