Chapter 759: Bullet in the Chamber!

Regardless of who the informant was, The New York Times hit it big this time.

The next day, on the latest issue of The New York Times newspaper, was a large red-colored headline. It reported the latest progress of the Chinese lunar program—a major design flaw in the Moon Palace core module cooling system and that the construction of the lunar space station was going to be delayed!

Apparently, the reason for this error was because China had insufficient experience in the space station field. Also, it was because the Lunar Orbit Committee was careless.

The latter was probably the main reason.

The news immediately went on trending in America.

NASA confirmed the speculation on its official Twitter account. They said that they had heard similar stories, but they couldn’t confirm just yet.

Compared to The New York Times, NASA was undoubtedly more credible. As soon as the tweet came out, American netizens began to discuss the matter intensely.

[Jesus… We were waiting for China to fight back, but they tripped on their shoelaces.]

[I told you, this isn’t a space race at all. Even though they have surpassed the Russians, they’re still half a century behind us. :D]

[Maybe we should donate to China’s space program? :p]

[We should! The competition is already about to end, this is too boring! xD]

[I’m looking forward to the end of the month! Space-X is not going to let us down!]

[…]

Interestingly enough, while most people were making fun of the Lunar Orbit Committee and the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation, NASA didn’t ridicule the Chinese at all. They even expressed their apologies toward the Moon Palace program.

The China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation was a respectable opponent. Even though the White House and Congress were happy to hear this news, NASA didn’t want their respectable opponent to lose like this.

Not because they actually felt sorry, but mainly because China’s space program brought them huge amounts of funding and political support.

Therefore, they wanted the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation to survive.

At the very least, they wanted them to last a little longer…

While Congress and the White House were about to open bottles and celebrate, a small group of people already popped open those bottles and began celebrating.

For those in the low-Earth orbit launch industry, there was nothing that made them happier than hearing about the lunar space station’s troubles.

On the same day The New York Times article came out, the same story was published on Chinese media outlets.

An anonymous account named “We Are Losing The Space Race” began to post online.

This time, the author presented himself as a prophet… or even a “savior”.

[Unfortunately, reality has proven me right again. I didn’t expect this to come so suddenly and terribly.

[The design failure of the billion-dollar core module wasn’t an accident, it was inevitable from the beginning. I knew this was going to happen. If the problem wasn’t the loop heat pipe, it would have been the engine or the solar panel.

[Like I said, controllable fusion technology fueled the success of the Skyglow launch. However, there were dozens of problems that were hidden in Skyglow. Now, those problems are presented to us in daylight.

[The entire Chinese aerospace industry is like a clockwork that has been tightened. People are going after unobtainable vanity.

[From the moon landing project to the Lunar Orbit Committee, all of these projects and policies are driven by one lunatic. No one remembered to lubricate the machine, no one remembered to give it more time.

[Perhaps Professor Lu is an excellent mathematician, physicist, and chemist. His achievements in the field of controllable fusion will go down in history. But he is still a human, and humans make mistakes. History tells us blind worship doesn’t end well.

[Now that the Lunar Orbit Committee is established, Professor Lu has gotten what he wanted, the throne of the chief designer. His prestige in the academic world gained him a large number of blind supporters. However, Professor Lu isn’t always right.

[The failure of the Moon Palace core module should be a wake-up call.

[Wake up, scholars around the world!]

Less than a day after the blog was posted, the blog received tens of thousands of likes. It was reposted to other major social media platforms, spreading like the plague.

This anonymous netizen found an interesting niche. This netizen used the loop heat pipe problem to criticize the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation, which was related to the Lunar Orbit Committee, which Lu Zhou was a part of.

If Lu Zhou wasn’t overly ambitious, if Lu Zhou wasn’t part of the Lunar Orbit Committee, if Lu Zhou didn’t arrange the launch mission…

All of this could have been avoided!

Even though some people were in support of Lu Zhou, the power of the Internet was too big.

Especially because most people weren’t good at critical thinking, they were too easily convinced.

After quietly waiting in this stormy weather for three days, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, China National Space Administration, and China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation finally spoke.

Their Weibo posts were the same.

The posts were short, but they contained a lot of information.

One sentence was posted on the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation’s official Weibo account.

[Launch plan is unaltered!]

Attached in the post was a photo of Skyglow, parked on the Jinling launch site. As well as the Moon Palace core module!

The bullet was in the chamber!

Their goal…

Was lunar orbit!

The Internet exploded.

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