Qiongzhou Island, Wenchang, was formerly a secret nuclear submarine base.

"What is he doing?" Director Xiao Yimin asked Yang Jiandong, the chief designer beside him.

"Judging from his actions these past few days, he is likely modifying the DF3 weather rocket to enable it to reach the Soyuz space station." Chief Engineer Yang Jiandong is the designer of China's new generation of "Great Wall" series carrier rockets and is an authority in the rocket field.

"Can he succeed?"

“It’s impossible to succeed.” Chief Designer Yang Jiandong shook his head. “The DF3 weather rocket was originally a modified DF3 missile. Its foundation is there. No matter how it is modified, it is impossible to break through the original limits.”

"And his modification is simply absurd!" Chief Designer Yang exclaimed angrily, his beard bristling. "He made such large cuts and welds to the rocket's shape, which will change the entire aerodynamic shape and cause a serious deviation in its flight trajectory. How will the rocket reach the space station then? Isn't this ridiculous?"

The DF3 variant is a typical example of a military-to-civilian conversion project. Yang Jiandong, as the main designer of this variant, naturally disapproved of Zhang Fan's actions. After all, changing the appearance was tantamount to a complete rejection of his aerodynamic design.

"Perhaps he was desperate to rescue the girl on the space station, so he just grabbed whatever he could find," Director Xiao Yimin sighed. "It's a pity we can't contact JAXA, otherwise we might be able to offer them some help."

“Even if we get in touch, it won’t make a difference!” Chief Engineer Yang’s straightforward personality meant he didn’t give the director any face, and he didn’t care that the director of the European Space Agency was standing next to him. He directly retorted, “The situation of JAXA Space Agency is not much better than ours. They can’t do anything except watch and cheer us on.”

"Uh..." Xiao Yimin saw that Chief Engineer Yang was in a bad mood, so he didn't dare to provoke him. Although he was the director, Yang Jiandong was his teacher when he was a young ordinary technician.

In fact, there are many people on Earth who cheer for Zhang Fan.

A man and a woman are separated by space and cannot be together. They can only cry every day. The woman is in dire straits and her life is not long. The man does everything he can for a tiny glimmer of hope...

This perfectly embodies people's romantic and tragic love fantasies; the plot is just too heart-wrenching...

Wano Country, Akihabara Survivor Point.

"Waaaaah, I feel so sorry for Zhang Dada..." The girls watching the live broadcast on TV in the survivor point square were sobbing uncontrollably.

"I heard from people in the bureau that the rocket won't make it to the space station..."

"You have to do it even if you can't make it. What can you do, Zhang Dada?"

"Even if Yui-chan is in the sky, it makes the distance seem a little shorter."

The other girls cried even harder when they heard this, immediately conjuring up a tragic love story set against a cosmic backdrop—what an incredible, otherworldly romance!

The male otaku in Akihabara have different focuses than the female otaku. Yui is their idol, and they are her loyal fans, but they also know about the dangerous predicament Yui-chan is currently in, so no one is jealous of the imagined romance between the two.

Especially after experiencing the great disaster on Earth, the boys actually really hope that Zhang Dada and Yui-chan can get together.

"But Zhang Dada looks really handsome when he's working. Even I, as a guy, am stunned," one male otaku exclaimed.

The rocket standing on the ground, the work suit with an exoskeleton attached, the sparks from welding on the hands reflecting the astronaut's young face, coupled with the desolate Martian desert, give it a violent aesthetic of post-apocalyptic wasteland mechanical heavy metal.

"Yeah, he's so handsome! I need to work hard tomorrow!"

After recovering from the disaster, humanity has begun to attempt to rebuild cities underground.

Beneath the surface of Blue Star, the sounds of digging, blasting rock, and hammering piles echoed everywhere...

When the workers feel tired, they stop to look at the lone figure flashing amidst the welding sparks on the large screen in the square, and then they are filled with renewed energy to continue building their new home.

Zhang Fan wasn't just fooling around.

There are essentially two ways to send the DF3 weather rocket to the Soyuz space station, 500 kilometers away: either reduce its weight or extend its range.

Weight loss can only do so much; after all, besides the air conditioning motherboard, food still needs to be provided for Yui. To extend Yui's survival time, the only option is to cram as much food as possible into the original weather satellite compartment.

Then the only solution is to extend the range. The first step is to optimize the rocket's aerodynamic shape to reduce drag, and the second step is to redesign the rocket's flight trajectory to propel the payload capsule to a greater distance.

The predecessor of the weather rocket was a modified DF3 missile, which was designed to fly in the atmosphere of Earth. Mars has a thin atmosphere and air resistance is almost negligible, so the aerodynamic shape of the weather rocket did not change much.

