The second weekend of April.
The morning calm in major cities across North America was completely shattered by a newspaper.
A striking headline on the front page of the latest issue of the Washington Post stunned every passerby at the newsstands.
<A Major Breakthrough in the Ares Program! The Ares Spacecraft's Life-Support Unit Successfully Lands! The Age of Cosmic Voyages Is Setting Sail!>
Compared with The New York Times, the Washington Post, as North America's largest, oldest, and most authoritative newspaper—a publication that had played important roles in the Watergate scandal and the Iran–Iraq War—was undoubtedly far more authoritative, and the reliability of its news was beyond comparison with that of ordinary papers.
Even white-collar workers with no interest in newspapers could not resist tossing a dollar in change onto the newsstand after seeing that eye-catching headline, stuffing the paper into their briefcases to read at work.
The freshly printed newspapers, their ink barely dry, were snapped up by people and sold out completely!
Caught entirely off guard, the Washington Post had no choice but to contact its partner printing houses and urgently print more than a million additional copies, sending them to newsstands and distribution outlets everywhere.
In an old district south of the San Francisco Bay Area, near the edge of Silicon Valley.
Inside a rib joint on a street corner sat a few scattered drunks nursing hangovers, office workers having breakfast before work, and several clearly retired old men who were simply there to pass the time.
Holding a grease-stained newspaper, an elderly white man seated beside the counter muttered under his breath. The expression on his face grew increasingly stunned, and he reached out to grab his old friend beside him, saying in an incredulous voice.
"Hey, did you hear? SpaceX's BFR rocket successfully sent a