When Luo Jia talked about the Grasshopper Rocket, some people suddenly had bitter smiles on their faces.

"Oh, don't mention it. I predicted that grasshoppers were just a joke, but in the end I became a joke. I was slapped in the face and was swollen."

"One, although Musk is arrogant, he really has a few tricks. From Grasshopper to Falcon Nine, he has created miracles again and again, slapping the whole world in the face."

"As one of the people who didn't like Musk at the beginning, grasshoppers are simply the black spots in my life."

Most of the people who speak of this kind are a little older and have participated in the large group mockery activities targeting Musk and the Grasshopper Rockets back then.

That happened in 2012. Musk made a little rocket named Grasshopper and claimed to change the world, but was ridiculed by scientists. No one was optimistic about him and thought he must be crazy.

Until October 2013, when the Grasshopper Rocket successfully launched its seventh launch and flew to an altitude of 744 meters, the scientific community still sarcasticated Musk.

However, time will eventually prove who is the real idiot. Just three years later, Musk's Falcon 9 successfully launched, shocking the whole world. Two years passed. On February 6, 2018, the Falcon Heavy Rocket, which is a great milestone in aviation history, was also successfully launched.

This time, the scientific community is no longer a problem of being slapped in the face, but has no face anymore!

The cost of Falcon Nine is 60 million US dollars, while the cost of North American Hercules Rockets and Delta Rockets, and European Aliana Rockets, are about 200 million US dollars, and the Falcons are only one-third of theirs.

What's more, the Falcon Rockets can still be recycled. On June 25, 2019, the Falcon Heavy Rocket successfully recycled a fairing worth $6 million, and the expensive first-stage rocket booster reduced huge costs for commercial launches.

Unfortunately, because recycling is too difficult, Musk gave up the second-stage rocket recycling plan. Otherwise, he could control the launch cost of the Falcon to a terrifying $10 million. You should know that the cost of the cheapest launch vehicle in the world, the China Long March series, was previously recognized as the cost of the China Long March series, would be close to $100 million, but Musk would be better. Twenty million US dollars to help you launch satellites, and he could still make millions.

Just look at China's development history. Low cost is really terrifying. According to the calculation that each launch carries 100 satellites, the launch cost of a single communication satellite is only 200,000 US dollars. It is precisely because of this confidence that Musk dares to be the first in the world and proposes a shocking star link plan.

Luo Jia smiled and said, "Musk is of course very strong, but as the saying goes, a hero and three helpers, the driving force behind him is Nasa, known as the Emperor of Science and Technology. Nasa has given Musk great help in both manpower and capital."

"Liu Cixin once said that weakness and ignorance are not obstacles to survival, arrogance is."

"No matter how many scientific research directions we have achieved success before, now in the face of large-scale space competitions, we are all absolute novices. We must lower our attitude and take every detail seriously."

Luo Jia let the brainstorming team understand the fact that North America is not a fool. They are confident that they dare to start the space race. Behind it is the countless scientific research accumulations that have been spent in decades and trillions of dollars.

When Apollo 11 successfully landed on the moon in July 1969, 90% of the people in the brainstorming group had not been born yet, and the gap was too big.

As for some people who suspect that the moon landing plan is fake and that Nasa has deceived the world, it can only be said that mentally retarded children have a lot of joy, and some even believe that the earth is flat, so there is no need to reason with those anti-intellectuals. The best way is to agree with their views and let them continue to be stupid.

The members of the Brain Storm Group had a feeling at this moment, and felt that Musk seemed to have deliberately dug a pit, a giant prehistoric pit, and then wanted to bury Xingchen Technology in it.

"Mr. Luo, this guy Musk is not cheating us!" Chao Anbang from the Materials Department said: "I just made a simple calculation. If you want to catch up with Nasa's technical accumulation over the past few decades, and if you participate in the space race, the entire company will have to jump on it and do it for twenty years."

"I also plan to do submersible research and create a Marine Ecology Ministry after the semiconductor development is over. If the space race starts, my desire to build a villa under Mariana is probably completely disappointed."

