As the number of surface robots landing increased day by day, the construction of a huge railway network transportation system took the lead.
"If you want to get rich, you must first build roads." This sentence is very true on any planet.
According to the plan, there are two to three thousand scattered mining areas. It is impossible to equip every small mining area with smelters, power stations and transportation bases. Doing so will only cause waste, but industrial efficiency will not necessarily increase.
Therefore, major mining areas need to be connected in series by railways to transport minerals or semi-finished products to one area for centralized smelting.
Nuclear-powered trains are always the cheapest means of transportation.
This paving technology has been developed very maturely and is fully automated. As long as the staff draws a few lines on the computer, the robot will work automatically.
At the same time, people started their next plan: the huge space elevator project!
The total height of the elevator is 8,800 kilometers!
The "space elevator" is a new technology developed by humans on the planet Nix. It is essentially equivalent to an ultra-high elevator that travels more than 8,000 kilometers.
More than a hundred years ago, in order to transport the massive supplies needed for the "Deep Space" into space, people suffered a lot and tried various methods.
It is definitely not cost-effective to always use rockets or spaceships for space transportation. The cost of spacecraft fuel and engine costs alone are very high. Even with the ion engine, the propulsion capacity is greatly improved, it is still not cost-effective.
The transportation cost of airships is very cheap, but it is limited to the interior of the atmosphere and cannot reach such heights.
"It is better to suck water up from the surface of the planet than to transport it directly from the other side of the universe!" This sentence was the huge complaint of scientific and technological workers during the Centennial Plan...
But it clearly points out the biggest problem for human exploration of space: people are in the "gravity well" of the planet.
Just like real wells, gravity wells constrain human space engineering.
A person standing at the bottom of a 10-meter-deep well would have to expend all his energy to climb out of the well; but walking 1,000 meters on the flat ground beside the well would require very little effort.
Therefore, "from the earth's surface to space orbit" requires a super large rocket, but "from orbit to other planets" only requires a small space capsule.
For example: In the Apollo program of the 20th century, the surface Saturn 5 rocket, with a total weight of more than 3,000 tons, launched the 45-ton Apollo spacecraft into the lunar orbit.
However, the take-off weight of its lunar module's ascent stage was only 4,670 kilograms.
Therefore, it is definitely not cost-effective to transport by rocket, especially in the case of Nix star with high gravity and dense atmosphere.
In order to climb the gravity well, humans have thought of two solutions.
First, collect minerals directly from the satellite of Nix and then transport them into space!
After all, the satellite has a small mass and low gravity, which saves industrial costs!
Second, of course, is the "space elevator"!
It was also the key research and development direction of people at that time.
If the construction cost of the elevator is not considered, the transportation cost of the space elevator is only one percent or even one thousandth of that of a rocket or spacecraft. Because it only uses cheap electricity and does not need to consider air friction and the like!
In terms of the scale of material transportation, the space elevator is even better...
Building a space elevator is also the reason why Deep Space stays in the synchronous orbit of planet GB131 and maintains the same angular velocity as the planet!
The theory and specific principles of the space elevator are not difficult. It is equivalent to hanging a few ropes from the "Deep Space", and using the ropes to forcibly lift whatever you want to transport.
Of course, the rope cannot go all the way to the end. There are several transfer stations in the middle for manipulation.
Its key technology is, of course, elevator materials!
Ordinary materials are not suitable for this kind of rope. For example, if a steel wire hangs down for a length of nine kilometers under the gravity of the earth, it will be broken by its own weight, so ordinary materials are not suitable at all.
Fortunately, the invention of carbon nanotubes has given people hope for a "space elevator".
Carbon nanotubes, as one-dimensional nanomaterials, are light in weight, perfectly connected in a hexagonal structure, and have many unusual mechanical, electrical and chemical properties.
It is very small, but its strength is comparable to diamond, and it is very flexible and can be made into long fibers.
Theoretically, a nanotube cable 1 meter wide and thinner than paper can support a weight of 13 tons (Earth's gravity), while its own mass is less than a few grams.
Therefore, this kind of nanomaterial allows humans to see the possibility.
A comprehensive breakthrough in nanotechnology is to reach the L3 level of interstellar civilization. However, this does not mean that people cannot invent in advance. "Carbon nanotubes", the simplest nanomaterials, have already achieved preliminary results in the Earth era.
After a long period of research, people finally invented a way to mass-produce carbon nanotubes with a length of tens of kilometers during the Knicks era. Its powerful function gave people an initial glimpse of the potential of nanotechnology...
In this way, machines buzzed, motors roared, and a large number of industrial systems were re-mobilized by the government.
Many scientists have also become active and are designing relevant parameters of elevators with great interest.
Of course, compared to Nix, the space elevator of GB131 is much simpler, because the gravity of this planet is very small and it is easier to operate. And with a supermassive spacecraft like the "Deep Space" in the sky above, the elevator will basically not
Shake.
As long as the spacecraft sprays ion flames regularly, it can offset the orbital changes caused by the elevator's ascent and descent.
In this way, the space elevator extended from Deep Space bit by bit.
This highly complex work cannot be done by robots for the time being and must be performed by humans. Therefore, there are a large number of astronauts busy outside at all times.
They wear power armor, are tied with safety ropes, and have ion injection devices behind them that can flexibly adjust their positions.
From a distance, these astronauts look like blue fireflies...
Seeing this busy scene, Yu Yifeng was also full of energy. He couldn't help but think of a report he saw a few days ago...
The sociology of the universe points out that the overall mobility of a civilization is an important reflection of measuring the "entropy value of civilization".
The stronger the cohesion of a civilization and the faster it can accomplish a big thing, the stronger the civilization will be.
Such a civilization often has greater potential.
In turn, the "entropy value" measuring the civilization will be smaller.
"Just like a young man, he is still in the stage of vigorous growth. His nerve reaction speed and motor ability are very strong. He can do whatever he thinks of and has high growth potential!
"So is civilization!"
On the other hand, if it is very difficult to gather the power of the entire civilization and you delay in getting something done, it often means that the civilization is in a period of decline.
This kind of civilization has little potential for progress.
"Such a civilization is equivalent to the elderly...the growth rate is not high, and there is even a possibility of decline!"