The satellite itself doesn’t have the ability to increase power; it can only relay signals. To put it plainly, it’s just like a mirror: the higher the power you send up, the higher the power it relays back down; if your transmission power is insufficient, the signal it relays will also be weak.

Once it’s detected that the monitored signal power is too low, you have to manually increase the transmission power. But by how much? There are several formulas to calculate this. If you increase it too little, it’s useless; if you increase it too much, the microwave tubes in the microwave amplifier will suffer greater loss. Those things are extremely expensive, and they can’t be produced domestically yet—they have to be imported from the US and Germany, and none of them are cheap. Just one tube costs tens of thousands of dollars. There are six microwave tubes in the three backup microwave amplifiers, and their service life is measured in hours. Moreover, their lifespan curve isn’t linear—once you exceed the normal value, it drops off a cliff. One hour of high-power transmission can consume more than a dozen times the tube’s lifespan compared to standard power.

At this point, it’s up to the ground station staff on duty to control this balance. The transmission signal can’t be too weak, but you also have to save the microwave tubes as much as possible. If your hand shakes, you could lose dozens of hours of service life in an instant. This is probably one of the reasons why ground station staff are so well compensated. If you’re stingy all the time and the staff get frustrated, hundreds or even thousands of dollars could be lost just like that. Even though there are duty logs and two people sign off together, this kind of thing is basically unavoidable.

Besides increasing transmission power, there’s another more economical method: adjusting the angle of the transmitting antenna to align with the satellite’s receiver. The more accurate the angle, the higher the received power. Usually, unless the weather is extremely bad, this method can make up for power loss without having to increase the output of the microwave amplifier.

However, this procedure is also difficult to execute. If the antenna angle is even slightly off, the signal will be lost instantly. For TV signal relay, it’s not a big deal—at worst, the TV picture freezes for a moment or goes blank for a while. But stock market data transmission can’t afford that. Those data are very important and time-sensitive. If you hesitate for a few seconds here, people over there are left in the dark.

What’s even scarier is when there are major national political events, like important speeches by key leaders on significant days. These TV signals have to be broadcast to the whole world. The leader’s team of advisors and speechwriters may have spent half a month crafting a speech that lasts just a few minutes, with every word carrying important meaning. If you cut off the signal for a few seconds? That’s not just a work mistake—it’s a full-blown political incident. The investigation would start at the ministry level, and even the minister would get criticized.

Just saying it’s important doesn’t cut it. After Brian Carter visited the station for the first time, he immediately understood why such an unremarkable little company still required political vetting. This ground station was actually built inside a large military camp. An entire hilltop had been leveled, and from the gate at the foot of the hill to the satellite station’s work area, you had to pass through three walls and four checkpoints. The guards weren’t armed police—they were soldiers with loaded guns and big German shepherds.

Chapter 0005: The Saboteur

According to Director Walker—oh, by the way, this Director Walker is Samuel Walker, who interviewed Brian Carter; everyone at the company just calls him Director Walker, so Brian Carter followed suit. He said this place was originally a rocket engine test base for the Ministry of Aerospace. Not only was it a classified unit, but it was also a dangerous one. The exhaust from rocket engines is highly toxic. Even though testing stopped years ago, the nearby fruit trees still can’t bear normal fruit—the apples are only as big as crabapples and don’t taste good. That’s all because the soil here has been contaminated by rocket engine fuel.

In the late 1980s, as diplomatic relations between China and the US normalized, a large batch of imported equipment arrived, including large-diameter antennas and microwave amplifiers. When Nixon visited China, he even brought a 24-meter-diameter satellite antenna, which was installed here. Gradually, this place became a comprehensive satellite ground station complex—not just for civilian use, but also for military purposes. There are even ground remote sensing antennas for rocket launches here, though not in the same compound. You can see them from the satellite company’s antenna platform.

Mysterious and exciting—that was how Brian Carter felt on his first visit to the station. He kind of liked the job, or maybe he was just excited by the novelty. As long as it was something he liked, he learned very quickly. That’s why his father always encouraged him to study hard and pursue academic research in the future. According to his father, someone with Brian Carter’s “crazy” level of intelligence was best suited to focus on a specific project. Those research topics can’t be tackled by hard work alone; you need that kind of unpredictable, inspired feeling—who knows when you might hit upon something.

Unfortunately, Brian Carter knew his own strengths and weaknesses better than his father. His IQ wasn’t low, but he lacked a very crucial quality: patience. He was a very impatient, inconsistent person, and didn’t have any strong convictions. Once you lack that, forget about being a scientist—it’s hard enough just to run a breakfast stall well. You can’t just switch to a new project every time you lose interest, unless the Chinese Academy of Sciences is run by your family and the Premier is your uncle.