SWDnovel #494 - Huge response
#494 - Huge response
“10!”
“9!”
Over a billion television viewers stared at the enormous rocket standing still on their screens, and the two calm Dongda astronauts inside the spacecraft, as the countdown echoed from the television. Dongda's television station even thoughtfully added subtitles to their live broadcast, causing everyone's hearts to leap into their throats.
For Dongda, this feeling was even more intense.
After years of development, Dongda's television user base had grown to over 30 million. However, the number of viewers gathered around those televisions at this moment far exceeded 300 million. Following the suggestions from above, everyone, except those in special positions that required them to work, was allowed to temporarily suspend their holidays for a day to watch the live broadcast. This even included the majority of government agencies.
Therefore, apart from the vast majority of rural areas that still lacked televisions, urban areas and wealthier rural areas were seeing people, even those without televisions at home, gathering wherever there was a television to watch the live broadcast.
In some rural households with televisions, there might even be over a hundred people gathered!
Unlike the wired approach used by the great powers for their television users, Dongda rapidly increased television coverage by using television station rebroadcasting of signals, rapidly increasing the number of television users in recent years.
“Ignition!”
But even the people who were most skeptical about the news were completely thrilled after seeing the authoritative newspapers and the day's television news headlines, as well as the village loudspeakers constantly broadcasting the news!
Out of a population of over 800 million, more than 600 million people received this news through various media on that day.
The rocket slowly ascended, appearing somewhat slow in the live broadcast, and its slightly deformed and overly large appearance caused anxious viewers to have some negative thoughts.
“Hiss, why is this rocket flying so slowly? Is there a problem?” someone asked anxiously.
“It's fine. Didn't you hear the command center say that liftoff is normal, separation is normal, attitude is normal...” The person next to him immediately retorted. They couldn't tolerate the slightest doubt, because this was Dongda's greatest pride to date.
“I didn't say there was a problem, I just think…” That person argued in a somewhat flustered manner, but the person next to him interrupted before he could finish, “We don't care what you think. If you can't say anything good, then don't say anything at all. Just watch carefully!”
Soon, the rocket began to accelerate under the enormous thrust, then pierced straight into the sky!
Then, it turned into a white trail of smoke and disappeared from the television viewers' sight. Then, the scene switched to the inside of the spacecraft. Seeing the astronauts' facial expressions somewhat distorted under the rapid acceleration, the television host explained in a timely manner that this was the effect of gravitational acceleration on the astronauts.
During the launch phase, astronauts actually experience a G-force of 1G to 8G. This means that a person weighing 70 kilograms feels the same pressure on the chair as a person weighing 560 kilograms, as if carrying hundreds of kilograms of weight on their body.
Therefore, normal people will have a very uncomfortable feeling, leading to changes in facial expressions!
These are all normal phenomena, indicating that our rocket's acceleration has reached the expected speed! Hearing the host's explanation, most of the people in front of the television seemed to understand, but for them, this knowledge was still somewhat unfamiliar. It should be known that among these hundreds of millions of Dongda television viewers, most had only received literacy education and were barely literate. These people knew almost nothing about physics.
At the same time, the scene switched back to the command center. The constant reports from the command center allowed television viewers to feel the complexity behind a rocket launch.
At the same time, these constant reports of various parameters being normal also affected the hearts of television viewers.
With these normal reports from the command center, and the host constantly explaining that the current situation was good and that the rocket was flying according to expectations, the Dongda viewers in front of the television gradually began to slowly lower their hearts that had been in their throats.
On the other side of the Earth, a group of scientists were also watching the television broadcast with serious expressions.
“Damn it, the image is already distorted,” an image processing expert said, looking at the full frontal view of the rocket before liftoff. “Obviously, our image mapping will have a large margin of error.”
“Come on, Peter, I told you not to think about taking shortcuts. If we want to catch up with Dongda's space program, we must invest more funding and conduct scientific research seriously. Now, the design of our first-generation spacecraft is almost complete. Theoretically, our spacecraft may not be much worse than Dongda's,” one expert said.
“Professor Weidmann, that's not how you put it. We do need to invest more funding to carry out this research, but if we have some third-party data to corroborate or verify some of our designs, it will greatly reduce our experiment time and funding input. Dongda's launch is the first time we can publicly obtain excellent intelligence. Their rocket design values, liftoff data, and spacecraft design, including the shape, internal cabin space size, and other data, are invaluable for our work. Of course, we must base our development on our own efforts, but if we have the opportunity to observe successful cases, we can also directly absorb the experience of our competitors,” another expert retorted.
“Okay, everyone, watch carefully. Haven't you noticed that the computers in Dongda's command center are very different from the personal computers they release? The images reflected on their monitors and screens, even if we only see a little bit of it, I think their computers are definitely not the performance of the personal computers currently being sold,” an expert saw something different.
“Mr. Moore, you think Dongda's computer development is actually more advanced than what is currently announced, right? The chips we are using now are not actually their latest models?” An expert next to him asked.
"Yes, I'm very sure," the expert named Moore said confidently. "I trust my eyes. In a certain frame, I saw an image displayed on the screen. You have to know that our current personal computers can't display pictures so quickly, but they can even display dynamic images. This shows that the processing speed of this computer is not even in the same performance class as our current personal computers."
