When my superiors asked me to write a report on the Wenchang launch site, my first feeling was one word: difficult.
Wenchang launch site, from the project to the design and then to the construction, just the commander of the engineering command department has changed four. One of the experts responsible for technical engineering equipment, his daily work "running account", remembered more than ten books, stacked on the table is half a person high, looking at people dizzy, not to mention all of them digested, condensed into more than 200,000 words of the book.
I don't know why, but many of the details about the Wenchang launch site come and go in my mind. What really made me determined to accept this assignment were two things: one was the 2014 typhoon "Wei-Ma-zong", which swept the launch site to a disastrous state. The second was when I heard someone say a name: Xianghu Zhou. These two things prompted me to pick up the phone and call Zhang Ping, the commander of the Wenchang launch site, who came up with a euphemistic but unforgiving tone and fired a salvo at me: you, a writer, always sitting at home, how can you write good things that are really grounded in the atmosphere.
I have been working at the Xichang Satellite Launch Center for 14 years, and have always regarded Xichang as my second hometown, and the Wenchang Space Launch Center is subordinate to the Xichang Center. I've been working at Xichang Satellite Launch Center for 14 years and I consider Xichang as my second home, and Wenchang Space Launch Center is under Xichang Center. Besides, it has always been my duty to set up a monument for the astronauts. The first thing I did was to get on a plane to Wenchang.
Hainan Wenchang launch site with the Xichang launch site is completely different: not surrounded by mountains, look out, is the boundless blue sea and sky and lush coconut groves. The "three highs" are the characteristics of this place, no matter where you go, will be high temperature, high humidity, high salt wrapped up, so you can not hide, walk a few steps in the sun, the whole body through a salty smell of sweat, and soon clothes will be sunburned out of the saline, as the local fish people say, this is called the sun dried fish.
In Wenchang launch site, raise the eyes is the hard work of entrepreneurs and not easy. The weather is hot, four or five big boys, crowded in a dozen square meters of residential transformation of the narrow space, sleeping in bunk beds, the leaders also live in the same environment. It turns out, build this launch site, the funds allocated above is not abundant, they had to break every penny into pieces, used in the main construction of the launch site, while they had to live expenses to a minimum. Even so, some projects were cut and cut in the design drawings. For example, the big rockets standing on the launcher should have a rain canopy, which had to be discarded because there was not enough money. When a typhoon hits and torrential rain pours down, you have to have someone climb to the top of the tower to put up a rain tarp. There are many other things like this ......
The first person I interviewed was an advanced model: Zhou Xianghu. I thought that a typical person like him has long been built by the media to have a good mouth, at least let me interview is not so laborious. After meeting him, I realized how self-righteous I was. He was still a mute man who didn't know how to introduce himself, not at all like the various media-polished characters. He wore deep myopia, was permanently blind in his left eye, and his right eye had a bare vision of 0.04, almost indistinguishable from blindness. You can't imagine that when the light is leaving him little by little, this man can still endure his illness, meticulously go to complete his supervisory work, and can not make the slightest mistake. What kind of strength and perseverance does it take to do that? I asked him, before your retina detached, there was no sign at all? He said softly, there, eye swelling and pain, vision loss, thought it was a minor problem, want to wait until the end of the project ...... Later, he was forced into the hospital. I think only people who value their responsibilities more than their eyes or even their lives will play so hard to get! He dedicated the most valuable organ of the human body for the noble cause of the country: a pair of eyes to observe the world. When he spoke of his regrets, he only said softly: I can no longer see my daughter growing up ......
In this launch site construction army, these people have never claimed to be heroes, but rather mocked themselves as "special civil workers". To be honest, in the few months I interviewed them, I found that their labor intensity is even greater than that of the real civilian workers, and their living conditions are even more difficult than those of the civilian workers. Every day they deal with reinforced concrete, which day is not covered with sweat and mud? In order to catch up with the schedule, they work almost every day than the civilian workers early, close than the civilian workers late. Two launch pylons of more than 10,000 tons of steel, 30 people to assemble; two infusion tank 7,000 tons of steel, 70 people to complete. Many people at a young age, because of this overloaded work, and prematurely got lumbar disc herniation. There is a soldier named He Rui, he was working under the high temperature of more than 50 degrees sunshine, suddenly his eyes went black, his feet slipped, and he fell down from the scaffolding, the safety belt tied to him did not work, and his body was lifted by a rebar high in mid-air, a 16 mm spiral steel, from the root of his thighs all the way to poke into his stomach, which is 30 centimeters long, and just on top of the stomach wall. Everyone rushed to send him to Haikou Hospital rescue. When he had just finished the CT and ultrasound, and had not yet cleaned up the trauma mouth, when he met his leader Yang Xiaoming, his first words turned out to be: Mr. Yang, I'm sorry, I'm making trouble for you again ......