"After all, it is aerospace. Thousands of sub-projects are larger than the research and development scale of semiconductors. In addition to aerospace engines, we must also launch aviation engines. The electrical department can start pre-research on electric aviation engines and strive to complete them within two years. As for aerospace engines, the Ministry of Machinery and Chemistry needs to be the main force."

"If this happens, will the quantum department still be established? Judging from the current known conditions, the quantum direction is also a huge pit, and its scale is definitely not smaller than that of life sciences."

Ordinary people often have a misunderstanding that scientific research is a sudden emergence of one or two people, but they are not clear about it. In fact, the scientific research field also requires a lot of manpower to build it.

Taking the semiconductor industry as an example, although Xingchen Technology has created a complete semiconductor industry chain from upstream to downstream, so far, Huaxia Semiconductor has not completely replaced North America's dominance. The main reason is not the inadequate technology, but the lack of human resources.

Funny to say, China, which has always been known for its many people, cannot find enough engineers to support the semiconductor industry.

However, this is the fact that the talent gap of at least 400,000 semiconductor engineers has caused Chinese companies to have the idea of ​​their neighbors. They offer high salaries to go to Japan and South Korea to poach people. Even Xingchen Technology, a benchmark in the field of Chinese technology, has also poached some.

Talent is actually a kind of hegemony. According to data in 2018, more than 60,000 doctoral students in North America graduated that year, 80% of whom were foreign students.

Knowledge is the primary productive force. It is no exaggeration to say that the land of North America is full of the smartest brains in the world, and it is difficult to be underdeveloped.

What’s even more terrifying is that these more than 60,000 doctoral students did not return to their hometowns after graduation, and 80% of them remained in North America.

Judging from the current situation, if Xingchen Technology accepts Musk's challenge, the company will not think about developing agriculture and quantum in the next twenty years or even further. As for deep-sea exploration, it will be even more impossible to carry out interest activities.

Because they don't have enough staff.

...

North America, Washington, White House.

"Twenty years!" Musk said to the president with a smile: "If Xingchen Technology accepts my challenge, it will bring twenty years of breathing time to the entire North American scientific research community."

"They will be overwhelmed by their huge and complex space plans. We can quickly narrow the gap with them in the electrical field, optical field, chemistry field, and semiconductor field."

"The best way to deal with opponents of Star Technology is not to defeat them, but to find a way to entangle them and not let them go too fast."

After hearing Musk's explanation, the president smiled exaggeratedly, and the fat on his body trembled.

"I deserve to be a famous super genius. I knew that you must have a way to deal with the damn Xingchen Technology!" The president grabbed Musk's shoulder intimately and said excitedly: "God bless America! Your plan is really great. If Xingchen Technology falls into this endless scientific research competition, we can take the opportunity to overtake!"

"The only problem is, can we hold up Star Technology for so long by relying solely on the technology in the Nasa Reserve? I heard that those Chinese people are very hard-working. Before this Spring Festival, they had no holidays for two years because of the development of semiconductor plans."

"It's really unimaginable what kind of scene would it be if 220,000 engineers and scientists work twelve hours a day without any holidays or working day and night. The terrible Chinese people are like a group of machines."

After hearing this, Musk smiled and shook his head, "President, please forgive me, I must refute your point of view. What is terrible is not the Chinese, but a belief called ideal. Starting from Luo Jia, the founder of Star Technology, almost every one of them is an idealist."

"As for our technical reserves in the space field, you can feel at ease that the whole country will invest in space research and development, and a company will study space technology, which are completely different levels of existence."

"It's like a long marathon. We've run half a journey, but Xingchen Technology has just set off. In this case, even if we walk slowly, it's enough to keep the lead all the way to the finish line."

The prisoner's dilemma of technology chasers, Luo Jia once talked about this issue specifically. When the route is the same, other marathon players set out first, and later it is difficult for you to catch up with them, because while you are running, they are also running wildly.

Xingchen Technology needs to mobilize hundreds of thousands of engineers and scientists to pursue, while North America only has a small team of thousands of people, it is enough to maintain its leading edge.
Chapter completed!