The logistics team does not need a lunar rover. There are exactly two lunar rovers in one group and one in each of three groups.
The Ye Han team returned to the temporary base, brought cutting tools, took the lunar rover to the ice lake again, and found a random place to park. The thin lunar dust that rubbed against the surface revealed a corner of the ice layer hidden underneath.
The unique reflection of water ice shines in the headlights.
Ye Han picked up a portable laser cutting machine and shouted: "Work has started, everyone stay away!"
The reason why a laser cutting machine is used is because as long as there is no problem with the power supply, this thing can work all the time. Although there is a problem of difficult to control the beam, overall the flaws are not concealed.
Ice is different from other substances. The lower the temperature, the higher the hardness of ice. In an environment of minus 50 degrees, the hardness of ice can reach 6 on the Mohs scale.
What is the concept of hardness 6? The hardness of iron is only 4-5, the hardness of stainless steel is 5.5, and the hardness of pure titanium and hacksaw blades is 6!
If you switch to traditional cutting tools, you may be afraid that the tools will be useless before the ice cubes are cut out. Even metal products are no exception. Only low-temperature steel can be used in the extreme low temperature environment of the earth.
Note that it is used in the extremely low temperature environment of the earth, and the extreme low temperature of the earth is about minus 70 or 80 degrees Celsius, which is far from the low temperature on the surface of the moon. Unless it is cryogenic steel, it can be used at more than minus 200 degrees.
The problem is that sending any gram of physical objects from the earth to the moon will cost a huge amount of money, and sending a pile of steel up just to cut the ice is a bit too extravagant.
There are many similar situations, so there are very few physical tools in the temporary base. All problems that can be solved with electricity will be solved with electricity!
The small nuclear reactor in the temporary base can be used for at least ten or eight years. It must always keep running even if it does not generate electricity, so all problems that can be solved with electricity are not problems. Using lasers to cut ice is perfect.
Laser cutting machines are not fun. If they accidentally come into contact with a space suit, a hole will be cut immediately. The space suit will lose pressure and there will be no chance to run back.
From this point of view, Ye Han, who is operating the cutting machine, is in the most dangerous situation. The cutting machine in his hand may damage the spacesuit if he is not careful.
As the team leader, how could Ye Han not rush to the front at a time like this?
He originally wanted to cut directly on the flat ice surface, but after thinking about it, he felt that it was difficult to cut on a flat surface. He looked around, trying to find something like an icicle to cut with, but he only found a few things that looked like grave mounds.
Grave bags should be grave bags. They are easier to deal with than ice. Ye Han rushed over with a cutting machine. After clearing away the loose soil on the surface, an ice lump with a very abstract shape appeared in front of several people.
Xu Hua lay on the ice lump and took a look: "Will this work? There are too many impurities."
The glacial lakes on the earth are all made of frozen water, and there are very few impurities in the ice layer; the glacial lakes on the moon are formed by the impact of icy asteroids. The surface of the glacial lakes has various ups and downs, including peaks and valleys.
Not to mention there are very few flat places, and there are also many messy impurities mixed in the ice.
Because there are too many impurities, getting ice is not just about finding a place and cutting a few pieces to complete the task. You must find an ice layer with high ice content and low impurities to get twice the result with half the effort.
The impurity content of ice lumps is not less than 50%. If the ice lake is compared to a mineral vein, this ice lump is the kind of ore that is extremely barren and has little mining value.
Ye Han could only find another ice lump. This time the quality was much better, but it was an empty shell. There was only a layer of ice less than two fingers thick lying there like a tent. Inside the shell
Empty with nothing.
Ye Han lost his temper and returned to the original freezing point resigned to his fate: "I finally figured it out. Lao Gao must have seen the ice lake before he brought us here."
At the freezing point specified by Gaokai, the impurities in the ice layer do not exceed 10% at most, making it an absolute high-quality mineral source.
Duan Zhiyang replied: "It's probably true. From my perspective, this crater is just a big glacial lake, but there are too few places suitable for mining."
"That makes sense!" Ye Han agreed.
When the spacecraft landed, the retrorockets blew away the lunar soil under the spacecraft. He still clearly remembered that the black ground under the lunar soil was very hard. Now that he thought about it, that place was probably an ice layer mixed with too many impurities...
...It's too convoluted to say that. To put it more bluntly, it's just a layer of frozen mud.
Xu Hua laughed and said: "I don't know what it looked like when the asteroid hit here."
"What else could it look like?" Ye Han said, "First it hits, then explodes, and then the melted water flows into the pit. After the temperature drops, the water boils violently and takes away the heat. Finally, a little water remains frozen at the bottom of the pit.
, a strange combination of circumstances has persisted to this day.”
"It's boiling!" Xu Hua looked back and saw the undulating continuous peaks and ridges of the crater in the distance without any hindrance. "What is the diameter of this crater?"
"More than thirty, less than forty."
Xu Hua chuckled: "Do you think this crater, surrounded by mountains, looks like a cauldron?"
"It sounds like...what do you want to say?" Ye Han felt that there was something in his words.
Xu Hua smiled again: "Tell me, if you were standing outside the crater during the impact, you would see a cauldron dozens of kilometers long filled with boiling water. How spectacular it would be!"
"Oh no, you can think of it!" Ye Han wrote a big word of "I'm convinced" in his heart, "How did you get such a brain?"
Xu Hua smiled sheepishly: "Just thinking about it.
Duan Zhiyang stretched out his thumb and said, "You're awesome!" The gloves of the space suit only had two fingers, and he couldn't make any more complicated gestures except giving a thumbs up.
"Come on, stop talking nonsense and get started!" Ye Han put the cutting machine on the ice at his feet and waved to his two companions.
Duan Zhiyang and Xu Hua quickly backed away.
Ye Han did not dare to be careless at all. In order to prevent the beam from being reflected by the ice surface, he did not dare to cut vertically. He placed the cutting machine at an angle and made sure that the beam would not hit him even if it was reflected, and then turned on the switch of the cutting machine.
A beam of light invisible to the naked eye was emitted from the top of the cutting machine. The shape of the beam appeared after it touched the ice surface. The ice layer illuminated by the beam quickly heated up and melted, and then vaporized and flew away. After a while, Ye Han made another cut.
Thin and deep crevasses in the ice.
Ye Han quietly breathed a sigh of relief and changed the direction and continued cutting. After a while, several ice cracks formed an irregular quadrilateral on the ice surface, and each crack was bottomless.
It’s not that the slits are unfathomably deep, it’s that the light is too poor to see exactly how deep the slits are.
Ye Han operated the cutting machine to cut diagonally twice more, and finally cut out an irregular triangular prism-shaped piece of water ice from the ice surface.