Chapter 183 Business Praising
Musk's flattery is not without reason. Currently, only Xiaomi's Ultra has obtained the second-generation perovskite battery technology. Tesla also wants to obtain it and apply it to the next generation of Tesla models, unlike now, when only the Cybertruck uses perovskite batteries.

At the same time, he also hopes to promote cooperation on topological semimetals. In a sense, he came here with an entire American mission.

Under pressure from the election, every big shot in Washington has to make tough statements.

At this critical juncture, federal business leaders need to play the role of lubricant.

As a key figure with huge interests in China, Musk is seen as one of the best lubricants. It should be noted that this role was previously played by Bill Gates.

"Oh? Wright, tell me, I'm worried about SpaceX." Musk became interested. In his opinion, Chen Yuanguang, who was in charge of Light Armor Aerospace, was qualified to make suggestions.

Unlike Bezos, who is only responsible for investment and management, Chen Yuanguang's identity as a scientist gives his words extra credibility.

“At present, no one can get rid of fossil fuels and enter the era of electric drive, and the starship is an extremely large spacecraft.

Then you shouldn't want everything.

At this time, it is necessary to give up some of the thermal efficiency of the fuel." Chen Yuanguang said.

"To put it simply, don't always think about igniting the upper stage when the launch vehicle separates. Before complete separation, the upper stage should ignite to prepare for subsequent flight."

Starship is an absolutely crazy plan. Starship is more than three times as crazy as Falcon 9.

Because its first-stage rocket consists of 33 engines.

There was once an interstellar spaceship in history that was just as crazy, and that was the N1 of the former Russian Empire.

Before Starship, N1 held the record for the most engines fired on a rocket, with 30 engines.

In history, all four launches of N1 ended in failure because in the field of aerospace propulsion, the engine essentially means a failure point, and the more failure points there are, the greater the probability of failure.

Even if the probability of a single engine failure is 95%, 95% to the 33rd power is less than 20%.

In reality, young space enthusiasts are extremely enthusiastic about the arrival of Starship, but they have forgotten the catastrophic consequences of N1 and so many engines, not to mention 33 engines.

What's worse is that in order to pursue extreme thermal efficiency and reduce costs as much as possible, SpaceX's Starship is still pursuing limits, with a second ignition after the first and second stage rockets separate.

"Wright, you are right." Musk quickly thought of the key point after listening (because this is the strategy used by SpaceX itself in the process of upgrading the starship, so he borrowed it).

"That's right, SpaceX's choice means that there are many potential failures that cannot be ruled out," Chen Yuanguang continued.

"We should consider switching Starship directly to the hot stage, installing a heat shield and ventilation valve room on the next super-heavy aircraft to fly, and adding a steel plate under the orbital launcher to dissipate the destructive force of the Raptor engine by spraying water."

Musk was not flattering this time. He said sincerely: "Wright, I should have given you half of SpaceX's shares to keep you in SpaceX. If SpaceX had you, I think we would have built a base on the moon by now."

When Musk communicated with some people in the academic world, he often talked about Chen Yuanguang. Almost all people in the academic world were amazed at Chen Yuanguang, believing that his breadth of knowledge and keen sense of smell were rare in the world, and no one could even compare with him.

Now he finally understood what smell was.

Musk didn't expect that the other party could infer such a key optimization point just through the details in the news.

If the design of Pioneer 2 still relies on future technology, then the optimization suggestions for the starship are a reflection of Chen Yuanguang's own level after being exposed to the aerospace field.

Standing on the shoulders of taller giants, he naturally has a keener eye to see the loopholes in the current super-heavy spacecraft design.

"If I worked at SpaceX, I'm afraid we would have a lot of arguments because of our different opinions on how humans should go into space," said Chen Yuanguang.

Musk is an absolute tyrant at work and is known for being harsh towards his subordinates. Even if he tolerates you in the short term because of your talent, you will still not be able to work together in the long run.

