The King of Huayu Science Fiction

Chapter 397 Planting Potatoes Is So Exciting
"The useless knowledge has increased again..."

This is the feeling in the hearts of many viewers.

Even for a self-proclaimed hardcore sci-fi fan like Ding Wei, it is too hardcore.

The movie hall where Wu Heng and Ding Wei were located was a movie fan hall. This was Wu Heng's request for premiere tickets at the time. He always felt that the atmosphere of film critics, reporters and even industry professionals gathering together to watch movies was not enthusiastic enough.

Younger film critics are okay, those who are a bit older, the older generation who came from the fifth generation of directors, don't appreciate science fiction movies so much.

For them, realism is the seriousness, the superstructure of film art, while unrealism is entertainment, a live-action version of fairy tales, which is naturally inferior.

Needless to say, the industry will be stingy with public expressions even if they are really attracted by the movie, so the screams, exclamations and laughter are usually issued by fans of the premiere.

The general audience who participated in the premiere of "The Martian" this time were mainly fans of Chen Jingxing, space fans, or science fiction fans.

DreamWorks and the Space Administration News and Publicity Center jointly organized Huaguo Aerospace’s science popularization activity of “Pursuing Dreams in Space, Building Dreams in Space”, including online knowledge contests and science fiction works submissions. The selected space fans and space fans, as well as The lucky viewers who were drawn were given tickets to the premiere of "The Martian".

Therefore, there are not a few hard-core sci-fi fans and aerospace fans like Ding Wei in the theater, many of them are aerospace enthusiasts, and keyboard warriors in the Tieba forum.

Therefore, the auditorium presents a gender ratio of yang and yin.

For some science and engineering men, showing off knowledge is like a peacock spreading its tail, which is completely uncontrollable instinct.

People who often come to the cinema must have encountered people who talked about science knowledge with their girlfriends or movie-watching companions during the movie screening.

Then the audience hall where "The Martian" premiered must be the place with the highest density of such people.

Just like Ding Wei’s popularization of “Mount Olympus” at the beginning, many science fiction fans and space fans have been exchanging their opinions with people around them or popularizing the knowledge they discovered from the movie after the movie started.

And this whispering exchange becomes less and less as the film's plot progresses.

It is one aspect that the audience gradually enters into the plot, and shares the fate with the protagonist, but more importantly, there is nothing that can make them understand or even criticize.

For these confident aerospace fans and sci-fi fans, "The Martian" has become hardcore beyond their imagination as the protagonist's survival begins.

Every line, every choice, and every action is full of science and reason.

The plot of "Mars" is that there are constant problems, which make the audience tense, and then the protagonist continues to come up with jaw-dropping solutions, and then makes everyone feel ignorant.

Although there is no visual spectacle, the rich amount of hard-core information across multiple disciplines has created a kind of brainstorming. One after another, the questions and accidents make the audience breathless, and the narrative without pee point is realized in disguise.

On the big screen, after calculating the farmland and expected harvest, Lei Jiayin immediately had to solve the next problem.

water.

Each cubic meter of soil requires 40 liters of water to meet the planting requirements. Lei Jiayin's entire plan requires 15.5 cubic meters of soil, and a total of 618 liters of water is needed for irrigation.

The habitat has the best water circulation device, the best equipment that can be made on the earth, and human beings need 3 liters of water every day to live healthily, so the space agency only prepares 50 liters of water for each person, that is to say , a total of 300 liters of water in the habitat.

Lei Jiayin intends to keep 50 liters for backup and use the rest for watering, but it is still not enough, and there is still a shortage of 368 liters of water.

There's not much water on Mars, there's some ice at the poles, there's ice on Olympus, and there might be water in the subsurface porous rocks, but obviously it doesn't help.

If you want to make water, you have to start from scratch.

Get some hydrogen, add some oxygen, burn.

Start with oxygen.

There are a lot of oxygen reserves, but far from enough to make 368 liters of water.There are two high-pressure oxygen storage tanks in the corner of the habitat. These backup oxygen can only produce up to 100 liters of water.

But if they are really used up, Lei Jiayin will have no oxygen to carry out extravehicular activities, and there will be no emergency oxygen backup, so there will be no way.

"Then I can only think about the atmosphere of Mars, which contains 95% carbon dioxide. As for me, I happen to have a device that is dedicated to decomposing oxygen from carbon dioxide.

yeah!Oxygenator!
There's just one problem: The Martian atmosphere is extremely thin, only 1% of Earth's atmospheric pressure, making collection difficult. "

Under the eyes of the audience who were not aware of the sharpness, and accompanied by brisk music, Lei Jiayin began a series of dazzling operations.

"My teammates left on the Mars Liftoff rocket, but its lower body remained where it was.

Remember how lift-off rockets used the Martian atmosphere to create fuel?The first step is to capture the carbon dioxide and store it in a pressurized container.

As long as I can get the Habitat to power the fuel station, it will provide me with a steady stream of CO10 at a rate of half a liter an hour. After 184 Martian sols, I will have 184 liters of carbon dioxide, and then use the oxygenator to produce [-] liters of oxygen.

