311: Chapter 311 Exposure and Widespread Doubt

Chief Designer Sun did not speak. He leaned back in his chair, his fingers lightly tapping the tabletop. The proposal Zhao Yang presented wasn't something he'd just dreamed up on a whim; he had spent a month identifying the limitations of the current plan from the data, and then proposed an alternative with clear theoretical advantages based on his own understanding of fluid mechanics.

Approaching a project this way would be unrealistic for any newcomer, but Zhao Yang was no ordinary newcomer. He was personally assigned by Deputy Director Wang, was a full professor at Peking University, and was a top-tier genius who had made breakthroughs across multiple fields.

After a moment of silence, Chief Designer Sun agreed.

"Fine. I'll give you a small conference room as an office. You can pick your own staff—I won't stop those who are willing to go. Funding will come from the department's discretionary budget, though the amount is limited. The test bench schedule must be separated from the main line; it cannot affect the main line's testing progress."

"That's enough."

Zhao Yang nodded with satisfaction. He hadn't asked for much to begin with, and this was plenty!

When Chief Designer Sun announced this decision at the department's weekly meeting, the atmosphere in the conference room immediately became stifling. He stated that Dr. Zhao would lead an independent technical verification task force starting today to explore a brand-new configuration for a single turbopump shared by four thrust chambers. Anyone interested in joining could sign up with him after the meeting.

After he finished speaking, no one in the conference room said a word, but the expressions on everyone's faces were different. Some were frowning, some were shaking their heads, and some were exchanging glances with those beside them.

After the meeting adjourned, discussions broke out in the hallway.

"A month. He's only been here for a month. A guy who had to crouch on the floor to measure dimensions on turbopump assembly drawings before is now going to lead a task force for a new configuration? Isn't this just nonsense?"

"I'm not questioning his mathematical ability. Math is math, but engines are engines. You're letting a mathematician redesign the basic configuration of an engine—how many professional disciplines lie between those two? Thrust chamber flow distribution, combustion stability, structural thermal deformation... these are things that require years of accumulated experience to touch. What right does he have!"

"Isn't this a waste of resources? Our current workload is already very heavy! And resources and funding are tight! A newcomer like Zhao Yang is coming to snatch resources and funding?"

"Even if he is a genius, he shouldn't be allowed to do this!"

"Exactly! What was Chief Designer Sun thinking? Even if he was assigned by Deputy Director Wang, we shouldn't indulge him like this, right?"

As Zhao Yang walked down the hallway, the discussions quieted down, but they didn't stop completely. Several people's gazes followed him into the small, temporarily vacated conference room. Their eyes held no malice, just pure skepticism and lack of understanding.

Zhao Yang didn't bother explaining anything. He didn't need to convince anyone of this. He sat in the small conference room for about half an hour until five researchers knocked and entered. They were all young; the one with the most experience had only been working for five years, while the shortest had just graduated two years ago. Their reasons for being willing to join varied.

One said he was deeply impressed by Zhao Yang's previous paper on superconducting models and felt this new configuration was theoretically viable. Another said he was just doing repetitive data processing on the main line anyway, so he might as well come and learn something new. There was also a young man named Zhou Hao who was a bit nervous when he first entered; he said, 'Teacher Zhao, to be honest, I came mainly because I feel that no matter what you do, you eventually succeed. I wanted to ride your coattails a bit.' Zhao Yang smiled after hearing this and told him to join.

The task force was assembled just like that. They used the idle time slots of existing test benches, and funding came from the discretionary budget Chief Designer Sun had approved. Zhao Yang led these five people as they started drawing from the most basic configuration sketches: the layout of the thrust chambers, the piping connections between the turbopump and the chambers, and the internal flow channels of the flow distributor.

With four thrust chambers sharing a single turbopump, the hardest part was flow distribution. The combustion pressure of the four chambers had to be strictly identical; any deviation exceeding a few percentage points would lead to asymmetric thrust, affecting the rocket's attitude control.

Additionally, there was the issue of structural thermal deformation. When the engine was running, the temperature of the thrust chambers would soar to two or three thousand degrees. Thermal expansion would cause slight shifts in the relative positions of the chambers. If these shifts overlapped with resonance frequencies, it might instead create new instabilities.

Zhao Yang spent every day in the office with these few people deriving formulas, drawing blueprints, and running simulations. After only a few days of this, internal opinions within the research institute began to grow sharper. When people saw Zhao Yang in the hallway, they were no longer just silent; occasionally, low whispers of "nonsense" and "wasting resources like this will lead to trouble sooner or later" could be heard.

Soon, someone bypassed their superiors to report the situation. The next day, news was leaked from the inside to the internet, and the matter quickly exploded.

It started with a post from a long-active account on an aerospace forum, stating that a certain academic star who had won the Cole Prize had, while participating in the development of the Long March 5, deemed the current plan too conservative after only a month and independently formed a team to develop a brand-new engine configuration.

The post was written very restrainedly, merely presenting a pile of facts without much judgment. However, the comment section quickly spiraled out of control.

"I knew Zhao Yang was getting too big for his boots. When he was crossing over into other fields before, I felt trouble was coming sooner or later. Math and computer science are different fields but not completely alien, but aerospace engineering is a totally different beast. He's only been in there for a month and dares to propose configuration-level changes? If that isn't blind overconfidence, what is?"

"The YF-77 plan for the Long March 5 has been under validation for several years, with so many rounds of testing done. He saw problems in just one month? If he really saw problems of this level in a month, does that mean the entire aerospace center's veteran engineers, who have worked for twenty or thirty years, are all useless?"

"This is truly ridiculous! I actually quite liked Zhao Yang before, I didn't expect him to get so arrogant! I'm very uncomfortable!"

"I'm so done! Did he go there just to hold them back? He really doesn't treat national funding like money, does he!"

Amidst the overwhelming skepticism, not everyone held a critical attitude.

"Have you guys considered that maybe he really did see something? The topological term cancellation problem Zhao Yang handled in his superconducting model paper is inherently connected to the mechanism of dual-engine parallel resonance. His theoretical accumulation in this area isn't something just anyone can match."

"I heard someone talk about him at an academic conference before. From Twin Primes to Goldbach to the superconducting model, he's finished every time within a timeframe where others thought 'it's impossible to be this fast.' Maybe he can slap everyone in the face this time too."

"The difference between mathematics and aerospace engineering—I don't think I need to explain that to you again, right? Also, he's smart, that's true, but when brilliance turns into conceit, things will only go south faster."

The heat online burned from evening straight through the night, staying on the trending searches for several hours. The Peking University Tieba, Shuimu BBS, and various professional aerospace forums were all discussing this matter. However, Zhao Yang paid no attention to any of it.

In the office, he led his five-person team through round after round of parameter sorting. When Zhou Hao returned to the office after having breakfast, he glanced at his phone and said to the colleague next to him, 'The outside world has already gone crazy with the cursing.'

His voice wasn't loud, but Zhao Yang still heard it.

"Don't worry about what they say online. Doing engineering is doing engineering; it's not about public relations."

Zhao Yang said calmly. For him, the experience of being questioned was simply too frequent; there was nothing worth saying about it.

Beside him, Zhou Hao and the others looked at each other.