Meanwhile, at the northern foot of the Qilian Mountains, the first section of linear track at the Apollo Chariot No. 2 Test Facility had been installed deep inside the mountain. Eito Hyuga stood on the safety oversight platform and checked the locked-in data three times.
The facility's original design consisted of a main acceleration section nearly twelve kilometers long, a deceleration and maintenance zone nearly four kilometers long, and a high-altitude booster system outside the mountain.
What the E.U. had used it for was very simple, and very cruel.
They packed four Alexanders, their pilots, reentry capsules, and essential support equipment into a carrier, used the Electromagnetic Track to accelerate the entire assembly onto a high-altitude ballistic trajectory, then had rockets propel it into the suborbital segment. Once it reached the target area, multiple reentry capsules separated and slammed into the enemy's rear almost like meteorites.
The original design had a combat payload of less than a hundred and thirty tonnes. With its ablation-resistant structure, propulsion section, and fuel, the entire launch vehicle weighed over three hundred and fifty tonnes. Its purpose was to throw a few KMFs and their pilots thousands of kilometers away in the shortest possible time.
As for the new Apollo Chariot built by Great Han, it retained a main acceleration structure roughly twelve kilometers long. Including the maintenance, buffer, and escape sections, its total length approached sixteen kilometers.
However, Great Han's Space Technology Committee had deprioritized the low-altitude dispersal capsules and added two upper-stage rockets, orbital attitude control, and a complete Return Telemetry System.
According to current engineering estimates, the track could first propel a 480-tonne launch vehicle onto a high-altitude ballistic trajectory, after which the upper stages would complete actual orbital insertion. In unmanned mode, the first-phase objective was to deliver thirty-eight to forty-five