Zhao Bowen immediately bristled with excitement.
He sprinted up to the eighth floor with the speed of Liu Xiang running 110-meter hurdles, pushed open the door, and shouted: “It’s done! It’s done!”
“What’s done?” Bai Zhen asked.
“What’s done?” Wang Ning asked.
“We’ve passed the hardest hurdle! Applaud! Applaud!” Zhao Bowen was visibly elated. Lao Bai and Lao Wang clapped their hands in bewilderment while he, without explaining, happily hummed a tune as he walked through the living room and continued drawing circles on the Nanjing city map with his compass and pencil.
What happened next was nothing short of miraculous. Zhao Bowen’s luck had turned – whether it was because he’d worn red underwear this morning or stepped in dog poop when leaving home. If he’d known, Lao Zhao would have bought a lottery ticket on his way to work and might have won five million yuan. But what made Zhao Bowen even happier than winning the lottery was that the long-silent phones started ringing one after another. The Engineering Team, Aerospace Team, Physics Team, Astronomy Team, Computer Team, and Decryption Team finally crawled out of their coffins. The cellular network signals flew in through the window like carrier pigeons, bringing news from afar.
Zhao Bowen immediately convened the “East Is Red” operation deployment meeting.
All those calculations he’d been making in his mind were finally about to be revealed bit by bit.
“Is it centered?”
“Move it a little more to the left, just a bit, make sure they can see the whole map…”
Zhao Bowen stood in front of the map, facing the camera set up in the middle of the living room. Bai Zhen was helping adjust the lens, Wang Ning was helping adjust the projector and screen. Lao Zhao tugged at his sweater collar, adjusted his tortoiseshell-framed glasses, cleared his throat, and stood straight before the camera, waiting for the signal to connect.
This was a large-scale video conference.
By 4:30 PM, expert teams joined the conference one by one. Zhao Bowen’s gaze passed over the camera to the projector screen, where he saw the last square in the Tencent Meeting grid occupied by a head as bright as a light bulb. He knew everyone had arrived.
“Comrades, I’m going to formally begin the deployment of Operation East Is Red.”
As for what exactly “Operation East Is Red” meant, nobody knew – not because its classification level was so high that even core members like Bai Zhen, Wang Ning, and the expert teams weren’t privy to it, but because it was a name Zhao Bowen had just made up. The operation code name “East Is Red” hadn’t existed an hour ago.
More than a dozen pairs of eyes on the screen stared at Lao Zhao, waiting for him to continue.
“As we all know, due to the Big Eye’s presence, MSR is in extreme danger. More importantly, she cannot reach the first and second bases at Purple Mountain and Mochou Lake. If she can’t reach the bases, we can’t get enough information and data. Therefore, the ultimate goal of our entire plan going forward is to eliminate that Big Eye,” Lao Zhao paused. “This is the East Is Red plan.”
Bai Zhen and Wang Ning sat on either end of the sofa, their expressions calm. What Zhao Bowen said was within expectations – eliminating the Big Eye was universally agreed to be the best option.
Over the past few days, everyone had gathered for countless meetings large and small, proposing various plans both feasible and far-fetched. In the end, directly eliminating the Big Eye got the most votes.
Everyone agreed that BG4MSR couldn’t confront the Big Eye alone, but just because a young girl couldn’t eliminate it didn’t mean all of humanity was helpless against it.
At this moment, she had seven billion people backing her.
“The East Is Red plan will proceed in three steps. Step one, the reconnaissance phase – we need to launch a remote sensing satellite twenty years into the future to establish a map of Nanjing and model the Big Eye’s movement patterns.”
This time, the Aerospace Team leader didn’t curse.
Over the past few days, the Aerospace Team had intensively discussed whether Zhao Bowen’s layman’s proposal was feasible at all, ultimately concluding it had zero feasibility.
They had rejected Zhao Bowen’s idea of sending a probe to the moon, so the Eighth and Fifth Academies designed another orbital path themselves – the chief designers said sending it to the inner solar system would be more feasible than the moon. People racked their brains trying to figure out how to make this satellite achieve precise orbit after leaving Earth for twenty years.
“The conditions are extremely strict – it’s like dancing ballet in shackles. We can barely say it’s feasible. We’ll minimize the satellite’s volume and weight as much as possible, then use SAR (Synthetic Aperture Radar) in the S or X band for telemetry. We discussed with the Computer Team – to achieve their required resolution of within 1 meter, the satellite altitude needs to be kept as low as possible.” The Aerospace Team was cautious. “Factoring in the rocket’s stretched payload capacity and complex orbital transfer methods, this will significantly reduce the satellite’s lifespan.”
“How many months will it last?” Zhao Bowen asked.
“We’d have to measure in hours,” the Aerospace Team replied. “Reconnaissance satellites are all like this – maintaining surveillance requires energy-consuming orbital adjustments, which inevitably burns through lifespan. We estimate the telemetry satellite’s normal operating time won’t exceed 160 hours after we send it over.”
Zhao Bowen calculated, “Seven days.”
“That’s under ideal conditions – it needs equatorial launch, precise orbital insertion. If anything goes wrong during launch or re-orbit, the results will be worse,” the Aerospace Team warned.
“That’s enough – we’re challenging the impossible anyway.” Zhao Bowen was quite open-minded about it. “If there’s any feasibility, we’ll work hard to do it. Where’s the satellite now?”
“In the 812 Institute’s satellite assembly workshop.”
“When can we launch?” Zhao Bowen asked.
The Aerospace Team was taken aback. “This… we need to find a rocket. This satellite’s too heavy, can’t use Long March 6 to launch it. We need at least an Ariane or Soyuz class rocket.”
“Find one! Find the nearest Soyuz rocket!”
“This… where do we find a Soyuz rocket on such short notice?” The Aerospace Team was stunned.
“Ask! Call and ask, ask right now!”
Zhao Bowen’s “Iron Hand of Doom” nature was exposed again – he wouldn’t wait a moment. He wished he could traverse the network to the other side and crack a whip at them, urging them to speed up progress.
A moment later they found the nearest rocket in terms of both time and space worldwide.
A Russian Soyuz-STB launch vehicle – as the big brother in the carrier rocket circle, it was the world’s longest-serving rocket with the most launches. It had done everything, and now it would help save all of humanity.
This rocket was currently on the other side of Earth, across the entire Pacific Ocean in northern South America, at the Guiana Space Center.
“Scheduled to launch December 18th. It’s probably a Russian commercial order, launching satellites for Italy and ESA – an Italian CSG1 Earth observation satellite, also a synthetic aperture radar telemetry satellite, over two tons; and ESA’s is a space telescope called CHEOPS, planned for sun-synchronous orbit. Two payloads on one rocket,” the Aerospace Team said. “Until launch, there’s… ten days.”
“Intercept it! Intercept it!”
Zhao Bowen waved his pencil.
“But this is Europeans’ rocket…”
The other side was troubled.
This wasn’t Zhao Bowen’s first time doing this, but previously he’d intercepted domestic rockets. This time he wanted to intercept a foreign rocket – international interception would be much more troublesome.
“Is it a commercial order? Let’s buy it! Tell the Italians to wait – we’ll go first.”
Zhao Bowen believed money could solve any problem.
“Launch is in ten days – can we make it?” someone asked. “Last-minute changes – the Russians might not be willing to breach the contract.”
“Dealing with Russians is too simple.” Lao Zhao was resolute. “How much is that rocket? Tell them we’ll pay double!”