Scholar's Advanced Technological System
chapter-771

Translator: Henyee Translations  Editor: Henyee Translations

Starlight roared through the clear skies and landed vertically on the tarmac.

The two astronauts walking out of the spacecraft were surrounded by the ground crew. The astronauts waved their hands at the reporters in the distance and boarded their car. They were heading toward the medical office for a simple examination.

The 72-hour flight mission was successful!

The test flight was completed perfectly.

This showed that Lu Zhou’s conclusion was correct.

Even though there was some deviation from Lu Zhou’s theoretical data, Starlight’s working medium fluid usage was significantly reduced.

Especially for the denser sections of the atmosphere.

Not just that, but because the speed of the spacecraft decreased by a significant amount, the heat output of Starlight also decreased. This reduced the maintenance cost.

Starlight would officially serve at the Jinling aerospace launch site and jointly undertake the lunar transfer orbit mission with Skyglow.

On the other hand, the second day after Starlight completed its 72-hour test flight, Skyglow, which completed its lunar orbit mission, landed on the Jinling launch site.

The Moon Palace core module had already been in orbit for two weeks. During this two-week observation period, the core module was found to be operating normally.

Academician Yuan Huanmin, who was in the command tower, looked at Nie Yun and Nie Yan walk out of Skyglow, and he sighed in relief.

Over the past three days, he and several of his students, as well as engineers and technicians of the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation, spent 24 hours a day at the Jinling launch site.

Now that Moon Palace was finally on track, they could take a break.

Far across the Pacific Ocean, the Americans were also celebrating.

Space-X’s BFS spacecraft successfully left the Earth-Moon system, carrying three astronauts tens of millions of kilometers away.

This was the first time that humans left the Earth-Moon system.

This was also the first time humanity had sent colonists to another planet.

Even though China was the first to put a space station in lunar orbit, NASA had proven its dominance in far-distance aerospace navigation. NASA expressed in an interview that the Ares program funding would not interfere with the Lunar Gateway funding.

Not just that, but NASA’s “Lunar Gateway” space station, which was scheduled to begin in 2022, was now scheduled to the second half of 2021. Space-X’s Dragon spacecraft was going to send the “Lunar Gateway” core module to lunar orbit.

If the Americans could successfully place a space station in lunar orbit, then they would have undoubtedly won the space race.

The United States seemed to be at the forefront of human exploration again.

At least that was what the world thought…

The Ares program and the Moon Palace project had both been going full force ahead, and scientists and related aerospace practitioners had been trying their hardest to defeat the other.

It seemed like there were new aerospace technologies born every day.

The contest between the two super countries created a futuristic illusion.

In fact, it might not entirely be an illusion.

Because of the space race, large amounts of funds had gone into the aerospace research field. Major universities had created majors in outer space exploration and resource development. Many aerospace research projects also received funding…

Because of the funding flowing into aerospace technology, other technology fields were also growing at an unimaginable rate.

The most obvious was the medical industry.

Just a week after the BFS Heart of Gold spacecraft launched, the Washington Post released another breaking news.

Significant progress had been made in dormancy cabin technology. Johnson & Johnson and Blue Origin had successfully thawed and awakened the monkeys that had been frozen for 67 days!

The international community responded to the news.

Even though the monkeys’ body tissues suffered various degrees of damage and had signs of dementia after waking up, this “resurrection” still shocked the clinical and biology world!

Leading the project was Professor Grange of Harvard University. When Nature ran a highlight of his article, he even described his research as the “same level of a breakthrough as controllable fusion technology”.

In fact, even though biological freezing and dormancy sounded like science fiction, examples could be seen in nature.

Take the Siberian Salamandridae as an example. The Salamandridae living in Sakha would climb into the cracks of gelisol, where they would stay frozen for a long time.

The longest recorded time spent frozen was 90 years.

