What is it like to leave Earth?
The answer is few people know, because only a very small number of people in the world have ever flown 100 kilometers above sea level from the Carmen Line to reach space.
Most people don't understand why they left Earth — but the 1.2 billion netizens who open WeChat every day see the first outcome of human exploration of outer space: a picture of the Earth rolling round.
The material for the WeChat landing page is a photograph of the Earth called "Blue Marbles", taken on December 7, 1972, when Apollo 17 traveled 45,000 kilometers from the earth, when the spacecraft was facing away from the sun, and the astronauts took a clear picture of the earth.
In September 2017, the earth on the WeChat login page quietly changed its appearance and was replaced by a high-definition cloud map of the eastern hemisphere taken by "Fengyun No. 4", and the picture people saw changed from the African continent to the rivers and mountains of the Chinese land.
The Fengyun-4 satellite was developed by the Eighth Academy of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, and its delivery marks the renewal of the continental geostationary orbit meteorological satellite observation system, which is of great significance for ensuring the continuous, reliable and stable operation of the continental geostationary meteorological observation business and improving the international status and influence of the mainland's aerospace industry and meteorological undertakings.
Space exploration never ends.
Although the cloud map taken by "Fengyun No. 4" on the WeChat login page only shows four days, China's self-developed artificial satellites continue to make new breakthroughs. April 24 is the seventh China Space Day, we recorded the story of three civilian astronauts, in the era of large space aviation, their present and future, are the sea of stars.
"Tinder 1" successfully launched
On December 17, 2021, Beijing time, the "Huayi-1" rocket took off. The suborbital rocket, developed by Shaanxi Province's first commercial rocket company, is equipped with the Dexterity experimental satellite and the Tinder-1 space bioload device, which is equipped with mouse stem cells for scientific research.
A few days after the launch, Cheng Wei, the founder of the rocket faction, the company behind "Tinder One", joked in the circle of friends, "The first few days were hit by cells, and I will upgrade it later, and put hairy crabs, oysters, northern Shaanxi, Pippi shrimp ... All hit the sky. In this way, when manned spaceflight is carried out in the future, the sky can eat and drink well. ”
Biological payloads are currently the most promising and operable application areas for commercial spaceflight. According to the McKinsey Global Institute, more than 60% of the more than 3,000 experimental businesses currently completed on the International Space Station are in the biomedical field.
This field not only has a large number of experiments, but also achieves large-scale commercial application from basic research. International biopharmaceutical giants Merck, Eli Lilly, Quiet, AstraZeneca, etc. have all used space platforms for commercial research and development, and a number of start-up biological high-tech companies have also joined in, forming active industries in biochips (organoids), artificial organs (such as artificial corneas, artificial blood), protein research (antibodies, enzymes, crystals, etc.), immune cells, cancer treatment, disease models and other fields.
And that's just one of the directions of commercial space exploration.
In 2015, the policy of commercial spaceflight was liberalized. Document No. 60 of the State Council proposes to encourage private capital to participate in the construction of national civil space infrastructure. In the past five years, the number of active commercial space companies in China has exceeded 300.
They are eager to try and are preparing for the future era of big spaceflight.
Save money to do satellites,
Let more scientific research projects "go to heaven"
On the day of the opening of the policy, Yang Feng and several of his friends who paid attention to aerospace chatted for the first time. What they had been discussing, preparing, and planning to do, it was finally time.
Since Elon Musk Musk's SpaceX successfully launched the world's first privately funded rocket, the Falcon 1, in 2008, and Yang Feng's heart moved. When did China's SpaceX appear? What will it look like? What can we do?
These private, spontaneous discussions really began in 2011. At the time, Mr. Yang was running a software company he had founded a few years earlier, and his business was to provide support for ground tests for some units of state-owned aerospace. (Due to the secrecy nature of aerospace research, they are isolated from the Internet, so a large number of devices need to manually output data) But this service is in the aerospace field, it belongs to the corner. Yang Feng's wish is very simple: "I hope that my company is a company that can create value for society, and it is a large company." ”
So he and a few friends in the space circle began to form a group, and they would meet regularly to exchange their own views on the commercial space progress. Discussions often revolve around the question: If China opens up commercial spaceflight, what kind of company can it be? What should this company do?
