Return to Earth!

It was New Year's Day.

Whether they knew anything about spaceflight or not, nearly half of Hua Nation was celebrating the Auspicious's launch. Most people might not understand the difference between electric and chemical propulsion, or even know what a Hall Thruster was. But as the first spaceplane capable of safely traveling between Earth's surface and outer space, the Auspicious had filled a gap in Hua Nation's capabilities.

Yet on that happy day, a report from The New York Times poured cold water on many people's excitement.

The report took selected remarks from a NASA spokesperson and reworked them, then cited the opinions of several other aerospace engineers in Silicon Valley to argue that the Auspicious had serious design flaws.

Those fatal flaws, it claimed, could make getting into space easy and coming back down difficult.

The result could be much like the Columbia: breaking apart in the atmosphere...

As soon as the report appeared, it sparked widespread debate on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.

When it reached Hua Nation, it caused an even greater uproar. Coming just after the release of a twenty-five-second video offering New Year's greetings from space, it cast a shadow over the flood of reports celebrating the Auspicious's successful launch.

It was hard to stay excited.

Many people were even worried sick about Professor Lu, who was still up there.

[Shit! Those Americans are up to no good! The moment our plane gets into space, they start wishing it would fall out of the sky!]

[Can you really curse a plane out of the sky? Maybe they're just giving a friendly warning!]

[I doubt it! I bet the Americans are plotting something. What if they're planning to secretly shoot it down with a missile?]

[MiG-25: If I fly fast enough, the missile