Professor Qian had taken every precaution, but he didn't expect that a tiny clue would still be noticed in this aspect.
The large computers in the command center were indeed not the 8080 series chips produced by Dongda itself, but the mainstream computer chips from the main world that Ren Zhong brought!
The operating systems of these computers were also brought from the main world, which is why they could handle the massive data processing and image processing for the rocket launch with ease.
However, this small mistake was insignificant for the overall live broadcast of the launch. Even if Mr. Moore's eyes were sharp enough to spot the difference at a glance, this difference only further solidified the impression of Dongda as mysterious and unfathomable among these top experts from the great powers.
Incomprehensible awesomeness is useful in any era.
They would never suspect that Dongda had developed more powerful computers and kept them for their own use, because they would do the same if they had such powerful computers.
Moreover, these powerful computers are also very helpful for the development of science. In the great powers, they all have a list of prohibited products and technologies that are not sold externally. It is normal for Dongda to keep good things secret.
Based on this thinking, the more these top experts watched Dongda's live broadcast, the more incomprehensible things they discovered, including the clear images transmitted from Dongda's spacecraft and the precise measurement data and perfect flight trajectory curves transmitted from the remote measurement ship!
These data almost perfectly matched the theoretical trajectory data calculated by the experts during the live broadcast.
This made these experts couldn't help but admire the design capabilities and theoretical level of Dongda's aerospace experts!
Because these calculations involved a huge amount of computation, Dongda silently revealed a major accomplishment. For these experts, these were things that should have been experimented with long ago. The amount of computation involved would probably take years with the current computer performance. Either Dongda had more powerful computers, or this work had been going on for many years in secret research!
Whichever guess was true, it was somewhat chilling!
This meant that their own research was far behind!
Under the spread of the live broadcast, not a single expert would have the slightest doubt about Dongda's manned spacecraft launch.
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For the average television viewers in these great powers, that was even more so.
When Dongda initially announced the news of a live broadcast of a manned spacecraft launch, many ordinary people in the great powers were still skeptical.
But after really seeing Dongda's live broadcast, even the most stubborn television viewers were now filled with awe for Dongda's progress in aerospace!
At least until now, they had not heard of any great power starting research on manned spacecraft.
In comparison, Dongda's spacecraft had already flown into space.
Therefore, during the live broadcast, some elite viewers from the great powers developed serious doubts about their own countries. They felt that they had spent a huge amount of taxpayers' money but had not seen such inspiring scientific and technological progress. Some people even began to reflect that in recent years' major scientific and technological achievements, whether it was personal computers or manned spaceflight, these world-shaking advances were all unrelated to the Western world.
Did this mean that in the process of technological development, the Western powers, which had always been far ahead, had actually lost to Dongda?
Once this idea arose, these rational Western elites were terrified. Based on some events in their memory, from nuclear submarines to personal computers, to today's manned spaceflight, the most noteworthy technological advances in the past decade seemed to have been led by Dongda without exception!
After nearly an hour and a half of long flight, the audience in front of the television kept chasing the flight trajectory of the spacecraft following the measurement signals of the measurement ship, until it became an orbiting satellite in space. The live broadcast only announced the end of the first stage after seeing the astronauts' actions in zero gravity for the first time!
Next, the spacecraft launched this time will return to Blue Star in seven days, and the return information will also be broadcast live, marking a successful end to Dongda's entire manned space program.
But even though the recovery part had not yet begun, the success of the launch alone had ignited discussions around the world.
Dongda's two astronauts who entered space for the first time were regarded as aerospace heroes of the entire Liangjian world!
Their first sentence in space, "This is a small step for us individually to enter space, but a big step for mankind to conquer the universe," became the headline of many media outlets the next day!
Dongda's national image has been greatly improved internationally!
Many people even began to think that Dongda is currently the most technologically advanced country in the Liangjian world! Because so far, only Dongda has sent people into space!
This reason was so powerful that it was almost impossible to refute!
For Dongda, this was of course a good thing.
Because it also led to a sudden increase in the prestige of many things exported by Dongda, especially electronic products and automobile products!
If the previous popularity of Golf and JETTA was due to the model and cost-effectiveness, now they also had an aura of Dongda's advanced technology. This caused the speed of the second-generation Golf and JETTA to explode much faster than the first generation.
In addition, the newly launched POLO super fuel-efficient car has also become a new model of small cars due to its fuel efficiency. Compared with the current popular Beetle, it has a larger use space, the maximum speed is about the same, but the fuel consumption is at least 15% lower, and it has begun to greatly squeeze its market.
Even Rolls-Royce is now taking out its sub-brand Bentley to cooperate with Dongda Passat to create the most technologically advanced luxury car, integrating Dongda aerospace technology into the Bentley brand, not only developing luxurious Bentley business vehicles, but also starting to create Bentley brand top sports cars!
Although this brand is mainly Rolls-Royce, in terms of production and manufacturing, Dongda Passat will be marked, and even Dongda's production plant will produce in two places. The supply in Europe will be mainly Rolls-Royce factories, and the sales supply in North America will be mainly Eastern factories!
This production system is naturally a shot in the arm for Passat, which is eager to enhance its brand influence!
The benefits of the manned space launch live broadcast have begun to be gradually released! (End of this chapter)