In the primary school Chinese textbook, there was a text called "Great Wall Brick", and there was a very famous rumor in the text. Say a foreign astronaut who said that when he was in the sky, he could only use his naked eye to identify two projects, one of which was a levee surrounding the sea, and the other was the Great Wall of the mainland.
This rumor was first born in 1937, when an American writer named Fang Long first mentioned it in his book The Story of the Earth. Because this book is too popular, the story of "seeing China's Great Wall in space" has also convinced many people and has been passed down for decades.
The problem is that many people overlook the problem that no one went into space in 1937, and yuri Gagarin of the Soviet Union had to wait until 1961.
Regarding this rumor, foreign astronauts have debunked it, but they have not paid much attention to it at home. It was not until 2003 that this matter attracted the attention of the vast number of people. At that time, Yang Liwei made it clear after successfully returning to Earth from space:
"The view of the earth is very beautiful, but I didn't see our Great Wall."
As the saying goes, "On paper, I finally feel shallow, and I never know that this matter must be done." "It is precisely because we personally went to space and walked around that this rumor was completely dispelled.
In fact, when Yang Liwei was in space, he also encountered a problem that was difficult for ordinary people to understand. In the space capsule where he was alone, there was a sudden "knock on the door" of "bang bang bang"...
See you tomorrow!
Yang Liwei is a native of Liaoning and was born in June 1965. It was an era of worshipping heroes and longing for victory, and Yang Liwei was naturally no exception. In 1983, he fulfilled his childhood dream of becoming a glorious pilot.
During his time in the army, he drove the "Strong 5" and the "J-6", flew safely for 1350 hours, and became a first-class pilot.
In 1995, the state began to select reserve pilots, and after a rigorous selection, Yang Liwei became one of the first members of the Chinese People's Liberation Army Astronaut Brigade, which had only 14 people at the time.
These 14 people can be said to be the best pilots in the mainland, and they need to carry out nearly 100 training subjects in 5 years. During this period, Yang Liwei's comprehensive results at graduation ranked first among 14 people.
Of course, the other 13 astronauts also have strong personal abilities, with a training elimination rate of 0 at the end of the course, and all of them have obtained the qualification of third-level astronauts. The elimination rate of the United States and Russia is 50%.
After layers of rigorous selection, only 3 of the 14 people entered the first flight echelon, and the final task was only the first of the three people.
On October 14, 2003, at a meeting held at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, Yang Liwei was confirmed as the first astronaut, and the backup astronauts were Zhai Zhigang and Nie Haisheng.
The expected launch time of the "Shenzhou No. 5" spacecraft is 9 o'clock in the morning of October 15, and according to the regulations, Yang Liwei must enter the cabin at 6:15.
At 6:00 a.m. on the 15th, only 4 people were left on the launch platform. They are Yang Liwei, an engineer who is going to close the hatch, a doctor, and an instructor. Everyone stood silently on it, and no one made a sound except the sound of the tower.
In the end, it was the engineer who broke the silence, and he pretended to say to Yang Liwei with ease: "Do you know what the engineer who was responsible for giving Gagarin the door is doing now?" ”
Gagarin
"Well, I really don't know."
"He is now the director of the Russian Aerospace Museum."
Before Yang Liwei could express his thoughts, he received the order to enter the cabin. Ten minutes later, he completed all the procedures for receiving the ship, and then handed the confirmation slip to the engineer who had been by his side.
Before closing the hatch, the engineer suddenly greeted him: "Li Wei, see you tomorrow!" ”
"Curator, we'll see you tomorrow."
Space day trip
“10、9、8、7、6、5……”
Everyone in the command hall was nervously waiting for the time to take off, and Yang Liwei on the screen suddenly gave everyone a standard military salute. Suddenly there was a thunderous applause in the command hall.
Immediately after, in a huge roar, the "Shenzhou V" took off.
On the eve of the launch of the spaceship, someone once asked Yang Liwei if he had ever thought about how he would feel after he actually took the spaceship to the sky. Yang Liwei smiled at the time and said that after he went up, he might be more relaxed than usual training.
