He has devoted himself to the grassroots post of China's aerospace industry for more than 60 years.
He is one of the pioneers of ballistic strategic missiles and launch vehicles in China.
But he said that he was just a "super code farmer".
He has designed the most perfect flying arc for Chinese rockets many times.
It is a "blue-collar academician" who has a flash of inspiration when tackling key technologies
Recently, CCTV's "My Family and My Country" interviewed Yu Menglun, an expert in rocket ballistic design in China, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and a 1955 alumnus of the Department of Mathematical Mechanics of Peking University.
Listen to this Peking University native tell the story of climbing the peak of aerospace technology with his lifelong love.
To prove the feasibility of the solution, they manually calculated it for two or three months.
Behind every rocket liftoff, there are countless Chinese astronauts who silently lift rockets, and Yu Menglun is one of them. Academician Yu Menglun, 87 years old, is one of the pioneers of the ballistic design of China's ballistic strategic missiles and launch vehicles.
In 1960, he graduated early from the Department of Mathematical Mechanics of Peking University and was assigned to the General Department of the First Branch of the Fifth Research Institute of the Ministry of National Defense at that time, where he calculated the flight path for missile and rocket launches.
In March 1965, China began the development of a certain type of Dongfeng series missile, and Yu Menglun was one of the three members of the ballistic design team.
In the face of the long flight distance, how to conduct the test has become a difficult problem in front of them. Just when everyone was helpless, Yu Menglun put forward a bold idea - a special ballistic scheme combining low trajectory and high trajectory, and split the whole test into two separate tests.
According to Yu Lao's recollections, in order to prove the feasibility of the plan with data, five or six of them calculated for two or three months.
On May 18, 1980, the first full-course flight test of a certain type of missile of the Dongfeng series was successful, realizing the leap of China's ultra-long-range missiles from scratch and completely breaking the long-term monopoly of the superpowers.
At the age of 40, he learned programming from scratch and successfully launched a re-entry satellite into orbit.
After the launch of the "Dongfanghong-1" satellite, in order to facilitate land census and ground surveying and mapping, the launch of a returnable satellite was put on the agenda.
The returnable satellite weighs 1,800 kilograms, which is more than 10 times the weight of the "Dongfanghong 1", so the "Long March 2" to undertake the launch mission has much higher requirements for carrying capacity.
The task of solving the problem of rocket speed and carrying capacity fell on Yu Menglun. However, at this time, Yu Menglun was already in his 40s, and his computing tools were replaced by microcomputers, so he began to learn computer programming from scratch.
As one of the earliest computer programming workers in China, Yu Menglun and his colleagues gradually overcame the problems of the program in the exploration.
After countless analyses of the optimal thrust program, Yu Menglun proposed a "small thrust ballistic scheme" that dazzled everyone.
Five engines - one engine with high thrust, four engines with low thrust. I made the big engine work a little shorter and the small engine work a little longer, so that the average thrust was reduced. Yu Menglun's "small thrust ballistic scheme" increases the carrying capacity of the rocket by 25%.
On November 26, 1975, the Long March-2 carrier rocket carrying China's first returnable satellite ignited and lifted off on time and successfully launched the satellite into the predetermined orbit.
In the following three years, the "Long March-2" rocket was successfully launched twice in a row, indicating that China has the technical ability to design and develop high-performance and high-reliability carrier rockets.
Faced with the harsh conditions imposed by the United States, he overworked for 18 months and completed the project as promised.
In 1978, China began to improve the adaptive technology of the launch vehicle on the basis of the "Long March 2", thus deriving the largest family of launch vehicles in China.
Among them, the Long March-2F carrier rocket is the only rocket in China that can carry out manned missions and is responsible for transporting astronauts. Its predecessor is the Long March-2** carrier rocket developed by Yu Menglun in the whole process, referred to as "Chang 2 Bundle".
Yu Menglun: At that time, the US space shuttle was unsuccessful. We want to engage in a "long second bundle" and use it to specifically hit foreign satellites, strictly speaking US satellites.
The year 1986 was a catastrophic year in the history of world spaceflight.
There have been many accidents in the United States and France, and the international commercial satellite launch market has been almost paralyzed. At this time, the Chinese astronauts entered the international launch market with the "Chang Er" rocket, which was still two design drawings, and began difficult cooperation negotiations with other countries.
In November 1988, after nearly two years of negotiations, China and the United States formally signed a contract for the launch of two satellites.
Yu Menglun said that after signing the contract with the US side, the United States requires that it must be successfully launched once every 18 months, and if it is not successful, it will lose money.
In order to be able to launch as scheduled, Yu Menglun and his colleagues at the institute began to overwork. More than 440,000 design drawings, more than 5,000 sets of special tooling, dozens of sections and hundreds of thousands of parts, and more than 300 large-scale ground tests were completed in just 18 months.
On July 16, 1990, as China's first high-thrust rocket, the "Chang Ershu" was successfully launched, creating a miracle in the history of world aerospace.
However, in the following 4 years, the "Long Two Bundle" experienced two launch failures. Yu Menglun put forward the hypothesis of the influence of high-altitude winds on rocket flight, and successfully resolved the obstacles after calculating more than 1,000 high-altitude wind data from the Xichang launch base.
"Chang Erbin" not only opened the door to the international space launch market, but also officially opened a new journey for China's manned space industry.
At Peking University, make decisions that affect a lifetime.
