Over the past 30 years, through the continuous struggle of several generations of astronauts, China has historically realized the Chinese nation's millennium dream of flying into space, and successfully embarked on a development path of manned space flight in line with China's national conditions. The core of this oriental miracle is precisely the spirit of manned spaceflight that has been nurtured from the practice of forging ahead: it is particularly capable of enduring hardships, fighting, tackling key problems, and making contributions. In 2024, the second issue of "Party Building" magazine published an article "Nine Days to the Moon and Build a Dream Sky", telling the moving story behind the spirit of manned spaceflight. Here are the main takeaways from the article.
Shenzhou-16 astronauts conduct underwater training (photo taken on September 14, 2022).
Especially able to endure hardships and ignite fires! ”
On October 26, 2023, the Shenzhou-17 manned spacecraft was launched. The command of the No. 0 commander resounded over the launch site of the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, and the tail flame erupted from the bottom of the Long March-2F carrier rocket, causing a boiling heat wave in an instant.
To ensure the safety of the mission, people mostly work in 1Launched at a distance of 5 km**. There is only one special "spectator", which stands only 50 meters from the launch tower. This is an elm tree, and it is also the "strong tree" in the mouth of the scientific and technological workers of the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center.
From Shenzhou 1 to Shenzhou 17, in the past 24 years, it has passed every "baking test", and witnessed the dazzling tail flame turn into distant stars 17 times.
"Tree Strong" is a tree, and it is also the generation of astronauts who have taken root in the Gobi with it.
In 1958, a stuffy train was traveling in western China, and all the stop signs were tightly covered by straw curtains. The car was carrying officers and soldiers of the 20th Corps who had secretly returned from the Korean battlefield to "carry out special military missions." Liu Han's grandfather Liu Huanzhang and grandmother Zhang Shujuan are also among them, and their task is to build a railway and an airport in the desolate and silent Gobi Desert. It wasn't until two years later that everyone learned that they were building China's first missile and satellite launch site.
In the face of the harsh natural environment, Liu Huanzhang and his comrades-in-arms ate sand dates, drank alkaline water, slept in tents, and lived in nests, without a single complaint. There was no large-scale machinery, so they carried it hand in hand, laid sleepers and steel rails in place, and in just over two years, they built China's first comprehensive missile test range in the vast Gobi.
When I was a child, my grandfather often held me in his arms and told me the story of 'two bombs and one star'. Liu Han recalled that at that time, the most common sentence his grandfather said was "to do aerospace, you have to dare to sacrifice".
After graduating from university, Liu Han returned to the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, where he was born and grew up, and devoted himself to China's aerospace industry like his ancestors. When he first became a father, Liu Han worked overtime every day, and had almost no time to take care of his daughter, so that when he hugged him gently, the child would cry "wow" to show that "**In this cry, he truly understood the selflessness and fearlessness of his grandparents who forgot their selfishness and sacrificed their egos. Now, looking at her daughter who has been running freely, Liu Han has a smile in her eyes: "Although the future road depends on her, I still hope that she can pass on the spirit of Dongfeng astronauts who are not afraid of hardships and continue to contribute to the country's aerospace industry." ”
At 18:40 on October 15, 2003, Beijing time, Yang Liwei, the first astronaut trained by China, greeted the people of the world from space and displayed the five-star red flag and the United Nations flag side by side in the capsule. (Source**, taken on the large screen of the Beijing Aerospace Command and Control Center).
I can fight in particular.
At 9 o'clock on October 15, 2003, the Long March-2F Yao-5 carrier rocket carried China's first manned spacecraft, Shenzhou 5, and ignited at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. The time for qualitative change has arrived.
Since then, Yang Liwei's name has been closely linked to "China's first astronaut", and has also witnessed the realization of the Chinese nation's thousand-year-old dream of flying into the sky.
To become the first person to fly, the hardships paid by ordinary people are unimaginable.
At the beginning of 1998, China's first batch of astronauts, including Yang Liwei, solemnly swore in the face of the five-star red flag and officially joined the Chinese astronaut corps.
In the following five years, Yang Liwei worked day and night, constantly charging towards the goal of being an excellent astronaut.
In the centrifuge training, Yang Liwei sat in a cylinder more than 8 meters long and began to undergo the high-speed rotation test at a speed of 100 kilometers per hour. As the load gradually increased from 1 g to 8 g, his facial muscles began to deform and sag, and his forehead protruded all over his face. There is a red button on the left side of the training chair, which the astronaut can press to stop the training at any time. However, in the past 5 years, Yang Liwei has never touched this button, not only that, so far 3 batches of astronauts, none of them have shouted "pause", they have survived hundreds of ischemia vertigo, chest and back pressure, rapid heartbeat, breathing difficulties with their tenacious will to fight, and have broken through the limits of the human body again and again. After watching her child's training**, an astronaut's mother waved her hand while crying and said, "Don't watch it, don't watch it!" ”
And this is just one of the more than 100 training subjects in eight categories for astronauts.
After passing all the training, Yang Liwei achieved 2 99 points and 3 100 points in the 5 normal flight procedure tests, ranking first in the professional and technical comprehensive evaluation, and was finally determined as the chief candidate of the first flight echelon.
Chinese astronauts, fighting again and again, going out again and again, bring the fighting spirit of not being afraid of sacrifice into the sky. They have closely linked their personal ideals with the destiny of the motherland, their personal choices with the needs of the party, and their personal interests with the interests of the people, and have written one miracle after another in the history of China's aerospace industry.
