Armor Frenzy

That night, the tunnel boring machine smashed the last rock blocking the road at the southern end of the tunnel, and the eyes suddenly opened up.

The topography of the north pole of the moon is very complicated. From satellite images, it can be seen that there is a flat but flat valley due south of Pit No. 1. On the left of the valley is a crater no smaller than Pit No. 1, and on the right is a three-ringed crater group. , large and small craters, you have me and I have you, and the terrain is extremely complicated.

At this time, the No. 1 pit has been officially renamed Beiyuezhou in the official documents of Beidu, a very Chinese name. The small plain in the south is named Zhounan Pingyuan, and even the temporary code name of Beiyuezhou Base has been changed to Beiyuezhou. The Yuezhou base is also planned to be changed to Beiyue City at a suitable time in the future, but it has not been officially announced to the public yet.

From the air, the South Continent Plain is narrow and long, so it should be called the South Continent Canyon. But in it, the South Plains is a horse and plain, that is, with high visibility on the lunar surface, it is possible to vaguely see the peaks on both sides of the plain.

The height of the bottom of the No. 1 pit is slightly lower than the plain south of the crater. When formulating the project plan, the designer intentionally raised the position of the south exit of the tunnel a little to avoid the position of the south exit being too low.

The height difference between the tunnel entrance and the plain is only more than ten meters. At this time, the roadheader is only separated by a gentle **** from the southern plain. After crossing the rugged **** with a length of no more than fifty or sixty meters, there is a plain below.

The roadheader opened the south exit, but did not withdraw to the tunnel. Instead, it pushed down the drill bit and continued to drive forward, smashing all the uneven rocks on the gentle slope. After driving to the foot of the mountain, it stopped the drill bit and turned to the side to stand by.

Two crawler-type lunar rovers with a height of nearly four meters, a width of no less than five meters, and a length of almost ten meters drove out of the tunnel, and the crawler carrying the full weight of the vehicle crushed a road of weathered rock and slowly traveled to the plain outside the mountain.

These two large-scale lunar rovers are lunar vehicles built by the mechanical team. Although the driving speed is average, their cruising range exceeds 3,000 kilometers. When fully loaded, they can carry five astronauts away from the base and perform half a month alone. exploration tasks.

The mission of the two lunar rovers is prospecting, to find out the distribution of shallow minerals near Pit No. 1 in the shortest possible time.

The engine of the lunar rover is not advanced. The personnel succeeded in greatly improving the endurance of the lunar rover.

Then there were a few construction trucks that were a full circle smaller, and seven or eight trucks with wide carriages. After they drove into the plain, they collected lunar soil with digging buckets. After the trucks were filled with lunar soil, they immediately drove back to the tunnel. Drive directly into the separation workshop in the industrial area.

When it comes to the resources on the moon, the most famous one must be helium 3. The reserves of this thing on the earth are only 5oo kg at most, but on the moon, the average reserves per square kilometer are about 70 kg!

The separation workshop is mainly used to separate helium 3 in the lunar soil. Although human beings have not yet mastered the controllable nuclear fusion technology and cannot use helium for fusion electricity, helium 3 is combined with deuterium extracted from the heavy water of the ice lake. , can be used for the production of nuclear weapons.

For every ton of helium-3 extracted from the lunar soil, more than 6,000 tons of hydrogen, more than 1,600 tons of carbon, and more than 70 tons of nitrogen can be obtained. Metals such as zinc, cerium, and rhenium.

Among them, the metal cerium must be obtained by artificial synthesis, and the existence of natural cerium has never been found on the earth.

Even the silicon dioxide, which accounts for about half of the lunar soil, can also be used to make glass and extract a single element of silicon or something.

The composition of lunar soil is diverse, and the extraction technology is complex, but the extraction of helium 3 requires necessary treatment of the lunar soil, and the other resources obtained are only by-products after further processing. The scale effect will definitely lower the price. I dare not say that it will lower the price of cabbage. At least it will not be more expensive than the earth's manufacturing. The manufacturing cost of scarce resources is even lower than the earth's price.

Although the refining industry of Beiyuezhou Base is not yet on a large scale, it is an excellent start. In the records of later history books, the tunnel penetration represents that Beiyuezhou Base has changed from a construction base to an industrial production. , is a turning point in the construction of the first-generation lunar base, and has written a lot in the history of human spaceflight.

However, in it, Ye Han, like all astronauts, did not realize the significance of tunnel penetration.

Refining lunar soil is a long-term and complex process. At this time, the main factor restricting the development of Beiyuezhou base is no longer the grain output in the agricultural area, but the material output in the industrial area. The steel output of the Yuezhou base ~www.readwn.com~, especially the low temperature alloy output, lays the foundation for the expansion of the base's industrial production capacity.

In order to find suitable mines for mining as soon as possible, in addition to the two prospecting trucks dispatched earlier, Beiyuezhou base concentrated resources to manufacture three prospecting trucks, which were divided into various directions to carry out exploration tasks.

The prospecting vehicle is not a blind search, but a fixed-point exploration based on the results of satellite telemetry.

The exploration team sent by the Beiyuezhou base is the first large-scale exploration of the moon in human history, and the results directly affect the base's next development plan.

The action of the prospecting truck could not be concealed from the satellite monitoring system at all. The prospecting truck had just entered the Yuenan Plain, and the American satellite had noticed this.

It is well known that the construction progress of the Beiyuezhou base is faster than that of the international base. The early exploration operation was expected by the Yankees, and Washington did not express any opinion on this matter.

But after a few days, the Yankees couldn't sit still, because they found that the Chinese prospecting vehicles were moving very fast, and every time they explored a location, they would leave the national emblem in the most obvious location.

This is where prospecting is, it is simply enclosure!

How could the arrogant and arrogant Yankees hold such a sigh of relief, and immediately arranged a press conference. The President of the United States made a speech in person, protesting the North Capital's violation of the Outer Space Treaty with diplomatic language that was not very euphemistic, and asked China to immediately stop this practice. .

If it is only a part of the US side, China can completely ignore it, but the international base is jointly built by more than a dozen countries. After the US side explained its own position, other countries participating in the international base plan have made similar voices one after another. There are various protests, but the core of all statements is only one: the moon is not the territory of any country, but the common property of all mankind, and China must stop its willful behavior. 8 For more wonderful novels, welcome to visit our school