<h4>Chapter 15: Sol Two, The Eagle That Lets Its Hair Down</h4>
Trantor: CKtalon Editor: CKtalon
Tang Yue sat down panting. He leaned against the airlock door and looked at the Eaglender a hundred meters away. Above the white fairing was a painted Eagle that looked domineering.
The Eaglender was actually a huge object, more than four stories tall. It was supported by four thick hydraulic legs, and the descent rocket had four embedded convergent-divergent nozzles. Duringnding, these four nozzles would spew out high-temperaturepressed gases at thousands of meters a second, providing a lift of 120 tonnes. Apart from the four main nozzles, there were four smaller stabilizers to maintain thender’s attitude.
The process of making the Eaglend safely was a tough problem. In the past, humanity had never nned for such a huge gizmo to re-enter the atmosphere—apart from the space shuttles. However, space shuttles didn’t need tond vertically. Typically, a shuttle’s re-entry module was two to three meters tall. It could hold a few people with very little weight capacity. Its structure was strong and would have its speed reduced with parachutes.
However, the Eagle couldn’t do so. It was because its weight and size were just excessive. Furthermore, Mars’s atmosphere was overly thin. At ten kilometers altitude, Mars’s atmospheric density was 0.0065 kilograms/m3. On Earth, the density at that height was 0.413 kilograms/m3, a difference of nearly 63 times.
Under such circumstances, there was no way for a parachute to provide an effective deceleration. It waspletely incapable of applying drag on such a massive object. When the Eagle entered the atmosphere, its speed would be more than ten times the speed of sound. It would shriek across the sky and crash into smithereens on Mars.
This conundrum had stumped humanity for quite a while, with many suggested ns rejected.
Finally, the legendary Caltech’s JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) stepped forward and took the honors of solving this problem!
A bunch of JPL eggheads—the best on Earth—secluded themselves in their rooms, eating ramen for half a year while spotting disheveled hair and slippers, expending half a kilogram of waste paper before finally producing a solution. They decided tobine a parachute and a retro-rocket propulsion system to decelerate, and created all sorts of redundancies for thender.
This group of people designed thender with a lifting body. It waspletely different from the traditional conical spaceships. It didn’t use a ballistic for entry into the atmosphere but instead engaged in gliding through the atmosphere. It glided a long distance to gradually reduce its speed.
Thender would enter the Martian atmosphere at an altitude of about 120 kilometers. At that point, its speed would reach 21,000 km/h. 90 secondster, it would activate the Intable Decelerator in its belly to reduce its speed. This Intable Decelerator was a massive air cushion. The Eagle would sit on this huge cushion as it descended. One could imagine an Arabian flying carpet.
The Intable Decelerator did the first stage of the deceleration. It could reduce the speed to about 2,000 km/h. At this point, the second stage would begin by first jettisoning the Intable Decelerator, and at the same time, opening up a massive canopy, with a thirty-meter diameter, that acted as a parachute.
The parachute would reduce the Eagle’s speed to 300 km/h. At this point, its altitude would be several hundred meters high. The retro-rocket engines would activate and thender would slowlynd in a vertical state.
Finally, the legs would be hydraulically controlled.
Once it had safelynded on its feet, the mission would be a sess!
The Eagle before Tang Yue was the final design. It looked like a spacecraft that stood erect on the ground, but it didn’t have the huge wings of a spacecraft. It looked more like a round, sleek mantou.
The white part of the Eagle, that Tang Yue was looking at, was the back. The other side—the belly—was, in fact, ck. It was covered with heat protection tiles. When entering the atmosphere, the Eagle had its belly facing down as it flew, as though it was letting its hair down.
Tang Yue looked at the indicator screen on his wrist. “The temperature is –29°C. Why is it so hot?”
“Why don’t you say that again without the Radiant Armor?” Tomcat’s voice sounded in his earpiece.
“If I were Martian, I’d definitely find this temperature scorching hot.” Tang Yue even used his hand to fan himself, even though he couldn’t feel a thing with his helmet on. “I wish I could have some ice-cream on such a hot summer afternoon... Ice-cream frozen by Mars’s sandstone and perchlorate salts, infused with carbon dioxide. Ah~ Taking a bite just reminds me of my childhood.”
“What nonsense are you spouting?”
“I’m reminiscing about my childhood on Mars,” Tang Yue said as he began to hum a tune. It was the tune to Lo Ta-yu’s Childhood. “On the rocks above the meteorite crater, the cockroaches chirp for the summer. By the side of the desert is a valley, a spacecraft parked on it...”
“Why would there be cockroaches on Mars?” Tomcat was stunned.
“Mutated cockroaches,” Tang Yue replied. “Haven’t you watched Terra Formars? They are mutated cockroaches.”
“... Have you set up all the sr panels?”
“Yes.”
Tang Yue spent two hours moving the sr panels out, one by one. Finally, he unfolded them in front of the Kunlun Station. He needed to do this chore twice a day.
With great difficulty, Tang Yue got to his feet and pushed his cart, like a Martian farmhand.
Tomcat was inside the Hab arranging the materials, as it slowly circled around the Hab’s hall. Categorizing things was quite a troublesome task. Since Tang Yue had expressed his wish to split things equally, Tomcat couldn’t be biased. An adult needed 80 grams of protein, 3,500 milligrams of sodium, 3,000 milligrams of potassium, 1,000 milligrams of calcium, as well as other vitamins. To ensure a nutritional bnce, Tomcat had no choice but to do detailed research.
Even though Tang Yue had requested it to be split evenly, Tomcat couldn’t take the brute force approach of splitting them equally based on mass. Mai Dong and Tang Yue’s physique and sex, as well as the work they did, was different. Therefore, it split the food based on energy expenditure.
Tang Yue pushed his cart and slowly stopped beneath the Eagle.
Thender’snding legs were thicker than Tang Yue’s arms. Each leg had a footpad with a diameter of half a meter attached to it that was used to reduce the pressure. A weight of more than a hundred tonnes pressed down on these four legs as it stood erect and very stable.
Tang Yue used a long-handled rake to scrape the rocks around thender. The Eagle hadnded on solid ground, and beneath it was hard rock. Despite a thinyer of soil on its surface, it remained very level. It was like a naturalnding andunching spot.
Tang Yue circled around the Eagle slowly and was looking up at thender when a strange thought came to him.
“Tomcat, do you think we can sit on this thing to go up?”
It wasn’t that Tang Yue had never thought of following thender up, but this n had been rejected by him and Tomcat from the beginning.
“You will only die faster that way,” Tomcat said indifferently. “The space station’s holding capacity is barely enough for Miss Mai Dong alone. If you were added to the mix, the space station would crash in two years.”
“Isn’t Orion II still there?”
“Orion II is there,” Tomcat asked, “but so what?”
“Can’t we board Orion II and return?” Tang Yue asked. “I wish to see with my own eyes if Earth has really vanished or not.”
“No problem. You can definitely return.” Tomcat was very frank. “But there will be no return. No one will guide you or correct your trajectory. You might not even reach Earth’s original trajectory. And even if you do, without Earth’s gravity to capture you, you would only berge-sized garbage in empty space... Do you still wish to return?”
“Forget what I just said.”