Gao Jian, You're an Outsider Too

The spacecraft's flight path to the moon was not a straight line, but a spiral.

As the realization clicked into place, Gao Jian narrowed his eyes.

The truth was this: after the TLI burn began, the spacecraft had not charged straight toward the lunar region. Instead, it had slowly climbed along an ever-expanding spiral.

Thus, the straight-line distance to the moon was still 384,400 kilometers. That had not changed, and the moon was still the size he knew. It had never expanded tenfold. It was just that for every small increment of vertical progress, the spacecraft had to travel an enormously long distance sideways.

Over the past half hour, the spacecraft had raced more than twenty thousand kilometers along its spiral path, yet its straight-line displacement toward the moon was less than two thousand kilometers.

No wonder.

No wonder the moon's apparent diameter had increased by only a measly 0.05%, almost impossible to distinguish with the naked eye.

No wonder the contours of the boundless land beneath him looked as though he were only two thousand kilometers above the ground, rather than twenty thousand.

The spacecraft had been spiraling the entire time, its vertical ascent forcibly slowed.

And Gao Jian had a terrible sense of direction. Ever since childhood, he had struggled to tell left from right or north from south, which was why he had failed to notice.

Moreover, the fact that its resultant velocity remained fixed at 10.92 km/s showed that Earth's gravity was not acting on the spacecraft at all. Otherwise, its resultant velocity would definitely have declined slowly.

Gao Jian simply could not understand why Earth's gravity was not taking effect.

Was Earth's gravitational influence confined to within 500 km of the surface?

Setting aside the gravitational anomaly, what was powering the spacecraft's spiral flight?

Ever since the TLI burn ended, the spacecraft had been coasting without propulsion. Gao Jian had not applied any thrust either; most of the time, he had merely lain on top of it and meditated.

Gao Jian recalled the cultivation teachings of the Great Dao once again.

[Newton's first law], recorded in "The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy," had explicitly stated: "Every body remains at rest or in uniform motion in a straight line unless an external force compels it to change its state of motion."

Newton was a giant of mechanics, a founding father of physics. Spiral flight essentially meant continually changing course along tangents to a circle. Throughout that process, an external force had to be acting continuously.

Then what force was continually deflecting the spacecraft's course?

Gao Jian suddenly felt a tingling all over his body.

He looked down and suddenly realized that the spacecraft had already reached the Van Allen radiation belt.

The radiation belts were layers of high-energy charged particles, divided into an inner and an outer belt.

The inner belt extended from 1,000 km to 6,000 km in altitude. At approximately two thousand kilometers, the spacecraft was right inside it. The inner belt consisted mainly of high-energy protons-hydrogen nuclei-and posed a major radiation threat to spacecraft.

The outer radiation belt spanned altitudes of thirteen thousand to twenty-five thousand kilometers and consisted mainly of high-energy electrons.

Yet a quarter of an hour earlier, he had clearly felt the spacecraft enter a distinct electron belt. Although he did not have a lightning spiritual root, he had practiced low-level spells such as Palm Thunder, so he was naturally quite sensitive to lightning elements.

At the time, he had sensed an extraordinarily turbulent electron field.

Even now, his white polyester shirt was crackling with sparks.

But why would there be so many high-energy electrons in the inner belt?

Could it be...

An absurd conjecture arose in his mind.

The spherical celestial body theory explained the radiation belts as the product of a planet's gravity and magnetic field acting together. But this land was not a sphere-or rather, not a small sphere. It was a vast spherical surface with an immense radius of curvature, or a world with only a slight curvature!

What scale of geomagnetic field would such a world generate? And what sort of radiation belts would it produce? Most likely, there was no longer any distinction between inner and outer belts. They were all mixed together.

What did electrons plus a magnetic field produce?

Lo... Lorentz force?

It was a Lorentz force spiral!

It was a Lorentz force spiral covering all of low Earth orbit! An enormous magnetic vortex enveloping the entire region!

There was no sustained drag in a vacuum, but a charged spacecraft hull traveling through an immense planar geomagnetic field would continuously experience a lateral deflecting force. The spacecraft needed no propulsion. The magnetic field naturally dragged every object that rose into the sky, forcibly twisting its direction of motion. Combined with the failure of gravity, this produced that long Lorentz force spiral trajectory.

He had found the reason for the spacecraft's spiraling flight.

Lorentz, giant of electromagnetism, was this also part of your calculations with Newton?

Filled with reverence for the pioneers of physics, Gao Jian made an estimate and found that the spacecraft would circle along its spiral path for ninety-six hours before reaching lunar orbit.

In other words, the theory that it took ninety-six hours to reach the moon was correct, but the way it worked was rather absurd. Gao Jian could no longer understand where this [ninety-six-hour] lunar flight theory, jointly accepted by NASA and CNSA, had actually come from.

Did CNSA know about any of this? Even if CNSA did not, surely the country knew?

"So that's it... So that's it."

Gao Jian murmured to himself.

But another question still troubled him.

Without Earth's gravity helping the spacecraft slow down, how would it decelerate later? How would it land on the moon?