Now that it was really up, the muscles in Yang Liwei's body subconsciously tensed up. After all, he was the first astronaut in China to go to space, and how things would develop next was not something he could grasp.
When the spacecraft began to accelerate, Yang Liwei noticed that the body load was gradually increasing, but it was still smaller than the training he had received on land, and he also subconsciously relaxed.
However, when the rocket reached an altitude of 3 or 40 kilometers, it suddenly resonated with the spacecraft. The resonance lasted for 26 seconds, coupled with the load of 6G, Yang Liwei, who had never been trained in this area, felt that "all his internal organs seemed to be broken", and at that moment he even felt that he was "going to sacrifice".
After 26 seconds, Yang Liwei gritted his teeth and passed this "test" from space, and after the resonance was over, he felt more relaxed and comfortable than ever.
The rocket continued to fly beyond the atmosphere, faster and faster, eventually sending the visitor from China into space.
After arriving in space, Yang Liwei carefully looked at the beautiful blue and white planet below, and intuitively felt the grandeur of the earth and the smallness of human beings. Similarly, compared to the universe, the earth is no different from a grain of dust.
Looking at the beautiful scene outside, Yang Liwei picked up a space pen, wrote a line in the work log, and then showed it to people on Earth on the camera in the cabin. Only to see that it reads:
"For the sake of human peace and progress, Chinese have come to space."
At that time, the spacecraft was flying around the earth at a speed of 90 minutes, and according to the plan, the spacecraft would fly 14 times, and the trajectory of the first 13 circles would not be repeated, and the last circle would repeat the trajectory of the first circle.
Strange flashes
During the flight, there were two things that Yang Liwei could not let go of for a long time. The first thing is the strange flash in space.
At that time, the spacecraft had just flown over the measurement and control area into the dark night (shadow area). Originally, Yang Liwei was sitting upright in a chair, and suddenly an extremely violent light suddenly appeared outside the window, and at that moment Yang Liwei even felt that he was about to lose his sight.
This bright light only lasted for a very short time, after which Yang Liwei quickly came to the window to look out, and the result was that there was nothing in the dark, and the data on the dashboard also showed that everything was normal for the spacecraft.
When the spacecraft entered the night for the second time, Yang Liwei deliberately came to the porthole early, hoping to thoroughly understand the source of the strange light. As a result, it waited until daylight, and the strange light did not reappear.
Yang Liwei firmly believes that what he just saw is definitely not an illusion, but something that has really happened. Before entering the night for the third time, he waited again by the porthole. Emperor Tian did not live up to his heart, this time, he clearly saw that a pillar of light flashed in the place close to the ground, and the space was instantly illuminated.
Less than a second later, Yang Liwei's eyes were once again shrouded in darkness.
Although it was only for a short moment, Yang Liwei still understood the source of the strange light: "Oh, it turned out to be lightning." ”
After knowing the source of the strange bright light, Yang Liwei's originally tense heart finally let go, and enjoyed the lightning wonders that appeared from time to time outside through the porthole...
When "aliens" come knocking
If the strange light brought by lightning was a false alarm, another thing that happened in the sky really confused Yang Liwei for a long time.
There is still a certain suspense in this matter, at that time, there was only one pilot Yang Liwei in the space capsule, and there were no manned aerial vehicles from other countries around. But in this case, Yang Liwei suddenly heard a series of knocking sounds.
In Yang Liwei's own words, the situation at that time was like this:
"This voice appears suddenly, not all the time, but in bursts, day or night, irregularly, not sure when it will ring a few times. Neither the sound coming in from outside nor the sound inside the spaceship, as if someone was knocking on the hull of the spaceship outside.
It's hard to describe it accurately, not ding-dong, not dangling, but more like banging on an iron barrel with a wooden hammer, banging... Boom..."
