The rise of nanometers

Low Earth orbit, Tianmen Space Station.

This large space station is both a space port and a spacecraft assembly plant.

Xiao Fei, the person in charge of the space station, received a new instruction from the Ministry of Aerospace. After reading the document, he personally came to the assembly area of ​​the space station.

I met Chen Xinyu, the chief engineer of the assembly work.

"General Manager Chen, the Ministry of Aerospace has just issued a new plan. Take a look!"

Chen Xinyu took the tablet computer, which contained the details of the new plan. After looking through it for a while, he called up the task schedule for the Tianmen assembly area.

"The federation requires us to use an assembly space to assemble a new spaceship. Before March?" This time made Chen Xinyu somewhat embarrassed.

Of course Xiao Fei understood why the other party felt embarrassed.

There are currently eight spacecraft docks in the assembly area of ​​the Tianmen Space Station, four of which are for 2,000-ton spacecraft, two are for 5,000-ton spacecraft, and the last two are for 10,000-ton spacecraft.

This time the Ministry of Aerospace's new plan is to build a 12,000-ton spacecraft.

The spacecraft is called the Zhurong-class spacecraft. It is a spacecraft planned to be used for manned exploration of Mars. It can carry up to three astronauts to explore Mars.

But now there are construction tasks at the two 10,000-ton shipyards, and two large spaceships for transportation are being produced.

These two large space transport ships are planned to be used in the construction plan to transport elevator cables to the construction space station.

After all, the total weight of the two cables of the space elevator is about 400,000 tons. If the previous kiloton-class spacecraft is used, it can transport up to about 920 tons at one time. Taking into account the round-trip distance between the moon and the synchronous orbit, the maximum transport at one time is 450 tons. supplies.

In order to ensure the strength of the cables of the space elevator, the number of splicings should be reduced as much as possible and more cables of suitable length should be used.

There is a difference of more than ten times between a 450-ton cable and a 6,000-ton cable.

Therefore, the construction of large space transport ships is already an indispensable part of the construction plan.

"Xinyu, I know you are in trouble. Now you can only find a way to solve the problem." Xiao Fei said helplessly.

Chen Xinyu thought for a while: "If we really want to build them without affecting the progress of the two large transport ships, we can only cancel part of the tasks of other shipyards and piece together two shipyards."

The reason why we talk about two docks is to ensure the balance of the Tianmen Space Station.

Regardless of the current total weight of Tianmen, which has reached about 94,000 tons, if the production tasks are not arranged reasonably, it will cause the space station to lose balance and enter a state of uncontrollable rotation.

Therefore, the docks of the Tianmen Space Station are all symmetrical, and every time the construction of a spacecraft is started, the construction of two spaceships of the same level is started at the same time on two symmetrical docks.

The weight difference between the two generally cannot be too large and must be controlled within 3%.

Therefore, for the sake of convenience, generally, the construction tasks of the two-sided symmetrical dock are arranged to start construction of the same model of spacecraft at the same time, and the construction schedule is usually similar.

Therefore, for the task of Zhurong-class spacecraft, two ships must be started at the same time.

After Chen Xinyu made his decision, he immediately picked up his mobile phone and sent a meeting message to a dozen other engineer leaders.

More than half an hour later, a dozen engineers came to the conference room.

"Everyone is here, I won't say any polite words. This is a new task. You should take a look at it first. After reading it, everyone can speak freely." Chen Xinyu said while sending the document to everyone.

Ten minutes passed, and many engineers who could see it either frowned or discussed in low voices.

"This is too rushed."

"If we want to ensure that the progress of large transport ships is not affected, we can only sacrifice the other six docks."

“It is now the end of January, and there is still more than a month until March, and the work to renovate the shipyard is also very tight.”

"Chief Engineer, can you please report this to your superiors? Give us another two or three months."

Chen Xinyu shook his head: "This is decided by the federation. Although there are some difficulties, it is not insurmountable. What's more, the Ministry of Space will launch a batch of modules to upgrade the dock next week to stop the missions of other spacecrafts. In March The renovation should be completed by mid-term.”

"What about the semi-finished spaceships that were modified before?" an engineer asked unwillingly.

"Don't worry, the Ministry of Aerospace has made arrangements. Among the six semi-finished spacecrafts, the two Tianzhou 3s whose main body does not exceed 8% will be temporarily moved to the warehouse for temporary storage." Chen Xinyu paused for a few seconds and continued:

"The two Tianzhou 3s, whose main bodies have reached 65% completion, will be received by the Tiangong Space Station, and they will continue to complete the remaining work."

"As for the two 5,500-ton Tianzhou 4s, they are actually almost 86% complete. Everyone works separately. Some people renovate the docks, and some people continue to complete the two Tianzhou 4s."

After listening to Chen Xinyu's arrangement, more than a dozen engineers discussed it for a while, and finally agreed to the solution.

But many people feel anxious and anxious about this matter and the recent acceleration of the Federation in the aerospace field.

In their view, the Federation's current aerospace strategy is obviously a little impatient.

The Federation has now successively annexed the Noah Society and Lucia, becoming the well-deserved overlord of Blue Star. Since Blue Star has no opponents, in their view, there is no need to be too impatient.

As one of the insiders, Chen Xinyu could not explain too much. After all, the existence of giant civilization was a high-level secret and could not be disclosed casually.

In fact, the federal government originally planned to lower the previous yellow status to blue status again around May this year.

However, the emergence of mega-civilization has forced the federation to extend the yellow status and keep the social industrial productivity index between 3.3 and 3.5 for a long time.

That is to say, many of the materials produced may be several times the total social demand.

For example, the output of a large number of raw materials that can be used in the aerospace industry is still rising.

Even in the lunar zone, a second nuclear fusion power station was quickly launched. The new nuclear power station planned to be built has a maximum power of 80,000 megawatts.

This is also to further enhance the productivity of the Lunar Industrial Zone, especially the Hongwan Helium 3 Refining Plant, which just completed its third phase in October last year and is a typical power consumer.

But helium-3 resources are also very important.

Although China National Nuclear Corporation was a bit opportunistic, it used helium 3 as one of the nuclear fuels and successfully developed the Jinwu 7 nuclear fusion power generation unit.

The advantage of the Jinwu 7 nuclear fusion power station is not its power generation, because its power generation is only 24,000 megawatts per unit.

However, its size and weight are very small. The length and width are about 21 meters and 16 meters respectively, the height is about 16 meters, and the total weight is 1,723 tons.

This volume and weight can barely fit into a large ship.

If the size and weight can be further reduced, even future nuclear-powered spacecraft will no longer be a fantasy.

The nuclear fuel of the Golden Crow 7 uses helium 3, and during the reaction process, helium 3 cannot sustain itself for a long time and must be continuously replenished from the outside.

At present, the Hongwan Helium 3 Refining Plant’s monthly output of Helium 3 is approximately between 120 and 150 kilograms.

Regardless of the current supply, once miniaturized nuclear fusion power generation units are used on a large scale, this output will definitely not be enough.

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