Would it crash straight into the moon at the staggering speed of 10.92 km/s?

A speed of 10.92 km/s also far exceeded the first cosmic velocity relative to the moon, 1.68 km/s. At that speed, the spacecraft could not even orbit the moon if it wanted to. It would only keep hurtling onward, becoming a rogue planet in the solar system.

At such a high speed, lunar docking and a soft landing were impossible. They were pure fantasy.

Then how exactly had the Apollo crewed spacecraft landed on the moon?

Even Gao Jian now had no choice but to question whether Armstrong and the others had truly landed there.

He even doubted whether the lunar orbital module had really been deployed into lunar orbit a year earlier by Falcon Heavy.

If it had actually been deployed, that meant there had to be some other force field near the moon that helped Falcon Heavy decelerate. If so, things would still be manageable, since that would mean the SLS rocket could slow down too.

That was the best-case scenario.

But Gao Jian did not dare gamble on it.

By now, in his heart, he had already pronounced this lunar mission dead.

He could not help recalling that emphatic line from Wan Hu's email: "Every lunar landing mission humanity has attempted to date has been wrong. They aren't even as reliable as strapping rockets to a chair like I did!"

No. Whether this lunar landing can go ahead or not, I have to get to the bottom of all this. I have to survive and take this information back to CNSA. Even the Chang'e lunar landing program needs to be halted. Going up there blindly would be suicide, Gao Jian thought.

His spiritual sense slowly seeped into the command module.

The four astronauts inside knew nothing about any of this, and Gao Jian had no intention of contacting them anytime soon. Commander Robert was still using the Hohmann transfer orbit formulas to calculate their journey. His calculation put their arrival at the moon at ninety-six hours, a result that happened to match reality.

Getting the right answer through the wrong process felt as absurd as a cultivator accidentally circulating spiritual energy through the wrong meridians, only to form a core anyway.

Gao Jian also paid particular attention to the instruments inside the spacecraft.

To his disappointment, the speed displayed inside the command module had already dropped from 10.92 km/s to 10.25 km/s, even though the spacecraft's actual speed had not decreased.

This meant the spacecraft's entire computational system was running according to the original Hohmann transfer orbit calculations. The spacecraft was still "pretending" to undergo "continuous variable deceleration" under Earth's gravitational influence, and the astronauts had no way of noticing.

With such a meticulous design, he could all but conclude that NASA's upper management had deliberately arranged all of this.

He did not know what NASA intended, nor whether CNSA knew about it, but at that moment, his desire to speak with Wan Hu reached its peak.

Six hours later.

The SLS rocket had traveled approximately 235,900 kilometers. Its actual distance from the moon had decreased by about twenty-four thousand kilometers, and the moon's apparent diameter had grown by approximately 6.66%.

Although it was a little bigger, visually, the moon now looked about the same size as a full moon during the Mid-Autumn Festival.

At this distance, Gao Jian still could not make out any details on the lunar surface, nor could he determine whether spiritual veins or spiritual energy existed there.

The idea that the moon possessed resources for immortal cultivation was not something Gao Jian had simply imagined. He had been in this world for two years and could still distinguish his old home from his present reality.

The Taiyin Star back home was a legendary sacred land of immortals, but that did not mean this world's moon was one too.

Yet when Gao Jian first crossed over, he had been confined to a private intensive care room at Han Dong First People's Hospital after a car accident. He had often stared blankly at the bright moon outside his window. During those half-conscious days, he had frequently dreamed of that sacred immortal land.

It had not been pure fantasy, either. Gao Jian remembered it clearly: on several occasions, he had seen fleeting Buddhist seals on the lunar surface.

Above the lunar surface, immortal light shone with divine splendor, and Buddhist seals blazed brilliantly, as though fellow Buddhist cultivators of tremendous power were walking upon the Taiyin Star. What a magnificent sight.

Those scenes had excited Gao Jian so much that he had almost climbed out of his hospital bed several times to search for traces of immortals, giving his grandfather, who was looking after him, quite a fright.

Although he was a disciple of the Mystic Sect, Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism were all one family. As long as he could cultivate toward immortality, Gao Jian could accept eating fine vegetarian meals, sleeping on a silk-and-jade bed, and living in the Great Moon Palace.

Those days spent gazing at the moon during his hospitalization had always remained his deepest secret. After his discharge, he had searched for reports of strange lights on the lunar surface, but found nothing. He believed this was because immortals and mortals were separated, leaving ordinary people unable to see the workings of cultivation.

After recovering and joining CNSA, Gao Jian had often worked late into the night over the next two years to prepare for the lunar landing. Occasionally, he went to the rooftop to stargaze, or visited the youth cultural center to borrow Uncle Sun's telescope and observe the moon. Unfortunately, he never found anything.

This had also cast a shadow over his Dao heart.

If it had all been nothing but my imagination, if there had never been any means of cultivation on the moon, if there was no spiritual energy anywhere in the world...

He did not dare pursue that thought.

Now, Gao Jian was a little closer to the Taiyin Star. He could not help staring at the moon, now 6.66% larger, hoping another miracle would occur.

