That night, the boring machine smashed the last rock blocking the road at the southern end of the tunnel, and the vision suddenly opened up.
The terrain of the Moon's North Pole is very complex. As can be seen from satellite images, there is a flat valley directly south of Crater 1. On the left side of the valley is a crater no less large than Crater 1, and on the right is a group of three-ringed moon-shaped craters.
, there are many huge craters, and the terrain is extremely complex.
At this time, Pit No. 1 has been officially renamed Beiyuezhou in the official documents of Beidu, a very Chinese name. The plain directly to the south is named Zhounan Pingyuan. Even the temporary code name of Beiyuezhou Base has been changed to Beiyuezhou.
It is planned to change the base to Beiyue City at a suitable time in the future, but it has not been officially announced yet.
Viewed from the air, the Zhounan Plain is narrow and long, and it should be called the Zhounan Canyon more accurately. However, when you are inside it, the Zhounan Plain is a flat river, which means that the visibility of the moon is high, so you can vaguely see the peaks sandwiched on both sides of the plain.
The bottom height of Pit No. 1 is slightly lower than the plain just south of the crater. When formulating the project plan, the designer intentionally raised the location of the south exit of the tunnel a bit to prevent the south exit from being too low.
The height difference between the tunnel entrance and the plain is only more than ten meters. At this time, there is only a gentle slope between the boring machine and the Zhounan plain. After crossing the rugged slope which is only fifty or sixty meters long, there is a plain below.
The boring machine opened the south exit, but did not withdraw into the tunnel. Instead, it lowered the drill bit and continued to drive forward, crushing all the uneven rocks on the gentle slope. It drove until the bottom of the mountain before stopping the drill bit, turning aside and waiting.
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. The crawlers carrying the weight of the entire vehicle crushed the weathered rocks along the way, and slowly moved to the plain outside the mountain.
These two large lunar rovers are lunar surface vehicles built with great efforts by the mechanical team. Although their 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 a half-month mission alone.
Exploration mission.
The mission of these two lunar rovers is to prospect and 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, it can only be of average level. Its endurance of 500 kilometers on the earth is due to high incense, but the gravity on the moon is low and the fuel consumption is low. Through appropriate design, the engineers can
Successfully greatly improved the endurance of the lunar rover.
Then several engineering vehicles drove out in a full circle, as well as seven or eight trucks with wide carriages. After they drove into the plain, they collected the lunar soil with buckets. After the trucks were filled with lunar soil, they immediately drove back to the tunnel, directly
Drive into the separation workshop in the industrial area.
Among the resources on the moon, the most famous one is definitely helium 3. The reserve of this thing on the earth is only 5 kilograms at most, but on the moon, the average reserve per square kilometer is about 7 kilograms!
The separation workshop is mainly used to separate helium 3 in the lunar soil. Although humans have not yet mastered controllable nuclear fusion technology and cannot use helium for fusion electricity, helium 3 is paired with heavy hydrogen extracted from heavy water in glacial lakes.
, which can be completely 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. In addition, varying amounts of iron, titanium, calcium, and magnesium can also be obtained.
Zinc, cerium, rhenium and other metals.
Among them, metallic cerium must be obtained through artificial synthesis, and natural cerium has never been found on earth.
Even silica, which accounts for about half of the lunar soil, can be used to make glass and extract silicon elements.
The composition of the lunar soil is diverse and the extraction technology is complex. However, extracting helium 3 requires necessary processing of the lunar soil. The other resources obtained are just by-products of further refinement. After the extraction cost is shared, the extraction cost is not expensive. If it is used
The scale effect will definitely further lower the price. If we don’t dare to lower the price to cabbage price, at least it will not be much 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 large-scale, it is an excellent start. According to the records of later generations, the tunnel penetration represents the transformation of Beiyuezhou Base from being a construction base to being centered on industrial production.
, was a turning point in the construction of the first-generation lunar base, and wrote a significant chapter in the history of human spaceflight.
However, while inside, Ye Han, like all astronauts, did not realize the significance of the tunnel.
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 food output in the agricultural area, but the material output in the industrial area. The top priority is to find high-grade mineral deposits as soon as possible and improve Beiyuezhou base.
The Yuezhou base's steel production, especially low-temperature alloy production, lays the foundation for expanding 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 in advance, the Beiyuezhou base concentrated its resources to manufacture three prospecting trucks, which were divided into various directions to perform exploration tasks.
Prospecting trucks do not search blindly, but conduct fixed-point exploration based on the results of satellite telemetry.
The exploration team dispatched by the Beiyuezhou Base is the first large-scale exploration of the moon in human history, and its results will directly affect the base's next development plan.
The actions of the prospecting truck could not be hidden from the satellite monitoring system at all. As soon as the prospecting truck entered the Moon South Plain, the American satellite discovered this situation.
It is a well-known fact that the construction progress of the Beiyuezhou base is faster than that of international bases. The early launch of exploration operations has long been expected by the Americans. Washington has not expressed any opinions on this matter.
But within a few days, the Yankees could no longer sit still, because they found that the Chinese prospecting trucks moved extremely fast, and every time they explored a location, they would leave national emblems in the most obvious locations.
This is not prospecting, it is simply enclosure!
How could the arrogant Americans bear such a tone? They immediately arranged a press conference. The President of the United States made a speech in person, using not very tactful diplomatic language to protest Beijing's violation of the Outer Space Treaty and demanding that China immediately stop this practice.
.
If it were just a single party of the United States, China could completely ignore it. However, the international base is jointly built by more than a dozen countries. After the United States made its position clear, other countries participating in the international base plan successively made similar voices and raised different positions.
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 insistent practices and so on.
