Although the children have not graduated yet, they have also received a lot of relevant professional education. It may not be possible to do specific work, but it is still possible to put forward some ideas from a theoretical level.
Just as Zhao Changxing expected, the teenagers burst out with great enthusiasm for this matter. In just one month, they put forward thousands of feasible suggestions, covering materials, structures, optics, etc.
aspects.
Members of the fusion generator project team conducted verification non-stop, and finally absorbed about dozens of suggestions and applied them to the project.
The research and development of fusion generators has made great progress, but... there is still a long way to go before the final product. Moreover, this distance can no longer be overcome by some whimsical idea or structural optimization.
Facing the messy parts and drawings in the laboratory, Chai Cheng and others all looked heavy.
Electricity is the core that drives all construction and is the heart of the entire human base. Without enough electricity, basically nothing can be done.
Zhao Changxing vaguely felt that he, no, the entire human civilization had encountered another important challenge after the asteroid incident.
Is it true that we can only slowly wait for the industrial level to improve to a certain level before building a fusion generator? But this will take at least several decades. During these decades, people's time and energy have been left unchecked.
Just wasted like this?
Not only that, I'm afraid that the population increase rate of 100 per six months on the Fire Spaceship will also slow down. Because if there are too many people, Zhao Changxing will not have enough food to feed them.
There is not enough food because more planting workshops cannot be built. More planting workshops cannot be built because there is not enough power supply.
The entire development process of human civilization will be delayed for decades because of this reason. Basically, an entire generation of people's lives will be wasted.
After thinking hard to no avail, Zhao Changxing sighed, rarely put on his space suit, left the base alone, and wandered slowly on the dark red Tolin land of Sedna.
There are so many tholins on Sedna that they can almost be described as endless. They almost fill Zhao Changxing's entire field of vision. Mountains, land, canyons, and plains are almost all covered by tholins. Just like at this moment
At the feet of Zhao Changxing - this place was originally supposed to be a huge canyon with a depth of more than a thousand meters, but from the outside, it looks no different from the plains in other places.
Endless Torin has completely filled it up. This canyon alone has reserves of at least tens of billions of cubic meters.
This is accumulated bit by bit over billions of years by the cold and lonely star Sedna at the edge of the solar system.
"It would be great if there were rivers on Sedna. I could also build a hydroelectric power station. If there is coal, then I can build a thermal power station. If it is closer to the sun, a solar power station can also be built. But this
There’s nothing but Thorin, what’s the use of it... Huh? Thorin? Thorin!”
Zhao Changxing's eyes suddenly lit up.
He discovered that not only himself, but everyone had fallen into a misunderstanding.
Faced with the dilemma of insufficient power supply and the inability to manufacture new fusion generators, the first thing people thought about was how to find a way to build a generator. After confirming that this road was unworkable, they still adopted the thinking of the Earth Age and thought about it.
Build a hydropower station or a thermal power station, and think about finding rivers, coal, oil and the like.
These things naturally don't exist on Sedna. There are a lot of Thorins on it. But almost everyone subconsciously ignores Thorins.
But, but... Thorin is also an organic matter! Thorin can also be burned!
Thorin is mainly made of simple organic matter such as methane and ethane irradiated by ultraviolet rays and high-energy cosmic rays. It is a mixture. Its calorific value is even higher than that of coal.
Isn’t this like being a beggar while guarding a mountain of gold and silver?
On the Sedna planet full of dark red Torins, Zhao Changxing stamped his foot hard.
Just as he was about to go back to conduct a feasibility study on the Tuolin Thermal Power Station, Zhao Changxing suddenly thought of another problem.
He found that he was still thinking about the problem with the thinking of the earth age, and ignored a very serious matter.
Of course Torin can be burned, and it is completely feasible to use it to build thermal power stations. But, but...
Like coal, tholin requires oxygen to burn.
This problem is not a problem at all in the age of the earth, because the oxygen in the atmosphere is almost inexhaustible. But where can we find oxygen here on Sedna?
There is actually no shortage of oxygen in human bases at this stage. There is a lot of water ice on Sedna. After melting it and electrolyzing it, a large amount of oxygen can be produced. However, the oxygen produced in this way is used for breathing and for
There is no problem with industrial use, but if it is used to participate in the burning of Tolin and build thermal power stations to generate electricity, it will not work.
The reason is very simple. Electrolyzing water also consumes electricity! And through a very simple calculation, you can know that doing so will completely lose money.
