Chapter 845： Dhahran Space Base

Andre and his party took a special plane to Dhahran, a city in eastern Saudi Arabia.

In the last war between Saudi Arabia and Iraq, Iraq won a decisive victory, overthrew the royal regime of Saudi Arabia, and achieved democracy and freedom in Saudi Arabia. Now, although there is a puppet regime supported by the United States in the west of Saudi Arabia, it is already lingering, because almost all Saudi Arabia's oil resources are concentrated in the east, without oil wealth, although the Saudi royal family has a past The accumulation has also been going downhill.

The emerging democratic regime, supported by strong force, has gained a firm foothold. At the same time, as a former Allied country, the Soviet Union has always stationed troops in eastern Saudi Arabia. These troops are mainly to protect the safety of oil fields.

It can be said that Saudi Arabia has been controlled by the Soviet Union through the last oil war. As for small countries such as the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, we have to look at the face of the Soviet Union now. After all, the facts are clearly in front of us, and the United States will be finished soon. Yes, the Soviet Union is thriving.

In addition to drilling for oil in Saudi Arabia, the Soviet aerospace industry also took a fancy to Saudi Arabia's geographical location and established a new aerospace base near Dhahran.

Yes, it is the space base! Launching rockets in Saudi Arabia is much more advantageous than launching rockets in Baikonur!

All rockets are launched from west to east, just to take advantage of the rotation of the earth! Since the earth is rotating, the linear speed of rotation can be used to launch a rocket. For example, on the equator, this speed is 465 meters per second, and to launch artificial satellites, the required speed is 7900 meters per second, which can be Calculated, this speed is equivalent to one-seventeenth, which is also quite impressive.

However, at high latitudes, the linear velocity of the Earth's rotation is much smaller. Near 30 degrees north latitude, it is only half the velocity of the equator, and at the poles, this velocity is zero.

(It is also for this reason that after our country has three major launch bases, a fourth launch base is built in hn, just to make more use of the speed of the earth's rotation.)

The Soviet Union is a high-latitude country. Now the Soviet space center, Baikonur, is also at about 50 degrees north latitude. It launches spacecraft and is inherently disadvantaged. It can be said that compared with the United States, it can launch the same space The Soviet Union needed at least one-tenth more fuel to use it!

Therefore, after going south to the Indian Ocean, the Soviet aerospace industry began to relocate and find a launch site that was more fuel-efficient and could have higher carrying capacity.

Originally, Iran's Bandar Abbas and Chakhbahar were good choices. These places were under the control of the Soviet army and were very safe.

However, there is also a disadvantage here, after the launch, the rocket will enter the sky over Pakistan and India!

And now, Pakistan is still the target of the United States. Although China and Pakistan have a good relationship, the Soviet Union has little overlap. For the safety of the regional edge, Andre will pull Huaxia Chengfei to engage in super seven projects. Pakistan is looking for a breakthrough.

After the rocket takes off, the booster and other devices will continue to fall off. If you fly eastward and end up in the sky over Pakistan and throw these things away, it will obviously bring a lot of inconvenience. Therefore, after careful consideration, we finally chose the west. Saudi Arabia, in this way, taking off from Saudi Arabia, crossing the Persian Gulf, and reaching the sky over Iran, all the way is under the control of the Soviet Union, or is an ally of the Soviet Union, and it doesn’t matter if something falls from the sky!

Therefore, in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, a space base was built. Of course, the scale of this base is still very small. For example, now, it can only launch some simple aircraft, such as ballistic missiles!

Each flight of the rocket requires several months of preparation and repeated testing to ensure that nothing goes wrong. However, compared with rockets, ballistic missiles with almost the same structure are guaranteed to have sufficient reliability. It can be said that ballistic missiles in combat readiness need to be ready at any time after half an hour of preparation. The more advanced solid missiles that can go to the sky can take off almost after entering the launch data.

When the special plane that Andre and others took came to the Dhahran space base, on the launch pad here, an r-7 intercontinental ballistic missile was already standing on the launch pad.

This 34-meter-high ICBM, with a launch weight of 280 tons and a huge size, is actually not suitable for an ICBM. This NATO code-named ss-6 "baton" designed by the Soviet rocket expert Korolev "The ballistic missile, although it has the world's first ICBM, has no practical value.

This r-7 missile uses unstorable low-temperature propellant, which must be refilled before launch, and because of its huge size, it can only be launched from the ground with a launcher, resulting in extremely low response speed and survivability of the missile.

Therefore, this initial intercontinental missile was only deployed symbolically, and the main role of r-7 became propaganda weapons and space vehicles For example, derived from r-7, a huge family of rockets, including Sputnik, Vostok, Soyuz and Bliksem. The launch vehicle modified by R7 sent the first artificial satellite of mankind into the sky.

The design of the r7's booster is a distinct Soviet feature, with four cones, which are close to the projectile. At the same time, this missile is also the prototype of the nuclear bomb in the Red Alert.

With the continuous advancement of Soviet ballistic missile technology, this missile has been gradually withdrawn from service, but how to deal with this missile is a difficult problem. It is said that it is the most effective way to use waste to launch spacecraft. However, this kind of missile The reliability of the aircraft is not high. In case of flying or exploding in the air, it will be sad. After all, the spacecraft to be launched is more expensive.

Now, this ballistic missile just has a new purpose, which is used to test targets for laser weapons in outer space! At the same time, just to test the capabilities of the Soviet ballistic missile defense system!

Anyway, the shape of this ballistic missile is similar to the Soviet launch vehicle, even if it is discovered by Western satellite reconnaissance, there is nothing to say!

Standing in the desert near Dhahran, looking at the ballistic missile on the high launch pad, Andrei is still immersed in the violent aesthetics unique to the Soviet Union.

"Andrei, the experiment is about to start. Are you going to the launch center or staying here?" Ustinov asked beside Andrei.

Although the launch scene here is spectacular, if you want to see the entire interception process and the effect of the space laser weapon, you still need to go to the lobby of the launch center, so Andre can only agree and go Beside the base car: "Go to the launch center."