The initial idea was to launch satellites on its own.
The world's first satellite lifted off in 1957, when the Soviet Union's Baikonur Space Center launched its first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, into space. But the satellite could do almost nothing, weighing 83.5 kilograms, and just maintaining its normal operation in space was at its limit of weight — and in the next few years, satellites launched by other countries, although different shapes and materials, had in common that they were heavy and expensive.
By 2014, the satellite designed by the private space company Planet Labs weighed only 4 kilograms, the main engine size was 10×10×30 centimeters, and it looked like the size of a loaf of bread. During the 2018 California fire, planet Labs operated a constellation of satellites that took advantage of the number to make higher-frequency observations of the fire area, helping to coordinate disaster relief.
I heard that Yang Feng and a few friends were going to do small satellites - at that time, they had not yet figured out what they could do after the satellite was launched over the sky - and soon researchers came to them, "If you want to do it, can you help our project to do experiments when the time comes?" ”
China's space resources are scarce, and there are a large number of scientists lined up to do experiments in space, but there is no chance. The company's later chief technology officer, Yang Feng's good friend Ren Weijia, worked at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and has participated in six spacecraft from Shenzhou 3 to Shenzhou 8, two space laboratories of Tiangong-1 and Tiangong-2, and the space station. Ren Weijia has seen a large number of projects shelved because they did not have the opportunity to go to heaven. They decided that their satellites could serve scientific research projects that the "national team" could not take care of for the time being.
In 2016, the Celestial Research Institute was officially established. In terms of naming, Yang Feng also played a little careful. "Research Institute" doesn't sound like a commercial company, which is a big help for a startup team. Not long after, Tianyi launched China's first satellite developed by a private enterprise, Xiaoxiang-1.
In order to save costs, they replaced military-grade materials with industrial-grade materials, such as applying car shelves to satellites. This road is not easy, because no one has done it at the beginning, how to ensure that there is no problem and can still send the satellite to the sky, Yang Feng and his team spent countless days and nights testing, iteration and upgrading.
Pete Klupar, a former NASA engineer, once lamented, "BlackBerrys are more functional than microsatellites and have better sensors and processors." "A big reason for reducing the cost of satellites over the past decade is the development of the consumer electronics industry. Some low-cost satellites will even use modified phone motherboards.
Tianyi did not use the modified mobile phone motherboard, but "tied" the mobile phone camera to the satellite.
"The "Earth" taken by the Celestial Satellite with a 100 million pixel camera"
"Aerospace-grade cameras are expensive, hundreds of thousands, and we don't think this thing is different from a mobile phone camera, which hardly costs money." Yang Feng said that two years ago, they just needed a camera to shoot the performance of satellite agencies on the satellite, which led to cooperation with Xiaomi.
In 2019, a camera of Xiaomi's mobile phone came to space through a satellite launched by the Tianyi Research Institute and photographed the earth with 100 million pixels, which became a good market promotion.
But why shoot the Earth with a hundred million pixels? Xiaomi wants to express the difference between mobile phone pixels from 90 million to 100 million, and Tianyi hopes that a wider range of consumer users will participate in defining commercial aerospace.
This is the same as computers and cameras: desktop computers and SLR cameras dominate in performance, but the beginning of the information age comes from a large number of cheap, popular, and lightweight personal terminal applications. Commercial small satellites, like fast-growing mobile phone technology, are suitable for a wider range of market needs, with lower costs and better performance.
Up to now, Tianyi Research Institute has provided short-term, low-cost small satellite development and data application solutions for dozens of scientific research institutes, universities and enterprises such as the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Aerospace Science and Technology Group, Tsinghua University, Xiamen University, etc., and the cost of a satellite can be compressed to 1 million to 3 million yuan.
The scientific research results completed by using the Celestial Satellite have twice appeared in the top international scientific journal Nature Magazine.
"Artistic representation of the Observation of the Crab Nebula by the Tsinghua Space Project "Aurora Project" appeared on the cover of Nature Astronomy Magazine"
In its six years of existence, The Celestial has launched 25 satellites and completed 14 space missions.