Yu Menglun, a native of Cixi, Zhejiang, moved to Shanghai with his family when he was two years old to escape the war. He has been among the top performers since he was a child, but he is deeply troubled by a serious stuttering problem.
One time in math class, the teacher asked a question, and I would do it, but I couldn't say it, and I felt very miserable at that time." Because of his stuttering, Yu Menglun became taciturn and introverted when he was young. But it also made him more focused on his studies, especially in the world of mathematics.
In 1955, 19-year-old Yu Menglun was admitted to the Department of Mathematics and Mechanics of Peking University. When he came to Beijing, Yu Menglun didn't care about appreciating the beautiful scenery and cultural attractions of this historical ancient city, plunged headlong into the ocean of knowledge, and devoted himself to learning with hunger and thirst.
At Peking University, Yu Menglun was taught by Zhou Peiyuan and Ding Shisun, and also listened to Qian Xuesen's academic reports many times. The profound knowledge of the teachers of Peking University deeply influenced Yu Menglun, and he secretly determined that he must study diligently and strive to become an accomplished scientist in the future and dedicate himself to the scientific research of the motherland.
When Yu Menglun was in his third year at university, according to the "emergency measures" of the national scientific planning and development of computing technology, the Department of Mathematical Mechanics of Peking University established a new major in computational mathematics.
According to Mr. Yu's recollection, Mr. Xu told the young students:"The birth of the computer is for military purposes, and the current application field is mainly military, but in the future, scientific computing is an important direction for the development of computers. Now, China will have its own first-generation computer, but the number of computer talents is still almost zero, so the state has decided to set up a major in computational mathematics to train talents for China's computer industry. "
In today's world, computers are a popular profession in various countries, but at that time they required multiple mobilizations. At that time, at Peking University, the most popular major choice was mathematics, followed by mechanics, and computational mathematics was just a sub-subject, and students had almost no understanding of it, and the teachers did not even have professional textbooks for lectures.
In Mr. Xu's narration, Yu Menglun was moved. He saw his direction and goal in the blueprint drawn by Mr. Xu, and resolutely signed up. Unexpectedly, he was the only student who signed up for the second class of 55 mechanics, and naturally he was also the only student who was selected. This is perhaps the most impulsive decision Yu Menglun has ever made in his life, and it is this decision that has influenced him all his life.
When Yu Menglun was in the fourth or fifth grade of university, it was the beginning of the development of China's computer industry, and Soviet computers were imitated in China. At that time, the teachers and students of computational mathematics and radio at Peking University, under the leadership of Mr. Zhang Shilong, the pioneer of computing technology in China at that time, began to design by themselves"Beijing No. 1"A small digital computer, which was successfully designed and delivered to the Air Force in 1958.
In the same year, the teachers and students of Beijing began to design the "Red Flag" digital computer, which was one of the earliest digital computers designed by themselves and advanced indicators in China. Yu Menglun and his classmates devoted themselves together"Red flags"In the development of computers, students who study mathematics do not understand the technology of electronics, and adopt the method of learning while doing, and gradually master the knowledge of door circuits, magnetic core memory, etc., which has made a contribution to the development of computer technology in China"Insignificant", in fact, a very important contribution.
Rooted in the front line of aerospace for more than 60 years, his name was named as a scientific research team.
In 1960, Yu Menglun graduated early and was assigned to the First Branch of the Fifth Research Institute of the Ministry of National Defense.
At that time, it was also a difficult start for China's aerospace industry, and it also coincided with the ...... of the country's natural disasters and the unilateral termination of the cooperation agreement by the Soviet UnionThe ballistic design of the "1059" missile, which Yu Menglun participated in, could only rely on a hand-cranked computer for calculation. Calculating a ballistic trajectory with a range of 500 km took six calculators two months.
Once, Yu Menglun encountered a thorny technical problem. In order to validate his ideas and solutions as quickly as possible, he barely left the hand-cranked computer for weeks. When he held a stack of data reports to share with his colleagues, people found that his right arm, which had always been thin, was severely swollen due to turning the computer grip for a long time.
Ballistic design, let me forget about tiredness. Although I encountered many difficulties in programming and modeling, the sense of accomplishment that comes from overcoming technical difficulties again and again makes me feel an unparalleled sense of happiness. Yu Menglun often said this.
On November 5, 1960, Yu Menglun witnessed the successful launch of the Dongfeng-1 missile and was greatly encouraged. The 24-year-old young scientific genius continued to shine with wisdom in his future ballistic designs.
Over the past decades, he has systematically put forward theories and methods for the ballistic design of missiles and launch vehicles, and has designed the most beautiful "air trajectory" for many types of carrier rockets in our country.
In 2009, his team was named "Yu Menglun Team" by the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, which is also the first scientific research team named after an academician and is known as the first team of China's aerospace industry.
In the more than 60 years of Yu Menglun's work, many of his students have become chief engineers and deputy chief engineers in the aerospace field, but he is still engaged in his original work at the age of nearly ninety. He has given up many job transfer opportunities, "Changing the guard could leave the ballistic design work, so I didn't think about transferring." "I love this job and love it." ”
In the view of this Peking University native, it is his greatest happiness to always work on the front line of scientific research and design a perfect flying arc for Chinese rockets.
Information**: Alumni Affairs Office, CCTV News, Biography of Academician Yu Menglun
Editor: Milo |