"Uh, sorry, that's not what I meant. It's all Elon Musk's fault. He told me so much about gravitational anomalies and radiation belt anomalies that I started thinking the moon landings were fake."
Old Li said slowly, "Of course the Apollo crewed moon landings were real."
Director Dan added, "Those moon landing hoax theories circulating out there are utter nonsense. Whether the United States landed or not, they might have fooled China, but could they have fooled the Soviet Union? The Soviets weren't fucking idiots."
"Hard to say," Old Li said solemnly.
"A country that managed to bring about its own collapse clearly had some serious problems."
Director Dan stressed, "In any case, there's nothing to doubt about the Apollo moon landings. Those corner reflectors on the moon could only have been placed there by people. The corner reflectors deployed by the Soviet Lunar Rover have all been buried in lunar dust by now because no one secured them. Only the corner reflectors placed by the United States were secured by astronauts, allowing countries around the world to use them repeatedly."
Faced with the three men's explanations, Gao Jian lowered his head in shame.
Good heavens, he had actually doubted the American moon landings.
Gao Jian asked again, "But the radiation levels in the Van Allen Radiation Belt are so high. Not long ago, after the SLS rocket headed for the moon, the Lorentz force effects in the high-energy particle and electron radiation belts sent it spinning. The entire rocket's flight path turned into a spiraling ascent."
Director Dan's tone turned odd. "Did Elon Musk tell you that too?"
Gao Jian nodded earnestly.
"Why does that man blab about everything?" Old Li grumbled.
Deputy Director Bian waved a hand. "Oh, it's only natural that he knows. He did get his start in aerospace, after all. The former US president probably told him again."
The mention of the former US president left everyone feeling it was a shame.
That old blond might have been stupid, but he had been straightforward at heart. His interests had all revolved around plotting candlestick charts and making money. At least his desire to mediate in Western Asia and Eastern Ukraine had been sincere. It was a shame he had departed so abruptly.
Had he not departed quite so abruptly, his methods might actually have brought the conflicts in those two hot spots to a halt.
Very few people in any country knew about the SLS rocket's "spiraling ascent."
For one thing, NASA's televised coverage relied primarily on CGI, leaving viewers unable to verify it. For another, the vast majority of countries lacked the ability to continuously track the SLS rocket.
Continuous orbital tracking required highly sophisticated space technology.
Aside from NASA's deep space network in the United States, only CNSA's deep space network and the European Space Agency's ESA deep space network could maintain continuous tracking.
Leaving aside Europe and America, who were joined at the hip, even CNSA had needed three deep space stations-the 66-meter station in Jiamusi, the 35-meter station in Kashgar, and the 35-meter station in Argentina-along with its domestic radio interferometer array to maintain continuous tracking.
As a result, only a handful of senior officials throughout CNSA knew about it. Most middle-ranking and junior personnel at the space agency were unaware.
Clearly, the major spacefaring nations had reached a tacit understanding when it came to concealing gravitational anomalies and Van Allen Radiation Belt anomalies.
As for why they were so united on this, Gao Jian could only put it down to their reluctance to cause public panic... after all, gravitational anomalies sounded decidedly supernatural.
As for the "Artemis Geomagnetic Storm" incident, the two directors also gave Gao Jian a thorough explanation.
First: the geomagnetic storm had indeed been unexpected. The country now assessed the space environment as extremely hostile, and had been forced to suspend the Chang'e Program to ensure personnel safety.
Second: the Chinese Space Station was one of the few surviving spacecraft. Its hull employed a brute-force approach to radiation shielding. They had been piling on materials since 2024, building up extremely thick radiation protection. The shielded hull had "heavy water" and "lead plate" layers to protect against high-energy protons and high-energy electrons respectively.
Third: more than half the satellites in low and high Earth orbits had been knocked out, but those disabled satellites could still be reactivated. There was genuinely nothing to be done about the ones that had burned out.
Fourth: the global situation was constantly shifting, and the bigger picture took precedence over everything... as for what constituted the bigger picture, everyone had their own interpretation.