"You want to go to Mars as soon as possible, and hope to achieve your goal of going to Mars through continuous financing and a beautiful blueprint for investors. In the process, humans will gradually get rid of fossil fuels."

To put it nicely, it is a wonderful blueprint; to put it bluntly, it is just a pie in the sky.

These entrepreneurs are all better at making promises than each other. Musk succeeded thanks to his past experience at PayPal and the favor of NASA.

“But in the process, it is easy to collapse due to a break in the capital chain. In comparison, it is easier to build a complete positive cycle like space mining.

More importantly, it will automatically operate after achieving its goals, and there is no need to rely on financing to exert external forces on the project. "

Musk's plan is so exaggerated that he wants to invest 10% of the world's annual GDP, more than 10 trillion US dollars, in the Mars project, which is unrealistic.

More importantly, once America loses its current position, its financing ability will plummet.

"Wright, I don't think space mining is any easier than going to Mars.

In a sense, space mining is even more difficult." Musk shook his head.

Chen Yuanguang replied: “No, no, no, it depends on how you define space mining.

If it is just about going to the asteroid and bringing back some materials, Neon has already done it. If it is about actually mining for metal materials, that is also not difficult.

It is indeed not easy to generate income that can cover expenses.

But we don't need to achieve the latter. We just need to be able to mine metal materials. After achieving this, the rest is just a matter of waiting for the technology to mature.

I think going to Mars is difficult. The biggest key point is that today’s rockets are governed by Tsiolkovsky’s rocket kinetic energy equation, and our subjective will cannot change this.”

Simply put, the rocket kinetic energy equation involves three momenta. Once two of them are determined, the remaining one will also be determined.

The three momenta are the change in rocket velocity, the total energy of the rocket fuel, and the mass fraction of the fuel.

Fuel mass fraction refers to the proportion of fuel required compared to the total weight of the rocket.

"We have no other way to get into space except by escaping the Earth's thick atmosphere with hundreds of tons of fuel.

However, to this day, rockets are highly dependent on Newton's three laws, which means that within a certain period of time, it will be extremely risky for manned spacecraft to go beyond the Earth's orbit. For example, the success rate of the Apollo mission to the moon is a miracle in my opinion. "

It was an extremely exaggerated thing that the Federation was able to achieve manned moon landing in the 60s and bring people back. It was a very low probability event among low probability events.

Some netizens compared the probability to that of a person crossing the Pacific Ocean on a piece of wood. To be honest, the probability of success may be even lower than this.

After Chen Yuanguang finished speaking, Musk nodded: "That's right, unless we turn fossil fuels into other energy sources, but this is not realistic in the short term, and we may not even see it in our lifetime.

Humanity can only rely on fossil fuels without batteries.

The biggest problem with current spacecraft powered by fossil fuels is that they are too heavy and cannot be controlled after takeoff.

We need to add a new power source to the spacecraft after it enters space to make it maneuverable."

"In the short term, solar cells or small nuclear fission reactors can do this," said Chen Yuanguang.

Nuclear fusion is not realistic in the short term. Even if it is achieved, its size cannot be used in spacecraft. But nuclear fission is possible. While scientists have been exploring nuclear fusion, they have also been studying small-scale nuclear fission.

Nuclear submarines and nuclear-powered aircraft carriers all use small nuclear fission reactors.

“NASA has been exploring this, but the problem is that nuclear fission is too risky, and fossil fuel rockets exploding in the air will only cause limited damage.

Once a rocket powered by nuclear fission explodes, it will have irreversible impact on the entire ecosystem.

I once talked about this with NASA experts, and he joked that once we use nuclear-powered rockets, the Federation will lose a rocket launch base for every launch. "Musk laughed.

This refers to the explosion caused by a nuclear fission rocket, which will cause the nuclear contamination in this area to exceed the standard and become unusable.

"So we still have to look forward to breakthroughs in photovoltaic technology. Perovskite batteries are far from enough," said Chen Yuanguang.