Yang Feng said that his heart was very flat. For him, working in the space sector has never been something that needs to be excited every day — "My ideal is to make satellites as convenient as electricity." The most difficult times are always in the future. ”
Another direction of the Celestial Institute is the remote sensing satellite with synthetic aperture radar. While the "eyes" of ordinary optical satellites are blocked by clouds, remote sensing satellites are not affected by weather and can acquire ground images in the event of disasters such as earthquakes, landslides, floods, and even wars.
In 2020, Tianyi launched the first domestic commercial synthetic aperture radar satellite, Hisi-1, filling the gap of China's commercial SAR remote sensing satellite. In February this year, Hisilk-1 took photos of the Russian-Ukrainian war zone and immediately reported the damage of the largest aircraft "An-225" large transport aircraft ever created by humans.
The launch is only the 51st step in the entire life cycle of the satellite - after ascending into space, it begins to serve people on the ground, and the mission of the satellite has just begun.
As of April 2022, the Hisilk-1 satellite has been in orbit for more than 16 months, obtained tens of thousands of images, participated in national missions many times, and obtained the first satellite images after the disaster for the National Disaster Reduction Center of the Ministry of Emergency Management, the Land Satellite Remote Sensing Application Center of the Ministry of Natural Resources, including the United Nations and other relevant agencies. Including during the heavy rainstorm in Shanxi in 2021, the Hisilk-1 satellite completed the emergency service response process within 6 hours and obtained the first satellite images after the disaster in Qi county and Qingxu County, Shanxi; during the 2022 Tonga submarine volcanic earthquake, the Haisi-1 satellite also fully demonstrated the sar satellite's all-day and all-weather powerful ground imaging capabilities, and emergency photographed images after the Tonga volcanic disaster.
Let rockets launch as often as flights
"Wally Funk goes into space on the Blue Origin spacecraft and returns safely"
On July 20, 2021, Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, successfully entered space and returned safely aboard the Blue Origin spacecraft of his space exploration company.
There were four people on board, in addition to Bezos and his brother Mark Bezos, and Wally Funk, an 82-year-old former astronaut trainee who was invited to board as an "honorary passenger" who trained as an astronaut in the 1960s but was never able to enter space because of the U.S. government, military, and NASA reservations about women becoming astronauts at the time. None of the women she trained with ended up in space.
There is also a paying passenger. Dutch student Oliver Deman, whose father is the founder and CEO of a private equity firm, Blue Origin did not disclose the price of the spaceship ticket. And this ticket also means that the real "space tourism" has emerged.
On that day, Cheng Wei, the founder of the Rocket Sect, and Wu Ji, chairman of the Chinese Space Science Society, and Liu Baiqi, founder of Galaxy Power, made a live broadcast to talk about Bezos's launch. Cheng Wei said that at the moment when Bezos opened the hatch and came out, "I really felt that we had witnessed history." ”
"If the 82-year-old grandmother can go, we can too." Cheng Wei said.
For the matter of going to space, Cheng Wei has had a strange sense of belief since he was a child, and he feels that he can be an astronaut in the dark.
The difference with many people who have had this vague idea is that Cheng Wei is really moving in this direction.
"Lego Mars Model in rocket pie office"
Before entering the aviation field, Cheng Wei was a complete layman. During the period of studying abroad, Cheng Wei and a friend co-founded a game company to do online game private servers. The company later transformed into a game agency, the most famous of which was Crossfire.
At some point, he decided to sell the company and get his first pot of gold. Cheng Wei began to be an investor again. Cheng Wei admitted that he may not be a good investor, but for him at that stage, investing can not only see more things, but also find a new direction in life. It was also during that time that he gained an in-depth understanding of energy, biomedicine and other fields, and the space dream of his youth began to grow again.
For this dream, he began to learn to fly, dive, and began to challenge Everest. He found that age was not a limit to becoming an astronaut. They generally undergo long periods of training and are often challenged from experienced pilots. "So I had a chance."
When you ask him, every time you dive deeper into the sea and climb to a higher mountain, do you feel closer to space? He said that every time he explores a new corner of the earth, his curiosity about space deepens. "Because I still don't know what it's like to be in space."
In English, "Rocket science" can be used to describe a very complex and difficult thing. This is in line with real rocket development – it is a huge systems project, involving structures, power electronics, precision manufacturing, energy and chemicals and other fields.
