Chapter 940: Space-themed Hotel
The entire summit lasted two days, while Jiang Chen spent a full week in Canberra. Half of a day was spent in the summit, four days were spent in business meetings, and two days were spent with Ayesha, touring Canberra and experiencing the Australian culture.
However, there was nothing to visit during this time. Many shops in Canberra were tempoarliy closed due to this high-level summit.
The result of the summit was surprising. In some sense, even Jiang Chen didn’t expect this level of success. Originally, he thought that when such a demanding cooperation framework without even any profitability discussion was proposed, not many people would work with him, but it was not the case.
The first country to express their willingness to cooperate was Moro. After all, the state was Xin’s number one supporter. However, Jiang Chen was very skeptical if Santos even knew what the space elevator was. In addition, Malaysia, Thailand, New Zealand, Madagascar and some small African countries accepted the cooperation framework proposed by Celestial Trade.
After a period of discussion, Hua and Russia also expressed their willingness to join the cooperation framework.
The representative of Hua proposed to establish a microgravity laboratory for the Institute of Mechanics of the Hua Academy of Sciences for 51 national research projects including two-phase flow, microgravity combustion, vapor phase epitaxy, metal alloy nucleation, and supercooling. The offer was a research fund of 1.57 billion Xin New Dollars.
The conditions for building a microgravity laboratory on the ground were quite difficult, and the UA had been trying to obstruct Hua’s participation in the International Space Station project, making the microgravity experiment only possible on the ground. After all, the cost of maintaining a large space station alone was too expensive.
To simulate the gravity-free environment in the experiment, Hua’s solution was to design a tall tower that simulated the microgravity environment through free fall. In the National Microgravity Laboratory established in 1995, the design of the 100-meter drop tower, in which the microgravity time of the landing system was 3.5 seconds, and the microgravity time of the drop tube system was 3.26 seconds. Both parameters were already considered topnotch in the world.
This achievement was worth being proud of, but it was also very helpless, because they were forced to adapt and innovate.
After the summit, the first thing that the Hua representative told Jiang Chen was to set up a microgravity laboratory in Celestial City and offered a quote of 1.07 billion. Converted into Hua’s local currency, it was a huge sum of more than 7 billion. But compared to the tens of billions of huge costs of building a space station alone, and the unimaginable maintenance costs, the figure was nothing.
Since Hua was the first country to work with Celestial Trade, the microgravity laboratory cooperation document signed with Hua became the blueprint for negotiations with other parties.
Subsequently, Russia also reached an agreement with Celestial Trade to invest 950 million to build a relatively small microgravity laboratory in the gravity-free section of Celestial City, which replaced the original Russian area expansion on the International Space Station.
However, the majority of the income didn’t come from this, it was the private companies that made Jiang Chen his fortune.
Formerly, space was still an unattainable dream for ordinary people. If it was not a rich man, only people who signed SpaceX’s Mars Program to board the one-way spacecraft could achieve their space dream.
But now was the turning point.
Celestial Trade announced the fare of the space elevator on its official website. The base price of the adult fare before tax was only 1,500 Xin New Dollars! It was even cheaper than most of the international flights during busy season!
It was absurd!
As if overnight, the space travel only the rich could afford suddenly became an international tour that even ordinary people could participate in.
After SpaceX, the second company that came to see Jiang Chen was not a space exploration company. The business it operated was not related to aerospace, but related to the services industry.
It was the famous Hilton Group. As early as the development of Xin’s tourism project, the two sides already established a good relationship. Now, Hilton was aiming at the tourism prospects brought on by the space elevator.
The moment the summit ended, Hilton Group President Christopher Nasseta requested a meeting with Jiang Chen and proposed an invitation for cooperation.
“Mr. Jiang Chen, we are quite optimistic about the prospects of the space elevator. We have studied all related information on the space elevator published by you. We hope to be able to purchase a total area of 24,000-30,000 square meters in the gravity-free section, low gravity section and surface gravity section of the city to establish space-themed hotels.”
The cost of a space station was expensive largely because of the high cost of shipping. After the completion of the space elevator, the price of orbit construction would fall substantially. Take the 50 billion US Dollars International Space Station as an example. If Celestial Trade wanted to build an identical one, the cost may be less than one percent of the budget. If the same living area were to be to be expanded on Celestial City, the cost could even be compressed to 100 million US Dollars.
Celestial City was located on the synchronous orbit, and the proposed area was much larger than Penglai City. If it were a year ago and the Hilton Hotel wanted to build a space-themed hotel with a living area of more than 10,000 square meters on the synchronous orbit, they wouldn’t be able to afford this even if they sold the group itself.
But now, with a mere cost of only 1.3 billion Xin New Dollars, they could complete the project.
However, before signing the contract, there was still a problem that required clarification.
It was the opinion of the UA government.
The Hilton Group was a UA company, but the UA had yet to make any statement on whether to accept the cooperation framework of Celestial Trade. Jiang Chen was not against the idea of the Hilton Hotel settling in Celestial City, but if the UA Department of Commerce decided to intervene, he was worried that the Hilton Group wouldn’t be able to withstand the pressure.
After listening to Jiang Chen’s concerns, Mr. Nasetta laughed and said nonchalantly, “Mr. Jiang is worrying too much, we are also a multinational corporation, even the Capitol can’t stop us from making money. We have a registered company on Coro Island that is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Hilton Group. The UA law can only go as far as Hawaii, and it will have no impact on our cooperation.”
After hearing this, Jiang Chen also laugh and extended his right hand.
“My pleasure.”
Mr. Nasetta grabbed Jiang Chen’s hand and shook with force.
“My honor!”
The date of the contract signing was set on the day before Jiang Chen returned to Xin.
Early in the morning, Nasetta brought his secretary to the door and sent the contract to Jiang Chen.
Jiang Chen already received an electronic version of the contract, passed it back to Celestial Trade Headquarters, and conducted a three-round review by a team of professional lawyers. After getting the paper contract, Jiang Chen just scanned through it. After confirming that the contract was the same, he took a pen and signed his name.
After the contract was signed, Christopher Nasetta invited Jiang Chen to have a meal with great enthusiasm. Jiang Chen also accepted his invitation.
Having just signed a multi-billion-dollar investment project, Nasetta was naturally enthusiastic. Favors were liked by everyone, especially for the decison-maker of a large group like him. What utlimately decided whether or not he could continue in his position, to a large extent, was no longer just his ability, but his connections.
A “super-premium customer” like Jiang Chen was naturally an individual he wished to connect with.
After the meal, Christopher Nasetta gave Jiang Chen a black diamond card.
According to Nasseta, the perks of this black diamond card were more than a regular diamond card, and the card itself had never been released to the general public. Only the important customers of the Hilton Hotel received one. Customers with this black diamond card could enjoy the treatment of the presidential suite directly at the counter at any Hilton hotel in the world. Even if there was no room available, they would find a way to arrange it for you. As for everything else, all services were complimentary.
Jiang Chen accepted the black diamond card and then bid farewell before returning to the hotel he stayed at.
After taking a shower, Jiang Chen laid on the bed and began to browse through the holographic screen of his watch.
He was returning to Xin tomorrow.
Just when he began yawning and was prepared to go to bed early, a video that broke the number of views in a week caught his attention. The video was uploaded a week ago, and the time matched the first train ceremony of the space elevator passenger track…