The last human in the universe

Chapter 37 Electricity
At this moment, the number of "strongholds" that human civilization has on Star Sedna has reached hundreds.Most of these strongholds are various mining sites, such as iron ore, manganese ore, copper mine, water mine, dry ice mine, etc. According to different types, most of them are distributed in several comprehensive bases, several planting bases and animal husbandry Surroundings of the "living circle" composed of aquatic bases and industrial areas.

Today, the main means of transportation connecting different bases is the space vehicle produced by people in the industrial area.This kind of space vehicle can be equipped with a bucket at the back, which has a certain transportation capacity.

There are a total of hundreds of space vehicles shuttled between different mining sites running on the land of Star Sedna at all times.While occupying a considerable part of the manpower, it also transported back various minerals and resources, and became the main traffic artery supporting the operation of the living circle.

But this model has to be said to be very inefficient.First, there is a limited amount of space vehicle body transportation.Secondly, the space vehicle cannot be intelligent, but must have a driver to drive, which takes up a lot of manpower.Even now, with the improvement of various factories and production lines in the industrial zone and the gradual improvement of production efficiency, the transportation volume of the space vehicle body can no longer meet the demand.

We must find a way to solve this matter, otherwise, this matter will become a bottleneck on the road to industrialization.

At this moment, there are three options before Zhao Changxing.

The first option is the simplest.All it needs to do is to roughly level the traffic roads between different strongholds, and the main mode of transportation remains the status quo, that is, it is carried out by space vehicles driven by drivers.

Because the road is leveled and the speed of the vehicle can be increased, this method can roughly increase the transportation efficiency by about 30%.

The second scheme is more complicated. After leveling the road, this scheme needs to coagulate gravel dust with some kind of coagulant to lay a special road surface.Afterwards, it is supplemented with some locators, indicators, etc. to realize the automatic driving of the space vehicle, which can save a lot of manpower on the premise of greatly improving the transportation efficiency.

Correspondingly, the investment required by this scheme is far beyond the first scheme.

The third option consumes the most resources and manpower, but is also the most efficient.This is the rail transit—rails are laid directly on the land of Sedna, and different strongholds are connected by trains.

Its transportation efficiency is the highest, and it can also be driven automatically.

Faced with these three options, Zhao Changxing encountered difficulties.After thinking for a long time, and discussing with several people who had taken traffic engineering, Zhao Changxing gritted his teeth and directly chose the third most difficult option.

"Either don't do it, or do the best. Solve the problem once and for all, so as not to upgrade slowly like refueling tactics in the future."

Zhao Changxing also had confidence in choosing this plan.

Although the number of all adults is only a few hundred at this moment, and industrialization is still in its infancy, Sedna is not Earth.

The gravity here is too low, which means that the quality of the rails does not need to be too high, the roadbed does not need to be too strong, and the traction of the front of the car does not need to be too high.Moreover, there is no bad weather here, and the full vacuum environment is not afraid of oxidation of parts, and there is no demolition, land occupation, and a series of messy things.Combining these factors, Zhao Changxing made up his mind.

But... If you choose rail transit, there is one thing that people have to solve.

"Leader, if we choose the rail transit option, our power supply will be insufficient."

During the seminar, Chai Cheng, who had majored in electric power, looked embarrassed.

In the early days of coming to Star Sedna, the first, second and third generations did not divide subjects into university education, but all received general education.General education involves all subjects, but not all of them are deeply involved.The most important thing about this arrangement is to allow people to have the ability to participate in labor construction as quickly as possible.However, after the population gradually increases, like now, there are already thousands of people in the Tinder spacecraft, and it will not work to promote general education, and it is time to change it to professional education.

So Zhao Changxing revised the university education curriculum, and thus, a steady stream of professional talents began to be produced.Chai Cheng is the first generation of talents who received professional education.At this moment, he is in charge of all human bases and all power systems.

Obviously, the train running on Sedna can only be powered by electricity.Moreover, rail transit is a big power consumer.

Hearing Chai Cheng's words, Zhao Changxing was slightly taken aback.

"Are we running out of electricity?"

It has been a long time since he paid attention to the problem of power supply.The two miniature fusion generators originally brought from the earth seemed to have unlimited potential. No matter how many bases Zhao Changxing built, they seemed to be able to undertake the responsibility of power supply.

But now, they have finally reached the point where their potential has been exhausted.