In broad daylight, the lone capsule sounded from time to time, just like someone knocking on the door outside. Yang Liwei, who never thought he would encounter such a thing, couldn't help but subconsciously tense up. He was afraid that something was wrong, and carefully checked everything in the cabin, and found that everything was normal.
If it's not an internal problem, it's an external problem. After that, as soon as there was such a strange knocking sound in the cabin, Yang Liwei would rush to the porthole while listening and looking out, trying to figure out the origin of this strange sound, but he couldn't figure it out for a long time.
Because everything was normal on the spacecraft, Yang Liwei did not report this matter directly to the ground, but waited until he returned to Earth.
guess
At about 6 o'clock on October 15, the spacecraft began to return. The next stage for the spacecraft is the most dangerous and critical stage: "at a speed of 8 kilometers per second, through the 'black barrier area'". During this time, the spacecraft has to withstand temperatures of up to several thousand degrees Celsius.
When the spacecraft flew to a distance of 100 kilometers from the ground, the spacecraft and the atmosphere rubbed down to produce high temperatures, directly turning into a "big fireball".
After a few minutes, the spacecraft successfully passed through the "black barrier area" and landed smoothly at 6:23 a.m. in the hinterland of the Inner Mongolia Siziwang banner Amugulang grassland. Coincidentally, at this moment, the flag is also being raised at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, thousands of miles away.
After returning, the researchers were very interested in the strange knocking on the door that Yang Liwei heard, and there was also a lot of speculation. They thought of various ways to simulate that sound, and as a result, Yang Liwei always said that it was not like it, he listened to it for more than a year, and as a result, he still did not hear the same strange sound as at that time.
Later, astronauts who flew missions in 2005 and 2008 also heard this "strange knocking on the door".
There was a "knock at the door" in space, and the incident also aroused the strong interest of foreign counterparts. For example, a space engineering expert in Singapore speculated:
"Space is absolutely quiet, and if it's a knock, something could have hit the spacecraft the astronaut was riding on, and of course, that's just speculation."
Another Singaporean expert said:
"The sound may be caused by the spacecraft's expansion and contraction, especially considering that the spacecraft's external temperature changes greatly as it flies in orbit."
Although there was no reasonable explanation for this at the time, our astronauts did not have any fear of it. After all, there is precedent for unexplained sounds in space.
For example, during a test flight around the moon in the United States in 1969, astronauts heard a strange sound, which americans believed should be interference with some kind of radio signal.
The astronauts on the Apollo spacecraft also heard strange knocking sounds similar to those heard by Yang Liwei, which he named "the knocking of aliens".
So, where did the voice that Yang Liwei heard come from?
On the morning of December 1, 2016, 13 years after the launch of Shenzhou V, Yang Liwei, who was already deputy director of the China Manned Space Engineering Office, answered the strange sound he had heard when he participated in a young pioneer theme education activity in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province:
"What I understand, there's more or less sound on every flight, probably because our spacecraft is stressed when it's on the ground. Space is a vacuum-free environment, and it is possible that there will be some changes in the structure that will produce some sounds.
Many of our objects are sealed with atmospheric pressure before going to heaven, and as we fly in space, there may be some sound that is decompressed, so we need to identify them, and I think these are normal things. ”
This speculation was put forward by Liu Hong, the chief designer of "Yuegong No. 1", which conducted experiments for three months from October 2013 to January 2014. During this time, the researchers in the cabin heard a strange "tapping sound". After a long time of investigation, it was found that it was the sound of the slight deformation of the bulkhead material in the cabin when the pressure in the cabin changed.
Later, when Liu Hong communicated with her Russian counterparts, she learned that the Soviet Union also encountered this problem when doing experiments in the 1980s, and finally found that it was the sound of deformation caused by pressure.
After hearing the voice, Yang Liwei chose to treat it calmly, without panic, showing the strong psychological quality of Chinese astronauts, and the facts also proved the reliability of mainland space technology. It is precisely because of Yang Liwei and other astronauts with strong abilities, and scientific research workers who have dedicated their lives to the motherland's aerospace industry, that the mainland's aerospace industry can also have today's glory.