Theoretically, if living animals could survive the harsh environment of being frozen and stay dormant, they could effectively “time travel” into the future. Insects in many extreme environments had more or less similar capabilities.

The problem was how to achieve this in mammals!

When the scientists researched the technology, they found that when freezing and resuscitating animal cells, there was a dangerous temperature zone, which was between 0 to -60C.

Long periods of time spent in this temperature range could lead to the permanent death of the organism.

Avoiding the dangerous temperature zone and safely reaching -120C was the main part of the technology.

Professor Grange, who worked at Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceuticals, used a frozen slow-release agent to fix this problem. After anesthetizing the organism, the organism would then be soaked with a special slow-release agent, after which the freezing process would begin.

So far, this technology had been sponsored by the Alcor Life Extension Foundation. Many multi-billionaire rich men and the Arabic royal family had expressed their interest in this technology.

Most sponsors had stated in interviews that they hoped that the technology could allow them to time travel into the distant future.

In their opinion, in the distant future, perhaps human society would have found a way to cure almost all diseases and achieved immortality.

A member of the Arabic royal family said that he would consider dividing his wealth into seven pieces before going dormant. He planned on giving them to four different companies and three banks.

If everything were to go according to plan, when he woke up, he would still be a rich man living in the future.

Not to mention that the growth of his money could make him one of the richest people in the world…

As long as inflation wasn’t too ridiculous.

Of course, even though the ultra-rich were optimistic about this technology, many liberals and socialists were worried.

In particular, the well-known Nobel Prize in Economics winner, Professor Angus Deaton, said in an interview with the media that the technology was not as beautiful as everyone had imagined. Frequent use of this technology was likely going to exacerbate the problem of economic class differences.

If everyone wanted to live a better life in the future, no one would want to make the present a better place.

Especially when the 3% of people wanting to go dormant held 97% of the world’s wealth and resources. This could stop global economic growth, turning humanity into a dystopian society…

Professor Angus Deaton won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2015 for his “contributions to research in consumption, poverty, and welfare”. He was a genius who used mathematical methods to build economic models. He was currently the head of the economics department at Princeton University.

His remarks might have sounded alarmist, but due to his reputation in the academic field, his words of insight attracted many people’s attention.

The North American liberals even held a protest at the White House, calling for the legislation to ban research on dormancy…

Of course, the protest would likely be useless.

Especially when the rich and powerful were staring at this technology with greedy eyes…

Lu Zhou, who was far away at the Jinling Institute for Advanced Study, also read Professor Grange’s article in Nature.

After reading the article, he couldn’t help but exclaim.

“Last time when I read the relevant report in the newspaper, Johnson & Johnson said that the technology was still in the stage of technical demonstration. I did not expect that in just a few months, they have already completed clinical trials.”

Lu Zhou took a sip of tea.

Yang Xu looked up and replied, “It looks like they’re doing amazing stuff.”

“Yeah, it seems like they are making great progress.” Lu Zhou put down the Nature magazine and pondered for a while. He looked at Yang Xu and asked, “What did Hengrui Medicine say?”

Yang Xu: “They are very interested in our proposal and agree that cryonics technology can be very promising in the near future… However, they also expressed their concerns about the risks of the project.”

Lu Zhou smiled and said, “They don’t think they can do it?”

Yang Xu shook his head and said, “Not quite, they’re more worried about policy.”

Lu Zhou frowned and said, “Policy?”

“Yeah.” Yang Xu put down his teacup and looked at Lu Zhou as he said, “The international research community is debating heavily on human dormancy research. Not only is there a constant controversy in the academic world, but the general population is also divided. Hengrui Medicine is worried that China might ban research on relevant technologies due to international pressure.”

Lu Zhou smiled and shook his head.

“That counts as a risk?”

Yang Xu made a helpless expression and said, “You might not think so… After all, similar things have happened before.”

“Tell them that their worries are completely superfluous.” Lu Zhou smiled and said, “No one can stop me from researching what I want.”