In short, after the harsh lesson of the geomagnetic storm, and with the gravitational field in low Earth orbit still not back to normal, a moon landing was out of the question.
Gao Jian looked bitter. "So there really is no way? We can't even find a temporary launch window?"
Old Li coughed. "There are no launch windows anymore. Neither geomagnetic activity nor gravitational field activity follows any discernible pattern. The higher-ups are absolutely firm on this. The Long March 10 has been built, but it might not have the SLS rocket's luck. Sending astronauts up would be sending them to their deaths."
"I'm not afraid to die!"
"Of course you're not. You wouldn't be the one going up. The astronauts would!" Old Li gave him an irritated look.
"I could be an astronaut too! I've wanted to be an astronaut since I was a kid!" Gao Jian said urgently.
"Get lost, get lost, get lost," Old Li snapped. "From now on, you'll settle down and work on theory with me. Do you think assigning you theoretical work is some kind of exile? It's to protect you. Do you really want to go leaping into the sky?"
Just then, Song Yaozu suddenly shouted from the rooftop.
"It blew up!"
The four reflexively turned to look at the northern sky.
Everyone on the rooftop raised their heads, pointing all their phone cameras north.
One second, two seconds... nothing seemed to happen.
"My Douyin video blew up again, hehehe..." Song Yaozu held up his phone, grinning foolishly. On its screen was the video he had filmed earlier of the staff from the neighboring defense technology and industry bureau fleeing in terror.
Everyone glared at Song Yaozu.
Director Dan was just about to scold him when a hazy white glow flashed through the corner of his eye.
"What's that..."
Gao Jian had kept his eyes on the sky the entire time. He briefly entered the state of "falsehood recognition," extending his divine sense as far into the sky as he could. From his perspective, the azure sky lost its color in an instant.
The atmosphere's refraction of sunlight ceased to exist. The blue canopy before his eyes instantly became an endless black night sky. He could even see countless twinkling, colorless stars and the clearly defined moon hanging in the daytime sky.
His divine sense also detected an exceedingly faint, thin ripple sweeping through the northern sky.
The disturbance vanished in an instant, leaving no time to capture any details. Only half the people there saw that faint white flash.
The intercontinental nuclear missile was far too high up. It was nothing like the bright spot everyone had imagined, one that could burn through the clouds. Instead, it was more like an immense, distant blue curtain briefly veiled in a gentle sheen, which the midday sunlight swallowed an instant later.
"Where? Where?" Song Yaozu spun around beneath the sky, unable to spot a thing.
But Gao Jian had seen the nuclear flash itself. A fleeting bright spot had expanded through the "night sky" at the speed of light in an exceedingly short span, then struck his eyes just as quickly, leaving him dizzy and dazed.
Everyone else had seen only a momentary aurora, produced by the continuous bombardment of the upper atmosphere by high-energy particles from the nuclear explosion. Like dew beneath the blazing sun, it had vanished in an instant.
It was over.
The space agency staff all looked a little forlorn. Clearly, many of them had failed to see that hazy flash.
Someone calculated the altitude of the nuclear explosion.
"The news said the missile was originally supposed to detonate at 2,800 kilometers, but judging by the timing just now, it seems to have exploded at an altitude of 1,800 to 2,000 kilometers."
Animated discussion broke out.
Old Li noticed that Gao Jian looked off, his face rather pale, and asked, "What's wrong, Gao? Heatstroke? Or are you feeling unwell somewhere?"
"I'm fine, I'm fine." Gao Jian shook his head.
He had seen it clearly. That missile had been blasted apart!
A brilliant beam fired from the moon had crossed 380,000 kilometers, ignoring the interference of the gravitational field and radiation belts. Like a colossal spear reaching into the heavens, it had struck the nuclear missile's warhead with pinpoint accuracy and shattered it in midair. By comparison, the nuclear explosion, equivalent to 500,000 tons of TNT, had seemed as powerless as an ordinary cultivator pierced by a sword, left with no choice but to self-destruct in despair.
Is the fellow cultivator on the moon really that powerful?
Gao Jian broke out in a cold sweat.
Before you continue