Around the world, there are fewer than a dozen countries that can actually launch rockets, let alone commercial companies. But Cheng Wei intends to challenge this task.
Since building rockets is a bigger and more difficult thing to invest, Cheng Wei did not enter the space field at the first time of policy opening. After observing the capital injection and development of some companies in the early stage, he decided to really start his own rocket company.
At the beginning of the establishment of the Rocket School, Cheng Wei found Academician Zhuang Fengyuan, a Taidou of China Space Life Sciences, as the co-founder. The company's launch vehicle research and development team is all from the Astronaut Institute. Different from the traditional aerospace industry to build rockets first, and then consider what to bring to the sky (payload) of the idea, the private rocket faction from the beginning from the life science research needs, "to define the load by demand."
"Aerospace commercialization is not a job that cannot be done, such as screws are not tightened, but every piece needs to be improved, every cost needs to be reduced, and reliability needs to be guaranteed." What we want to break is a system, a complete solution. ”
Cheng Wei said that the mission of the rocket faction is to enable the rockets with biological payloads to achieve "flightization" and launch rockets into the air on a daily basis like airplanes.
In 2022, the rocket faction plans to complete more than six space test launch missions, and in 2023, the rocket faction plans to launch the first domestic star-arrow integrated liquid oxygen methane rocket "Darwin II".
"The pain now is nothing,
To stand higher and see more."
It is said that when Blue Arrow Aerospace was first established in 2015, founder Zhang Changwu went to meet investors and was asked the 3 questions most - can the rocket be built? The country let not let the launch? Can the launch site be used?
Blue Arrow Aerospace is one of the earliest companies established after the country opened up private aerospace, and it is also the first civilian carrier rocket enterprise in China to obtain all access qualifications. By the time Blue Arrow Aerospace finally obtained its confidentiality qualification and could apply for a rocket launch permit, the company had been established for the third year.
In October 2018, "Suzaku-1" flew for the first time, flew normally after launch, worked normally in the first and second stages, and separated the fairing normally, but the third level was abnormal, and the satellite carried could not enter orbit.
Failure and resistance are commonplace. At the beginning of the rise of the industry, the model name, funding source, and competent unit in an application material were still designed for the national system. To start a business from scratch in such a situation, to subvert a traditional industry, every company and the people involved in it have exerted their full strength.
Sometimes, difficulties come in the form of trivialities. When it first moved back to Changsha from Beijing, Tianyi Institute brought in a team from Beijing who was more familiar with the structure of the laboratory to renovate the office building , where the last tenant was said to be Yu Ni Fang. Companies that intend to build satellites have settled down. However, the climate in the south was humid, and the construction team from Beijing was completely unsuitable, and the construction period was extended by more than half a month.
When watching the variety show "Talk Show Conference", there was a passage from an English teacher of a former education and training institution that made Yang Feng resonate very much. "It's hard to meet someone who has no career, no money, and no time." Since starting a business as a satellite, Yang Feng has often been too busy to spend time with his family. Every time he feels anxious and painful, he thinks about what Musk encountered in the past, "The pain now is nothing." ”
Although there is no clear timetable for the launch of Suzaku-2, Zhang Changwu is confident. In an interview with the media last year, he made a bold statement: "It should be said that in the development of world space in the next two years, a very heavy launch is the launch of Suzaku-2."
Not long ago, Tianyi's second SAR satellite "Chaohu No. 1" also went to the sky, which marked that Tianyi took the lead in realizing the mass production networking and commercial operation of domestic SAR satellites in China.
"Many people ask me why your laboratories and offices are still so simple in such a tall industry as satellites." Yang Feng discussed with fans in the recent video number the question of "whether it is important to start a business or face is important", although Yang Feng did not give a clear answer, but as the satellites of Tianyi went to the sky one by one, technology has made breakthroughs again and again, and the answer is obvious -
The road is long and long, and every penny of commercial astronauts is spent on the blade. "It's all spent on satellites."
For commercial astronauts, the charm of spaceflight is self-evident. Compared with the old astronauts who have worked all their lives to see the space station online once, they will reap what they have paid for more than once in the future: standing higher and seeing more.