"It's okay, let's build a few more fusion generators. During this time, the engineering team will go to level the road and make initial preparations."

"With our current industrial capabilities, I'm not sure whether we can build a fusion generator..."

Chai Cheng hesitated in his words.

Zhao Changxing waved his hand, and his face was full of confidence: "If you can't make a fusion generator with 20% power, why can't you make a 10% power generator? It's really not possible, [-]% is fine, at worst, build a few more."

Zhao Changxing also has certain professional knowledge.It was this knowledge that supported his judgment.

"I'll try it."

Chai Cheng agreed.

Immediately after that, Zhao Changxing made road network drawings with the help of Xiaoxi and several selected professionals.

Obviously, the rail transit network should take the living circle as the core.There are six lines extending from the core, and then at a fixed point in the middle of the road, different numbers of extension lines are scattered again, connecting all the mining points scattered outside.

The place where the extension line spreads out is designed as a station.The station is connected to the last mining site by light trains. Different light trains transport various mineral resources to the station for convergence, and then transfer them to heavy trains, which are finally transported to the living circle for further development. deal with.

It is estimated that in the initial stage, only one heavy-duty train is needed temporarily on each backbone line of the road network to meet the current requirements.When the demand for cargo resources increases in the future, trains can be added at any time.

Its transportation potential is still great.

After confirming these things, Zhao Changxing immediately mobilized all mobile forces to start the preliminary roadbed leveling and construction work.The production of rails also started immediately at the steelworks.

It has to be said that the difficulty of building a railway on Sedna is several orders of magnitude lower than that on Earth.Just talking about the roadbed is easier. I don’t know how much.

First of all, there are no earthquakes on Sedna, so there is no need to consider earthquake resistance.The surface temperature of Sedna is extremely low, everything is frozen hard, and there is no need to consider ground subsidence.No geohazards, no need to think about things like landslides.The so-called roadbed construction is actually just clearing the forest, removing big rocks, filling up pits and the like.

If it wasn't for the consideration that the running of the train would cause the rails to vibrate, and the vibrations of the rails would rub against the surface of Sedna to generate heat, and the heat would cause the gas to melt and cause the ground to subside, Zhao Changxing even thought of laying the rails on the surface directly.

Even considering this point, the remedial measures that Zhao Changxing needed to do was to put a little support on both sides of the rail every two meters to prevent the rail from directly contacting the ground.

With the help of space vehicles and various equipment, the roadbed construction progressed rapidly.Even when facing the biggest obstacle on the road of roadbed construction - a mountain peak stretching for several kilometers and tens of meters high, Zhao Changxing just brought some TNT explosives and directly blasted a gap in it.

More than a dozen teams worked together to advance the road network with a total length of thousands of kilometers. In just one month, almost half of it was completed.

At this moment, everyone is full of fighting spirit and confidence.At this time, Chai Cheng found Zhao Changxing again.

"Leader..." Chai Cheng's face was full of shame: "My several attempts have all failed."

Chai Cheng is quite capable, smart enough, and capable of doing things.What's more, this matter has been helped by other people.

"How could it fail? Isn't this thing very simple?"

On the premise of a mature technology route and all drawings and documents, it is enough to manufacture a product with only [-]% or even lower power of the original fusion generator. How can this be difficult?

Zhao Changxing was a little unbelieving, so he put aside the matter of the roadbed for the time being, and started technical research with Chai Cheng.After trying for half a month, Zhao Changxing also had to admit failure.

This thing is really difficult.It's far from as simple as I thought before.

Insufficient precision of the steering gear prevents several laser beams from accurately converging to the core of the reaction chamber.The laser light is not strong enough to start the fusion reaction of the fusion material.The heat resistance of the material is not enough and it is prone to deformation...

Zhao Changxing's stall was too big, which caused the power generation of the two fusion generators to be insufficient at this stage.You must know that in the original plan, these two generators are enough to support the industrial development to a certain extent, enough to manufacture a copycat version of the generator.

And the reason why Zhao Changxing is so urgent and spread the stall so big at this stage is also very simple.

He is afraid, he is afraid.He can't wait to make human civilization prosperous and strong again. Only in that way can he resist those unknown risks.

For example, the risks implied by the signals from unknown sources that Xiaoxi received, such as the impact of an asteroid...

Zhao Changxing thought for a moment and made a decision: "Let the children in the university also participate in the technical research. There are many people and strength, maybe we can find a way to solve these problems."

(End of this chapter)