This way, I have enough oxygen to make 368 liters of water, and the oxygen is gone. "

Oxygen is solved, and hydrogen is next.

And this involves the Mars landing vehicle. There is saved reserve fuel in the landing vehicle rocket, 292 liters of unused hydrazine.

Each hydrazine molecule contains four hydrogen atoms, which means that two liters of water can be made from every liter of hydrazine.

This is enough to make nearly 600 liters of water!Far more than needed!

There's just one challenge: breaking down the hydrogen from the hydrazine.

"What I'm going to do is react it with a catalyst—I can extract it from the engine of the landing vehicle rocket, and then it will produce nitrogen and hydrogen.

The final result is that five molecules of hydrazine can produce five molecules of nitrogen that are harmless to humans and animals, and ten molecules of hydrogen. During this process, there will be an intermediate process of conversion into ammonia.

Chemistry is a sloppy subject, and it is destined that some ammonia will not react with hydrazine, and remain in an intermediate state.

It's true that I'm a botanist, but I also have full marks in chemistry.

Ugh... the smell of ammonia is unpleasant! "

Lei Jiayin showed his words in front of the camera with some embarrassment. Perhaps on the planet where he is the only one, the continuous recording of video and audio logs will prevent him from being overwhelmed by fear and keep him alive. optimism.

In a dizzying series of operations, he successfully produced water.

Wearing the lining of a space suit, gloves and boots, and an oxygen mask and laboratory goggles in the chemical toolbox, Lei Jiayin cheered happily in the "farmland".

Some of the audience in front of the screen whistled and even shouted.

Apparently, the bravery, tenacity, wisdom and optimism of the hero played by Lei Jiayin has successfully infected all audiences. This is the favorite character image and plot of the sci-fi and space fans in the theater.

But the happiness didn't last long.

Lei Jiayin found that the produced water was not as much as he imagined.

Not even half of what was booked.

Lei Jiayin seems to be keeping a diary, but also seems to be thinking with the audience behind the camera, thinking calmly: "My oxygen is increasing, and the amount of gas introduced from outside the cabin is continuous.

So the only reason for the 'positive' increase in oxygen is that it is being consumed less than I thought it would be.However, hydrazine was actually used up according to the expected amount.

The only reasonable explanation: I didn't burn all the hydrogen released! "

Ding Wei caught up with the actor's train of thought: "Damn it! It's dangerous!"

It must be that a lot of hydrogen produced did not participate in the combustion and floated into the air.

That means...there's a lot of unburned hydrogen in the air, everywhere, mixed with oxygen, and then...a single spark can blow the habitat off.

Obviously, Lei Jiayin also realized the danger at the first time, and immediately waved a sealed ziplock bag in the air a few times, then sealed it, dressed neatly, stepped out of the cabin and entered the rover, and analyzed it in the atmospheric analyzer to show that nitrogen was 22% , 19% oxygen, 54% hydrogen.

Habitat becomes a dangerous "hydrogen tank".

The plot that was already on the right track and saw hope took a sharp turn again and reached the edge of the cliff.

Once the habitat module explodes, the male protagonist will no longer have life.

Wu Heng's heart tensed again after letting go. Although there is no action scene, the narrative rhythm of this movie is so dense that it is difficult to distract.

However, the hero of "The Martian" is indeed the "most powerful" protagonist he has ever seen.

Lei Jiayin, who had been hiding in the rover for a day and a night, came up with a solution again.

Atmospheric regulator with Habitat.

Hydrogen is deadly because it explodes.

But the premise that it can explode is that there is oxygen in the air, and hydrogen is basically harmless without oxygen.

The main function of the regulator is to reduce the oxygen concentration.

The regulator has four separate safety interlocks that ensure it doesn't let the oxygen levels in the habitat drop too low, however, the regulator was designed to avoid technical failure, not vandalism.

"I can tape up the eight vents, leaving only one working, and then use the oxygen tank in the spacesuit, fill that bag with pure oxygen, connect the vents, and trick the regulator into turning the Hab The oxygen in it is pumped out.

This way I can do whatever I want in a space suit without having to worry about exploding.

Then use an oxygen tank to inject a small amount of oxygen into the hydrogen, and use some batteries and wires to create a micro-spark, which can instantly ignite the hydrogen, the amount of combustion is limited by the amount of oxygen injected.

I can do the above operations repeatedly, and burn all the hydrogen in the habitat through controlled injection.

Only one flaw: it would ruin my fields.

The only reason these soils can be called living soils is because of the bacteria growing in them.Once I take all the oxygen out, the bacteria die..."

After all, Lei Jiayin once again figured out a way to overcome the danger of the habitat module exploding and exhaust all the hydrogen.

Lei Jiayin, who solved the problem again, took the soil that had gone through many hardships like him to make slides, sent the slides into the microscope with trembling hands, and called up the images on the screen.

They are still there!Healthy, active bacteria are busy as always!

Can grow potatoes!

Just as excited as Lei Jiayin is the audience who are engrossed in the plot.

Wu Heng let out a deep breath, good guy, he never thought that just planting potatoes in a movie would be so exciting.

(End of this chapter)