The electrolyzed water electrolyzes out a part of oxygen, and all this oxygen is used to participate in the combustion of tholin, and then electricity is generated. The generated electricity is then used to electrolyze water, and at most, only 0.75 parts of oxygen can be electrolyzed.
The more electricity you generate, the more you will lose.
The only solution is to find enough pure oxygen on Sedna - it must be pure oxygen, not oxygen compounds. Otherwise, just decomposing the oxygen will consume too much energy and cause it to lose value.
Already.
But, is there pure oxygen on Sedna?
The answer is yes. Over the years, the ten geological exploration satellites have searched the surface of Sedna countless times, and have found some oxygen elements that have been frozen into solid state, which is called
It is an oxygen ore.
But...their reserves are too low. It is barely enough for daily breathing, and it is just a drop in the bucket for use in power plants.
The most critical problem is that it seems that there is no theoretical possibility for Sedna to have too much pure oxygen reserves. The only oxygen deposits are most likely formed by various chances and coincidences.
"Is the thermal power solution really unworkable? Is it true that we can only slowly wait for industrial development and the construction of new fusion generators to solve this bottleneck?"
Zhao Changxing did not just accept this situation. He put down the rest of his work and devoted all his attention to reviewing the information.
He is looking at the theoretical possibility of allowing cold dwarf planets like Sedna, far away from their stars, to possess large amounts of oxygen minerals.
Only by finding this possibility from a theoretical level can it be possible to use theory as a guide for practical action.
During the long database search, some statements in a paper that seemed completely unrelated to the current predicament caught Zhao Changxing's attention.
"We have observed that under certain special environments, through ultraviolet rays or other high-energy rays, certain compounds of the oxygen element - such as water, iron oxide, etc., can react spontaneously to purify elemental oxygen...
"
Zhao Changxing's heart immediately started beating. He keenly discovered that the so-called special environment in the experiment described in this paper seemed to have certain similarities with that on Sedna.
The first is low temperature. The temperature on Sedna is obviously very low. The second is low pressure. The atmospheric pressure on the surface of Sedna is simply zero. The third is long-term exposure. The surface of Sedna may have endured it for billions of years.
of radiation...
Zhao Changxing immediately began to use this as a basis to search for more relevant papers, and finally came to a preliminary conclusion.
There is probably a huge reserve of oxygen minerals on Sedna! The key point of the search is to first find a large amount of oxide storage points - hydrogen oxide, which is water, or iron oxide, sodium oxide, etc.
You can wait.
They must be in the open air as much as possible. The depth of the veins is not important but they must be wide. They cannot be located deep in canyons and other places where they cannot be exposed to cosmic radiation.
Zhao Changxing immediately started screening based on the existing observation data. Finally, he selected a dry ice mine covering a vast area.
In the previous search, this dry ice mine also contained some oxygen minerals, but because the reserves were too low, Zhao Changxing gave up. But now, under the guidance of the latest theory, this dry ice mine obviously has higher
the value of.
At least it's worth Zhao Changxing's on-the-spot exploration.
During this period of time, the construction of the road network and roadbed has been completed. The steel plant has even begun to produce rails and begun preliminary laying. Under this situation, Zhao Changxing drove a space vehicle and drove a space vehicle in Sedna
It was speeding across the surface of the star, heading straight towards the dry ice mine.
After clearing the surface covering of Tolin, Zhao Changxing's various prospecting equipment began intense inspection. When a large shadow finally appeared on the display - the shadow meant the existence of solid oxygen ore - Zhao Changxing suddenly
My heart suddenly relaxed and I waved my fist fiercely.
"I knew that there must be huge reserves of oxygen minerals on Sedna!"
They may have been formed billions of years ago. After their formation, they were covered by layers of tholins over a long period of time. It was only now that Zhao Changxing discovered traces of them.
Preliminary detection shows that the oxygen ore reserves in this dry ice mine are at least hundreds of millions of tons, which is completely enough to support the operation of thermal power plants. In particular, it is not too far away from the living circle. As long as the mining closest to it is
Point, and then extend the railway for less than fifty kilometers, you can reach here.
For such a huge oxygen mine, Zhao Changxing believes that it is completely worthwhile to build a railway to extend here.
"Chai Cheng, don't think about the fusion generator anymore. Start preparing to build a thermal power station. I found an oxygen mine."