What also moved me was the farmer brothers who were the first to make sacrifices. The construction of the entire launch site requires the relocation of 24 natural villages, involving 1,960 households and more than 9,000 people saying goodbye to their hometowns. There is such a middle-aged woman, after her husband died of illness, she dragged three young children to live, when her family's new seven-storey house was large-scale equipment rumbling push down, she suddenly fell on her knees in front of the director of the land acquisition office refused to get up, so that the people present were shocked, thought that she was going to renege on the original thought that she was just worried about her son, moved away from the place, will affect his son's academic performance, and can not be enrolled in local She hoped that *** could help her solve this problem. Later, her son is very competitive, got into the dream school ......
In the "long five" first flight summary of the meeting, a headquarters leadership emotionally said: we really want to remember the people of Hainan on our space cause to make great contributions, they are They are not afraid of sacrifices and sacrificing for the sake of everyone. If one day we forget, that is our sin.
Now, it's time to talk about the typhoon. Typhoon, is also the Wenchang launch site of the "regular guests". In order to feel the power of the typhoon, I deliberately chose in the typhoon "Shalijia" landed on Hainan Island before, and went to Wenchang, witnessed the front-line astronauts with the typhoon battle feat.
On the opposite side of my imagination, the night before the typhoon, the weather was so beautiful that it was unbelievable: the sea was blue, the night sky was full of colorful clouds, and the moon was full and big with a circle of light, like a lady's cheeks wiped with rouge as good as a little bit of stormy weather is coming. However, this is only a gentle illusion. When you sleep in the middle of the night, you will be awakened by the sudden sound of the wind, and listen carefully to the window, as if there are tens of thousands of male wolves hissing and low growling from far away and near.
The next thing you know, the whole launch site is gray. I also tried to push open the door to see what was going on outside, and managed to unscrew the lock, but it was like there was a giant palm outside the door, wildly and roughly trying to squeeze in, and I was so scared that I could only pop the lock back on the door. This time, I realized why they sent me dry food, mineral water, flashlights and a series of other emergency supplies. In addition, I finally understood why the various doors on the walkway were opened and sandbags were built to stabilize them like a levee. This was also to keep the typhoon from toppling the entire building and to minimize its destructive power. I interviewed harvested a lot of details, such as the door opened, the house shoes like a goose, abruptly followed the typhoon flew up ...... these details, you do not come to the typhoon landing site, it is really difficult to imagine out.
And then there's the big storm. Heavy rain in front of the gale is much weaker, was the wind whisked straight foaming, a moment swish run to the east, a moment and then turned back to retreat, sometimes actually twisted in the wind, like a crazy python ...... and then the coconut grove. Why do the leaves of the coconut tree grow like the shape of a comb? It turns out that it is used to fight with the typhoon, otherwise, it does not grow slits in the leaves to prevent the typhoon from drilling through its dense barrier, without a few may be uprooted by the typhoon, not to mention that it grows so tall and lush. I live on the 6th floor, every time I see the gale blowing the coconut tree down again and again, almost the entire ambush on the ground, and see it tenaciously stand up, feel it body is not yet completely straight, and again be forced to hold down ...... typhoon past, look around, the entire coconut grove from the green to brown, as if by the fire roasted like. Some of the trees can not withstand this torture, early four back and forth lying there, the scene is very tragic.
After about seven hours, the typhoon itself seemed to have exhausted itself, and was not so violent. The cooking class rushed to notify the opening of the meal. I just unscrewed the lock on the door, the door crashed open, like a mad cow rushed in, making me break out in a sweat again. I didn't realize that the aftermath of the typhoon was still so strong that when I got out of the door, I still had to hold on to the railing and stay close to the wall to prevent the gale from grabbing me and throwing me downstairs. I managed to get to the elevator and found the doors open but jammed with sandbags: out of service. I had to go down the stairs, and I really don't know how I managed to get to the first floor, it was pretty lousy all in all.
Even more exciting, at the Wenchang launch site, I followed the entire process of the first launch of the Long March 5. Wenchang launch site was built because of it. What I can't forget in particular is that on the day of the first launch of the Long March 5, the launch program was suspended several times due to malfunctions. Why were they suspended? Every pause, people are upset. Especially the minute before the launch, a chain of failures and was reversed back, I just feel my heart has been raised to the eye of the throat ...... accidents, always in your unexpected nodes and moments occur, but was calm and resourceful astronauts time and time again to rule out the risk of averting a catastrophe. When I finally breathed a sigh of relief and watched the big rocket whistling from the launch tower rising into the sky, I with tears in my eyes once again savored the unique pride of being a Chinese astronaut. It was also at this time that I was able to become one of them and record with my own pen the brilliant deeds of the Chinese astronauts, isn't it the luck and honor of a writer? Looking back now, everything witnessed at the Wenchang launch site has gradually faded away with time, but all those glittering people and things will become my memory that can't be cleared away in this life.