I'll Give You Half Credit

The biggest news that New Year's Day probably wasn't some celebrity's New Year's Eve wedding, nor the Xihe Reactor in Daya Bay officially connecting to the grid. It was the series of events from the Auspicious's launch to its successful return.

From the Auspicious's successful launch to that twenty-five-second video, then the report in The New York Times, and finally the Auspicious's safe return, every moment had commanded people's attention.

There was no shortage of people who built rockets.

But so far, he was probably the only one who dared ride a rocket he had built into space.

Even Elon Musk, long known as Silicon Valley's Iron Man, had never said he would ride a Falcon 9 into space.

Then there was that sensational, revolutionary propulsion method, which had completely overturned people's understanding of spaceflight.

It was as though this New Year's Day had marked not merely the arrival of 2020, but the passage into an entirely new era.

From an old era to a new one.

From the past to the future...

Actually, there was something rather interesting about the whole affair. If NASA hadn't released the news through Columbia Television, the vast majority of people might never have known that the Auspicious used an electric propulsion system.

After the news broke, neither Starry Sky Technology nor the Hua Nation's authorities seemed inclined to deny it, but neither gave an affirmative response either. To most people, that was already tantamount to tacit acknowledgment without a public admission.

And it was precisely that strength hinted at through their silence that gave those who had quietly prayed for the Auspicious during its return a profound sense of vindication.

All along, the Hua Nation had been doggedly chasing the United States and Russia in aerospace. In designing high-thrust rockets and spacecraft for