History of Human Space Exploitation

Chapter 9 Asteroid Belt
As a descendant of the third generation of immigrants born on Mars, Zhang Dongyang is confident that working as a geological exploration supervisor in the asteroid belt has a physical advantage, especially when compared secretly with his colleagues on Earth who are two or three heads shorter than him on average.Although people working in low-gravity or even zero-gravity environments have received long-term professional training, they have an absolutely high level of accomplishment from theory to practice.

But Zhang Dongyang always feels that his innate awareness of the difference between gravity and inertia, especially when handling heavy objects with bare hands, is really better than people born in a high-gravity environment like the earth.

The "Kuiyuan" asteroid geological exploration and identification space station that Zhang Dongyang has worked for five years has a strange appearance but is very practical.These space stations resemble ancient coronaviruses that are nearly extinct on Earth and caused massive pandemics in the early 21st century.The spherical functional main body of the space station with a diameter of 1000 meters is stuffed with primary and secondary miniaturized fusion engines, large grinders, spectrometers, composition analyzers, and simple but fully functional instruments that can be used by no more than five people in a [-]-month shift cycle. Living space.

In addition to the main nozzle, the steering nozzle and 190 seven huge heat dissipation fins connected to the fusion generator, the surface of the station body is 1327 circular platforms with a length of 500 meters, a hollow, and a diameter of ten meters at the top.These are the space station extension columns used to moor the automatic geological exploration sampler.Those epitaxial columns are also used to supplement energy for the sampler, and receive various asteroid samples collected by the sampler and send them back to various analysis devices on the space station.At the same time, these pillars are also communication antennas for the space station to transmit data with the relay satellite network, and for the staff to exchange trivia and gossip with family and friends on Earth, Mars and several inhabited space stations.

A total of 330 such "Garden Garden Level 50" geological exploration and identification space stations have been deployed in the asteroid belt, and they carry a total of nearly [-] unmanned probes in the ring-shaped asteroid belt with a width of about [-] astronomical units. to detect valuable interstellar debris.At that time, valuable interstellar debris and asteroids were generally rich in liquid hydrogen, fusion fuels such as deuterium, fission fuels such as uranium and plutonium, and metals such as iridium, silver, titanium, tungsten, and chromium.

After the specimens brought back by the unmanned probe to the space station are identified and analyzed, the coordinates of the asteroids with mining value will be sent to the adjacent "Moby Dick" class melting space station.After the manned or unmanned shuttle boat arrives at the asteroid with a recoverable engine of suitable power and is installed, the asteroid will be pushed away from its original position and fly to the melting space station.

A total of 23 Beluga-class space stations have been deployed in the entire asteroid belt. The main job is to smelt or extract the above-mentioned "raw ore" into a form that can be used directly and is convenient for safe transportation.Cargo ships travel between these stations and Mars, delivering ingots, storage tanks, or radioactive materials in safe shapes to factories where they will eventually be transformed into finished products.

Zhang Dongyang likes some kind of ancient craft black tea produced between 23 and 25 degrees north latitude and 99 degrees east longitude.If you add two fingers of brandy produced in a certain place in southern Europe to black tea, this way of drinking black tea with brandy comes from the special hobby of Yang Weili, the second man in the East, in a novel he likes.

Since Zhang Dongyang graduated from the Department of Geology and Mineral Resources of Olympus Comprehensive University in the second week, he found a pack of cheap black tea in a bag and tasted it with unknown brandy in a glass wine dispenser at the school graduation party. He fell in love with the bitterness of caffeine and the softness of alcohol.The only regret is that in this low-gravity space environment, he can't enjoy bone china or any other tea set without lid, he can only use it with "Planetary Defense Council", "Planet Defense Conference", "конференция пооборонепланеты", The insulated semi-sealed cup with the words "Conférence De Défense De La Planète" takes a sip of the drink at a constant temperature of 67 degrees Celsius.

Zhang Dongyang understands that this plan, which has lasted for nearly 100 years and is the largest in human history, integrating all forces including politics, economy, scientific research, and engineering, is more personal to him, a person born on Mars.Because, if human beings sit still, the asteroid numbered 200 will directly hit Mars head-on in 2973161 years. The huge momentum brought by the 4000 trillion tons of this object with a diameter of one kilometer and the huge momentum brought by one-thousandth of the speed of light will directly make Mars The crust disintegrated.

In the next 200 years, there will be a 20.00% chance of crashing into the earth with some fragments of Mars flying inwards to the solar system.Although for the earth itself, it is nothing more than a replay of several large and small impact events in the past 50 billion years, but for human beings, it is a simple multiple-choice question whether to follow the dinosaurs.

Project Coda uses this musical term as its code name. It is generally believed that the written symbol "" and the superficial meaning of this term are in line with the ultimate goal of this project and the expectations of all mankind behind it.

There are four stages in the plan, namely, first observe and locate in the asteroid belt, then drill holes after rendezvous and landing with the asteroid in the Kuiper belt or a suitable location, at the same time, manufacture equipment for the space station in the asteroid belt, and finally in the orbit not close to Saturn Otherwise use a suitable weapon to detonate the asteroid after rendezvous.

Except for the final detonation stage, which is carried out almost independently in terms of time, the other three stages are more precisely three relatively independent parts of this plan for more than two hundred years.

Zhang Dongyang also secretly rejoiced from time to time to be able to work in such a frontier position in the finale plan.On the one hand, the generous allowance of this job can bring him to enjoy these two kinds of drinks that have already become luxury goods due to their sharply reduced production.In particular, he can often find someone to buy the kind of brandy that was not very good, although the work of the space station operator has always been able to eat vacuum-packed space food that is not much better than the beginning of the 21st century.On the other hand, with his mediocre grades in school, 200 years ago, he would have had no chance of being selected into a professional astronaut training class, and would eventually be able to work in space.And the 100-year-long chaos and recession that happened on the earth caused almost all his classmates and alumni in the past 50 years to be semi-forcibly recruited into the planetary defense committee.

