Johnson, the chairman of the Outer Space Committee, and Rhine von Groot, the representative of the Hans family of the Western Space Administration, had no choice but to fly to Dongtang overnight.
the other side.
Huang Junjie has been at the Airship Research Institute these days. He is developing a new type of airship.
Since the hydrogen airbag airship has almost reached its limit, among the airships manufactured by the Airship Research Institute, the airship that can fly to the highest altitude is the Ring Airship Type 14, which can fly to an altitude of about 63 kilometers.
When it reaches this limit, it is very difficult to increase the height. The only way to increase the height is to reduce the payload.
However, the airship has reached an altitude of 63 kilometers, and its payload is already less than 15 tons. If the payload is reduced, the airship will be of little use.
According to estimates from the Airship Research Institute, reducing the payload to about 10 tons can increase the altitude to about 72 to 74 kilometers above sea level.
"Boss, we have made a ring-shaped airship according to your instructions. All materials and equipment are made of the lightest materials. Even the airship's battery uses the most powerful battery from the Raytheon Group (3214 watt hours per battery).
kg), and gave up solar thin films." Xia Xia, director of the Airship Research Institute, quickly introduced it to Huang Haojie.
Huang Junjie was quite satisfied with Xia Tian who replaced Wang Tu as the director of the airship research institute.
"How much has the airship's dead weight been reduced?"
"About 21%." Xia Tian answered quickly.
"21%, if it carries a payload of 1 ton, how high can this airship fly?"
Xia Tian thought for a while and replied: "I estimate that it can reach an altitude of 85 to 87 kilometers."
"Is that so? Then arrange for someone to test it and then report the data." Huang Junjie ordered.
"Okay, I'll do it right away."
In the summer, Huang Junjie went to arrange the airship test. He looked over the situation of the ring-type airship Type A 17. Although the height was increased, the cost soared.
The cost of building an ordinary ring-shaped airship is about 1.5 million to 3 million Mars coins, but the cost of this new airship is as high as 130 million Mars coins.
After all, many materials need to be light and high-strength, and with other requirements, the cost of these materials is quite high, and it is inevitable that the cost will soar.
However, even if it reaches an altitude of 85 to 87 kilometers, it still does not meet Huang Haojie's requirements. He wants the ring airship to reach the Karman Line, which is about 100 kilometers above sea level.
If the airship can do it, there will be no need for a space station to pull the magnetic vacuum cable, because the space station needs to pull the magnetic vacuum cable, and the height requirement of the space station is very high.
A magnetic vacuum cable of at least several thousand kilometers must be made. Such a long magnetic vacuum cable is not only very difficult to make, but also requires a huge amount of electrical energy to activate the vacuum state. This will not be worth the gain.
If the airship could be maintained near the Kármán line, then such a long magnetic vacuum cable would not be needed.
At an altitude of 60 kilometers to the Karman Line, the length is about 40 kilometers. The weight of one kilometer of magnetic vacuum cable plus normal temperature conductor cable is about 4.7 tons, and 40 kilometers is 188 tons.
The altitude is 6o to 87 kilometers, the distance in between is 27 kilometers, the weight of the cable is about 127 tons, and the average payload of the new airship is 12.5 tons.
This distance alone would require 11 airships.
The height of the airship has reached the Kármán line, and it is not known whether there is 1 ton of payload left. In these cases, they need to wait until they test the new airship data in the summer before they can proceed with the next calculation.
However, Huang Haojie is still thinking of ways to increase the payload of the airship, using hydrogen airbags as buoyancy for the airship. Currently, Galaxy Technology has pushed this to the extreme. It has really reached the pinnacle, reaching the point where it can no longer be improved.
Summer is back.
"Boss, I have already made arrangements."
"Then let's go to the laboratory!" Huang Junjie said.
"Okay, the materials and equipment that the boss ordered before are ready." Xia Tian quickly led the way.
Come to the laboratory.
The materials and equipment Huang Haojie ordered them to prepare before are already ready.
Magnetic vacuum film, laser welding aB gel, laser welding equipment, vacuum testing equipment... These equipment and materials are already neatly in the laboratory, waiting for Huang Haojie to do experiments.
After putting on protective clothing, he took out a piece of magnetic vacuum film. This magnetic vacuum film had been made into a balloon in advance. However, there was no electromagnetic stimulation at this time, so it did not turn into a vacuum ball.
With the assistance of Xia Tian and others, a vacuum ball soon appeared in the laboratory.
"Use gel spray equipment to spray gel on this vacuum ball." Huang Haojie ordered.
"Okay." A researcher quickly started to use gel spray equipment to evenly spray the mixed gel on the vacuum ball.
Huang Haojie continued to order: "Carry out laser welding."
The researchers immediately performed laser welding on the vacuum ball. Under laser irradiation, the mixed gel quickly solidified.
After a while, the mixed gel that had been laser welded had been completely formed. Huang Haojie waved his hand: "Stop the vacuum excitation, and then take out the magnetic vacuum film and wires."
The researchers had already made relevant laboratory designs before and quickly took out the magnetic vacuum film and wires inside the gel ball.
As for the gel ball that lost its wire connection, since there was no fixed object, the gel ball quickly flew upwards. Fortunately, there was a ceiling blocking it, otherwise the gel ball would not know where to fly.
Obviously Huang Haojie had anticipated this situation in advance and welded four pull rings to the gel ball during welding.
The researcher used a hook to hook the tab and then pulled the gel vacuum ball off.
"Boss, I didn't expect it to be possible." Xia Tian said as he looked at the transparent gel vacuum ball that was shining slightly blue in front of him.
Huang Junjie touched the gel ball: "Test the strength, hardness and other conditions of the gel ball to see if there are any weaknesses."
"Okay." A group of researchers hurriedly started.
Huang Junjie wants to use vacuum bags to replace hydrogen airbags as the buoyancy of the airship. Why can vacuum provide buoyancy? In fact, buoyancy is caused by the difference in density of matter.
Currently, among the known gases in the world, there is no gas less dense than hydrogen.
Since there is no gas with a lower density, simply let the gas disappear completely and replace the hydrogen with a vacuum.
The density difference between air and hydrogen is 12o, and the density difference between air and vacuum is 129. In this way, the buoyancy of vacuum is about 1o7.5% of that of hydrogen.
More than five hours later, the sun was already setting.
Xia Tian ran over excitedly with a test report and said: "Boss, the test results of the gel ball are perfect and in line with expectations."
After taking the report, he flipped through it and put it aside. He was not surprised by the result. After all, the mixed gel can be used as a repair material for spacecrafts in parallel time and space - the interstellar era. Its strength and sealing properties can definitely resist vacuum.
of.
The test data in the report shows that the buoyancy of the gel ball has indeed reached 1o7.5% of that of the hydrogen air bag.
If gel vacuum balls are used instead of hydrogen bladders, the overall buoyancy of the airship will increase by about 7.5%.
This 7.5% increase in buoyancy is crucial for raising the airship's height to near the Kármán line.
However, the gel vacuum ball is not without its weaknesses, that is, once the height is fixed, it is difficult to adjust the height, and once it goes up to the sky, it may not come back down.