A long while later.

Disappointed, Gao Jian withdrew his gaze. Instead of looking at the moon, he turned to the surrounding stars, silently estimating the period of revolution by observing the changes in their positions relative to the spacecraft.

Six hours had passed, and the starry sky had slowly rotated around the spacecraft exactly once. But the rate of rotation was not constant; the strength of the Lorentz force spiral field kept changing as their altitude increased.

Calculating the rate with the stars' positions as reference points, he found that the magnetic field would weaken as their distance increased. Yet the Lorentz force spiral field would remain, and the period of revolution would grow longer and longer.

Each turn of the spiral brought them only a little over twenty thousand kilometers closer to the moon.

Yet their radial speed toward the moon remained constant at 1.1 km/s, making the entire journey to the moon take exactly ninety-six hours.

There were still ninety hours of travel left. In the past, that would have passed in a single short session of secluded cultivation.

But for some reason, Gao Jian suddenly felt a slight coolness beside his nose. Instinctively, he reached up and touched it.

Blood.

Gao Jian froze, then immediately realized something.

Was the high-energy particle radiation in the Van Allen radiation belt causing his nose to bleed?

Under the original lunar mission plan, a straight flight to the moon required only one crossing of the Van Allen radiation belts. Passing through the inner belt would take just twelve to eighteen minutes, traversing the gap about twenty minutes, and crossing the main region of the outer belt another twenty minutes or so. The total radiation dose would be limited.

But the spacecraft was climbing in circle after circle along a spiral trajectory. As a result, it had already spent six hours in the radiation belts, and it would remain immersed in them for another twenty hours. There was no getting out anytime soon.

What a radiant blessing.

The accumulated radiation dose had exceeded the limit.

Even his body, as a Foundation Establishment cultivator, was feeling unwell. Could the astronauts withstand it?

Gao Jian frowned and sent his spiritual sense into the command module again. For the moment, none of the four astronauts showed any obvious abnormalities, which meant the SLS rocket's radiation shielding was reasonably adequate. But that adequacy was based on the original lunar mission design.

Gao Jian could clearly sense the radiation dose inside the cabin continuing to accumulate. It was simply difficult for the human body to notice.

The cumulative damage from radiation was certainly there. Even if it did not show immediately, the astronauts would gradually develop symptoms later.

NASA really doesn't value astronauts' lives at all.

But if I hadn't stubbornly insisted on repairing the spacecraft, wouldn't the astronauts have made an emergency return long ago because of insufficient fuel?

At that thought, Gao Jian's Dao heart tightened.

Had his stubbornness caused this?

Thinking of this, the pedantic, upright, old-fashioned cultivator could only console himself with a self-deceiving thought: I'm just a lousy immortal cultivator. I didn't understand this world well enough. I'm the outsider who caused this accident. If we make it back, I'll definitely give the four of you some pill crumbs to mix into water and drink.

He was an outsider, a passerby, an immortal cultivator.

As long as the moon was still there, as long as the Taiyin Star was still the Taiyin Star, as long as he could reach it and find spiritual veins, everything else could be set aside for now.

"The spacecraft's self-check is complete. All systems are normal. This is going to be a long trip. Have you thought about what flavor of mashed potatoes you want for dinner?" Lunar landing astronaut Allen's voice came from the command module.

"I'm having my burrito," came the voice of lunar orbit engineer Ron.

"You Dave, all you ever do is eat burritos." Allen shook his head.

"Still better than those cans of mashed potatoes you eat!"

"No taste."

Navigator Jim seemed rather uneasy. He had no interest in dinner, merely clutching the little cross he had secretly brought in his pocket as he addressed the arguing Allen and Ron:

"Have you noticed that we haven't heard those thumping sounds for a long time? I thought they'd keep thumping all the way to the moon."

Engineer Ron squeezed out some mashed potatoes and put them into his mouth. "It was just some noise during launch."

As he opened a sealed package of burritos, Allen also said, "Don't worry over nothing. We've checked with the ground plenty of times already. It was just some unusual noise during launch. We can find out what caused it after we get back."

Jim remained uneasy. "But at the time, it really sounded like someone was banging on the hull with a wrench."

Seeing that neither of them took it very seriously, Jim turned to the commander.

"Robert, don't you think so?"

Robert looked rather stiff. He floated there without saying a word.

"Robert?"

Puzzled, Jim grabbed a cabin handhold and pushed off hard, swimming over like a fish.

"Hmm? Another message from the ground? What did they send? Let me see."

Jim pulled the commander aside, leaned forward to look, and froze on the spot.

"What's wrong, Jim?" The other two came over too, and they all saw the low-resolution image the ground had just sent.

Judging by the angle, it had been taken by a surveillance camera on the tank section, originally intended to monitor the direction of solid booster separation. It therefore also showed a small portion of the rocket's tail and the EUS engine nozzle.

Judging by the timestamp, the image appeared to have been taken at the instant the rocket's EUS engine fired for the translunar injection burn.

But neither the angle nor the timing mattered anymore. They had all seen the human figure blasted away by the flames.