Quietly recall...

In 2089, after a 190-day flight, Zhang Dongyang's grandfather and his family arrived at the city of Mars-[-] from the Earth-orbiting space station Tiangong-[-].His grandparents joined the ranks of Mars developers with a lot of money to settle down, three tons of personal belongings they thought they couldn't throw away and sell, curiosity, and the ideal of the cause that the community spirit gave them.

In the 21s and 90s of the 1709st century, moving to other planets to work and live is far from being a popular and popular emigration behavior.However, Zhang Dongyang's grandfather's family also became one of the [-] technical support talent families of the global joint mining company after they beat other [-] candidate families in the national selection from China Minmetals Corporation Jiangxi Branch. .

When Zhang Dongyang’s grandfather took off from the Wenchang base and left the earth, he still couldn’t forget his apartment in Xinyu, which he listed more than ten days ago. .

However, two years later, the family will be grateful for this unintentional but planned move.

One month after they arrived on Mars, when they were still trying to adapt to the gravity of one-third of the earth and the high proportion of oxygen in the air, the buyer from Fuzhou just made a deal with them with a symbolic cut. .

The turning point comes from Dr. Gu Lanlan's report on the asteroid.

After all, after every human being heard the news that this species has a high probability of extinction in 300 years, the global housing prices caused by the panic of the public and the feedback from the over-amplification of the capital market, the average flash crash exceeded 90.00%.The housing price of their old home was only cut in half, supported by a certain kind of national tenacity and everyone's spirit of resignation to past disasters to resistance with both hands.

The impact of the evaporation and disappearance of a large amount of wealth on everyone was multiplied by human greed, ignorance and fear in the convulsions and suffocation of commercial activities, industrial production and even agricultural production in the following ten years.As a result, after the total human population reached a historic 2113 billion in 50, it was followed by [-] years of senseless wars and famines, and a future that generally looked like the end of the world. There is a desire to avoid the birth of offspring.

The total population of humans in the solar system has dropped to 230 billion.

This population decline is as historic as the previous population peak, such a proportional decline in the history of Homo sapiens.In addition to the large-scale attrition caused by the tragic and primitive mutual gnawing with the Neanderthals when they first came out of Africa, even the damage caused by the mythical flood that only survives in the Shan Hai Jing and the Old Testament of the Bible is particularly inferior.

However, when the permanent population of near-Earth inhabited space stations and lunar bases is kept far below the minimum operation and maintenance limit all year round due to the lack of supplies, fortunately the major countries on the earth still maintain a minimum level of sobriety.

Such sobriety has allowed the largest hadron collider in human history, located on the border between China's NMG and northern Mongolia, to continue to operate at full capacity.The three Newton-class deep-space telescope arrays established between Mars and the asteroid belt were established five years after the first Mars settlement on Mars was established.

The Hadron Collider enables scientists to continuously explore the boundaries of energy and quantum mechanics that humans can control. Such exploration may be possible in a limited future and within the limited resources that humans have.These studies and efforts have enabled the nuclear weapon technology mastered by mankind to cause considerable damage to the asteroid that may be extinct.

The main mirrors of the three optical telescope arrays with a diameter of more than 1000 kilometers are made of water ice on Ceres, and behind the entire huge ice-made objective mirror, gold, the most reflective and stable element in nature, is used with an average thickness of three millimeters. coating.The intelligent broadcast system and station staff of the three telescope space workstations broadcast the trajectory of the asteroid 2973161 approaching 260 million kilometers to the solar system every day.

In addition to the report on the trajectory of the asteroid, the telescope group also has more analysis results on the asteroid.There are also good people who use this to calculate the distance that human beings will slide into the abyss of death after the Martian crust destroyed by the asteroid hits the earth a few years later, on the earth covered with flames, huge waves, dust and dark clouds.

三座牛顿级深空光学望远镜都以最简单可靠的牛顿式反射望远镜设计构建。1039千米的主物镜直径比这之前最大的50米口径轨道光学望远镜口径扩大了二万余倍，实际放大倍率较之前增大了二十于万倍，达到了前无古人的20亿倍。巨大望远镜的理论放大倍率更在空前的一万零9000米的主副镜距离下，理论上可以看清3.26光年外一万8000米大小的物体。

It is also fortunate that the ignorance and fear that caused the war, just like the past tens of thousands of years, spurred the human species to continue to explore and revive until it stood at least at the top of the solar system.In the autumn of 2161, the Global Joint High Energy Research Institute proposed a solution under the unremitting efforts of research.

The plan is to collect abundant materials from the asteroid belt to make three M-class fusion nuclear weapons.According to the observation results of the asteroid by the array telescope, the TNT equivalent of this level of nuclear bomb is enough to blow up the target into fragments no larger than 5000 meters in diameter near the orbit of Neptune.However, with the means of manufacturing and mining by human beings at that time, when the asteroid reaches the inner periphery of the Kuiper belt 150 years later, exhausting all human resources can only have no more than five M-class nuclear bombs

Note 1: At this time, humans have used the number of star type to refer to the nuclear bomb equivalent, that is, M-class, K-class, G-class, F-class, A-class, B-class, O-class, and the latter class is higher than the H class of the previous class. The equivalent is two orders of magnitude larger, that is, one hundred times. 1H equivalent is the equivalent of the largest hydrogen bomb ever detonated by human beings in the [-]th century—the Tsar Bomb (Царь-бомба), and the standard M-class nuclear bomb is [-] H equivalent.

(End of this chapter)