Competitors

The bidding conference was over.

After Lu Zhou, quite a few research institutes and aerospace companies with close ties to defense agencies presented their technologies in PowerPoint slides. Some of their concept images made even wilder claims than his, but no one seemed inclined to complain anymore.

And so, in that strange atmosphere, the bidding conference drew to a close.

After the meeting, Lu Zhou returned to his hotel and took a shower. He called the contacts whose business cards he had collected recently, one by one, then finally called Chen Yushan and told her about the wager he had made with Academician Yuan at the conference.

Strictly speaking, it was not a wager with Academician Yuan. There was little point in betting against a chief engineer; even if Lu Zhou won, Academician Yuan could not make decisions for the Aerospace Group on his own.

Instead, it was a verbal agreement with a wager attached.

For the contract to deliver a 50-ton payload to Low Earth Orbit, bidders would compete with a finished product rather than a written proposal. In other words, whoever first proved they could deliver that payload would win the contract, provided their price did not exceed the other bidder's by too much.

The funding would be roughly 9 to 12 billion RMB.

Although it was only a verbal agreement, the leaders of the Science and Industry Bureau and the head of the Aerospace Group had acknowledged it, and it had been entered into the meeting minutes. In that sense, it carried some weight.

After all, even setting aside the wager made in front of so many industry peers, if Starry Sky Technology's Electric Propulsion System was as advanced as its slides claimed, the Science and Industry Bureau had no reason not to pay for it.

And