On the evening of May 29, 2021, China ignited and launched the Tianzhou-2 cargo spacecraft on time at the Wenchang Space Launch Site in Hainan.
It is especially capable of tackling key problems.
Chinese astronauts have an original term - zero.
In the 90s of the 20th century, after a series of failures, the astronauts who learned from the pain summed up the "double five" for zeroing quality problems, that is, the technical zeroing standard with the content of "accurate positioning, clear mechanism, problem recurrence, effective measures, and inferences from one example" and the management zeroing standard with the content of "clear process, clear responsibility, implementation of measures, serious handling, and improvement of regulations".
With zeroing, there is a Jedi counterattack at this critical juncture-
On the night of May 19, 2021, the Wenchang launch site in Hainan Province was as bright as day, and the Long March 7 Yao-3 carrier rocket carrying the Tianzhou-2 cargo spacecraft was about to be launched.
Less than 3 hours before the launch, the launch command hall suddenly fell silent: a pressure value parameter was abnormal, and it could no longer meet the requirements of the launch index.
Whether this rocket can be successfully launched is related to whether the "space-earth transportation corridor" of China's space station can be successfully built, and it is also related to whether the follow-up manned space program can be successfully implemented.
Many netizens waited for the live broadcast until the early morning of the next day, but waited for the official announcement of the postponement of the launch. For a while, there was a lot of speculation.
At this point, there are only 9 days left before the next launch window, and everything is zero.
In Hainan in May, the heat was unbearable outside, but inside the Chang-7 rocket, it was a low temperature of minus 183 degrees Celsius. In order to find out the fault, the test team members drilled into the arrow body from the 50-centimeter-square hatch again and again, and shuttled back and forth between the "two heavens".
The R&D personnel are fighting under pressure on the front line, simulating the state of the arrow through a large number of first-class tests, analyzing the failure mode, and reproducing the fault.
The time back wall is still approaching, and the model team rotates 24 hours a day, with no time to take care of rest, racing against time to complete the problem positioning.
On the 25th, the zeroing work was nearing completion, and the sky was blue and the clouds were white.
At 20:55 on the 29th, Tianzhou sailed and sent the "first batch of gift packages" to the core module of the Chinese space station that had been in space for a month, and the "space express" ushered in a highlight moment.
This is a young scientific and technological talent in the dispatching team of the Beijing Aerospace Flight Control Center. (Photo taken on July 1, 2022).
I can give in particular.
On the manned space front, there is a kind of romance called "You shout dispatch in the front, and I will ensure that your voice reaches all points."
The protagonists of the story are "Tiangong Divine Starling" Yang Yanbo and his wife Ma Yuanyuan.
Yang Yanbo appeared in the public eye very early. In November 2011, the rendezvous and docking mission of Tiangong-1 and Shenzhou-8 was underway, when the live broadcast camera swept through the hall of the Beijing Aerospace Flight Control Center, Yang Yanbo, who was sitting on the dispatching console, had an outstanding appearance and neat password, and quickly became popular on the Internet, and was called "Tiangong Shen Starling" by netizens.
Contrary to Yang Yanbo's "front of the stage" identity, Ma Yuanyuan has long adhered to the communication transmission post and ensured the smooth implementation of the task "behind the scenes".
Their mode of getting along is a "long-distance relationship" close at hand.
Even though we all work at the center and are in the same building, sometimes we don't even see each other for days. Speaking of his wife, Yang Yanbo was full of guilt, "She is downstairs, I am upstairs, sometimes I take the elevator past her floor, in fact, you can see her as long as you turn over, but I have hardly been there, and I am afraid that it will affect her work." ”
In this regard, Ma Yuanyuan expressed full understanding: "We know that we are fighting on the manned space front, which is the common choice of two people, so we must face it hand in hand and move forward side by side." ”
As a large-scale and highly integrated system project, after entering the space station stage, China's manned space program has increased to 14 major systems and hundreds of subsystems, with as many as 1,000 participating units and hundreds of thousands of scientific research workers.
It is inconceivable to implement such a grand project without centralized control and national cooperation. Zhou Jianping, chief designer of China's manned space project, said with deep feelings.
Great collaboration is not a simple superposition of "crowd tactics", but a concerted effort like a gear bite. Tens of thousands of astronauts from astronauts, space applications, manned spacecraft, launch vehicles, launch sites and other systems stick to their posts to build a solid line of defense for safety and security during major missions. The families of thousands of science and technology workers have silently shouldered the burden of taking care of their families.
Once, Yang Yanbo asked his son, who was still in elementary school: "What would you do if one day, the country needed Dad to go to space to carry out a very dangerous mission?" The son thought for a while and replied, "It's not brave to see righteousness, dad, go ahead!" ”
Although the catastrophe of the solar system in the movie "The Wandering Earth" is only a science fiction plot, the inheritance of responsibility, courage and dedication of several generations is truly staged every day, both in the past and now.
*: 2024 No. 2 "Party Building" magazine, authors: Li Guoli, Huang Yichen, Yang Wen, respectively are reporters from Xinhua News Agency and directors of the 25th Party Office of the Second Academy of China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation.
Producer: Miao Suiqi.
Review: Gu Lijuan Wang Qunxing.
Editor-in-charge: Wang Biwei.
Proofreading: Wang Biwei.
Production: Wang Bo.