After talking with Musk, Musk wanted to sign a strategic cooperation agreement with Guangjia Aerospace, but unfortunately Guangjia Aerospace is a Chinese company and is on the White House list, so he had to give up.

He hoped that some SpaceX engineers could come to Guangjia Aerospace for exchanges and learning, but Chen Yuanguang declined, saying that they were here to learn, but no one knew what they were here for.

"I'm sorry, Guangjia Aerospace has a lot of commercial secrets, and it's difficult for us to distinguish which ones are non-sensitive. The SpaceX engineers probably didn't gain anything from their visit. They just came to China for a tour at public expense." Chen Yuanguang was very straightforward.

"I think we can cooperate on electric vehicles. I think making cars is very interesting, so I plan to acquire a car company. Are you interested in joining me?" Chen Yuanguang asked.

It wasn't him who was interested, but Lin Jia. Executives from Lotus Cars, which was backed by Geely, came to see her several times.

After gaining a deeper understanding of Lotus Cars, Lin Jia also felt that this was an opportunity.

After Chen Yuanguang found out, he thought it was okay, but there was no need to get involved with them. If he wanted to do it, he might as well do something big and directly acquire Lotus in full. It wasn't expensive anyway, with a total market value of US$38 billion. If he launched an acquisition, a premium of about 30% would be more than enough.

As for La Musk, he felt that if he and Musk worked together to build a luxury sports car, it would cause a sensation around the world and help Lotus establish its brand image more quickly.

Of course, Musk is not the only partner;

If you only plan to play around in China, then there is nothing wrong with full ownership. But if your goal is the global market, then cooperation is inevitable.

Musk became interested after hearing this. "What do you mean?"

"Lotus Cars is currently under Geely. I hope to acquire it and see if I can revive Lotus," said Chen Yuanguang.

Musk had heard of Lotus, "I think I'd be interested."

Tesla and Lotus' target customers do not overlap at all, so his investment in Lotus will not have any impact on Tesla.

Lotus can also enrich Musk's business empire.

"I think if you join, some of Tesla's technologies can be licensed to Lotus," said Chen Yuanguang.

"No problem. Can the audio and video system used by Xiaomi Ultra be licensed to Tesla? That would be incredible. If Tesla has that technology, the user experience would take a leap forward," Musk asked.

After he experienced the Xiaomi Ultra in Yanjing, he had been envious of the audio and video technology. His original purpose in getting a Tesla was to make driving as easy as playing a racing game. With that thing, the sense of immersion was maximized.

And in his opinion, Xiaomi's tuning is not good enough. If Tesla does it, it can be tuned better.

"From my perspective, I don't mind, but the problem is that we signed a five-year exclusive technology licensing agreement with Xiaomi, which means that even if I fully acquire Lotus, this technology cannot be used on Lotus.

We can only wait five years and sign a new contract to see if this is possible," said Chen Yuanguang.

Musk shook his head helplessly: "Okay, but I am very interested in working together to build a luxury sports car. We can talk about it in detail later. When I am not in China, Tom can communicate with you.

He is my plenipotentiary representative.”

Chen Yuanguang said: "Okay, this matter needs to be kept confidential for now because it is still in the planning stage. You know, the shareholder structure behind Lotus is very complicated. It is not easy to buy it."

Musk didn't achieve any purpose in meeting Chen Yuanguang this time, he just came to make himself familiar.

The acquisition of Lotus is still only on paper.

Except for one thing, that is the patent authorization of the second-generation perovskite battery. However, this was originally going to be open to major car companies, so it would make no difference whether Musk came or not.

However, Musk still happily tweeted, with four photos of him meeting Chen Yuanguang:
“It was a pleasure to meet with Wright Chen. We have a surprising amount of consensus in the commercial space sector, and we also have a lot of consensus on renewable energy replacing fossil fuels.

In the future, we will cooperate in many areas that you may not expect.”

"Wright helped me find one of the important reasons for the failure of the Starship launch. His attainments in aerospace technology amazed me."

(End of this chapter)