Zhang Fan's further improvements to the rocket's aerodynamic shape were aimed at recovering the air resistance that had been overlooked.

Fortunately, with the help of "Phoenix", Zhang Fan could save a lot of effort.

...

"Teacher, what do you think his current aerodynamic shape resembles?" Xiao Yimin asked his teacher in front of the large screen at the Qiongzhou base.

"Leaving aside the rocket body, the payload compartment looks like a 'water droplet.'" Although Chief Designer Yang disapproved of Zhang Fan's disruptive behavior, when the modified design drawings of the weather rocket appeared on the big screen, he still ordered people to take screenshots immediately and then summoned the weather rocket design team to review the drawings.

"What was the result?"

"Under the same conditions, the rocket's thrust increased by 5%." Chief Designer Yang had to admit, but he was still unconvinced, "This is meaningless; for a distance of 500 kilometers, it's just a drop in the ocean."

"Teacher, why did he design the cargo hold to be teardrop-shaped?" Xiao Yimin continued to ask.

"He plans to use inertial guidance." Chief Engineer Yang shook his head, not wanting to say anything more.

Generally speaking, after a launch vehicle is launched into the air and the payload compartment separates from the rocket body, it still relies on its own small boosters to provide power to complete aerial maneuvers in order to correct its flight attitude or change its trajectory.

Zhang Fan's current approach is to let the rocket launch the payload "water droplet" into space and then leave it alone, allowing the "water droplet" to rely on its own inertia to complete all subsequent space travel.

In Chief Designer Yang's view, this is equivalent to leaving everything to God after the rocket is ignited.

"Can he succeed?" Xiao Yimin couldn't help but ask.

“We have done calculations using all the orbital models, and there is no flight path that would allow his ‘Droplet’ and ‘Soyuz’ to intersect.”

Chief Engineer Yang is an authority in this field, and his words left all the staff present feeling somewhat disappointed. After all, Zhang Fan is now humanity's hope, and his failure would greatly undermine the confidence of all mankind.

Tomorrow will be the day of the rocket launch. In the main control room of the "Bird's Nest" base, Zhang Fan began inputting the data model of the Mars flight trajectory onto the screen. After the parameters of "Phoenix" were substituted into "Waterdrop" to complete the calculation, the data was written into the flight control system of the DF3 weather rocket.

On Blue Star, Chief Engineer Yang stared wide-eyed at everything on the screen, his eyes widening with each passing moment.

Pyr-

The live stream ended at that point, and the screen turned into static.

Chief Engineer Yang lunged forward like a madman, grabbed a staff member by the collar, and roared, "Was that recorded in the back?! Was it?!"

"Huh? Yes, yes, yes!" The staff member in charge of controlling the screen was terrified, thinking he had made a mistake.

Chief Engineer Yang put the staff member down and shouted to the entire hall, "Call all the technical personnel from the space agency over here! No one is allowed to sleep tonight until the results of this model are calculated!"

Tonight is destined to be a sleepless night at the temporary center of the China Space Agency. All the technicians have been gathered together for a space flight trajectory data model on the screen.

Due to a severe shortage of computers available for calculation, technicians even brought out an old-fashioned abacus, and the central hall was filled with the ticking sound of beads colliding.

As dawn broke, a report was handed to Chief Engineer Yang.

"What a pity, what a pity..." Chief Engineer Yang sighed as he looked up at the result.

"What's wrong, teacher?" Xiao Yimin, who had been by his side, asked. "Verification failed?"

"I regret that we didn't get this model before the 'New Era'," Chief Designer Yang lamented. "If humanity had obtained this interstellar orbit model before then, it would have advanced human exploration of space by at least 30 years."

Xiao Yimin's eyes widened, his face filled with disbelief, but he knew his teacher never joked, so he snatched the result sheet and looked at it.

A moment later, Xiao Yimin's eyes widened even more.

When launching orbital spacecraft, humans typically only consider the factors affecting the launch point and the target point.

For example, when launching a lunar spacecraft from Earth, we only need to consider the gravitational influence of Earth and the Moon on the spacecraft's orbit; the gravitational influence of other planets can be ignored.

But this model is different! It considers the impact of all the planets in the solar system as a whole on the orbit of spacecraft.

Can you imagine launching a rocket from Earth while also considering the gravitational pull of Pluto on its trajectory?

But the model in my hand did just that!

This is practically a navigation system for humanity's future interstellar travel!

No wonder Chief Designer Yang commented that this will advance humanity's exploration of space by 30 years!

Xiao Yimin angrily walked back, holding the paper in his hand.

Where are you going?

"I'm going to ask those idiots at the Ministry of Education why they didn't recommend such a genius to me when I graduated!"