Black Technology Editor

Chapter 245 Spaceport

Seeing Lu Chen's dissatisfied face, Lu Zhou explained with a wry smile: "With the gravity of the earth, it is not suitable for the Tianshu to take off and land. It is more suitable for berthing in the space port."

"Spaceport?"

Lu Chen was attracted by the new term in Lu Zhou's mouth, and asked in confusion, "Is it a space port built to park the Tianshu transport spacecraft?"

"Correct!"

Lu Zhou nodded, "The material carried by Tianshu this time is about one-tenth of the materials used to build a small space port. Only ten round trips are enough to build a space port for berthing Tianshu." .”

Hearing that there would be ten more destructive trips, Lu Chen's face became even more ugly.

These are only materials for building space ports, not materials for building space cities.

You must know that compared with a space port where the Tianshu transport spacecraft is parked, the materials needed to build a space city are completely astronomical.

And if you want to transport such a huge amount of material into the sky, you have to travel countless times only by the Tianshu.

In addition to what Lu Zhou said just now, every time the Tianshu goes back and forth to the earth, it will be affected by the gravity of the earth, and its internal parts will be damaged to varying degrees.

It may be an exaggeration to say that inspections are required for one flight, but it is not an exaggeration at all for one inspection after ten flights.

In this way, the unit price of transportation to space is not cheap.

At the price of the American Falcon rocket, it costs about 1000 million US dollars to go back and forth to geosynchronous orbit, and its limit load is about 8.3 tons.

In other words, the cost of transporting a ton of objects to geosynchronous orbit with rocket technology is about 120 million US dollars.

The ultimate carrying capacity of Tianshu is 3.7 tons, but its launch cost is much higher than that of the Falcon rocket.

Let's not talk about the energy consumption of the Tianshu itself (because of the controllable nuclear fusion technology, this part of the cost is relatively low for Lu Chen, almost negligible).

That is, every time the Tianshu goes to the sky to destroy the ground facilities, it will cost him a lot of money.

According to Lu Zhou's estimation, the total cost of each take-off and landing of the Tianshu is about 5 million Xia Yuan.

On average, it costs about 1.35 US dollars to transport a one-ton object to geosynchronous orbit. Compared with the Falcon launch vehicle, it saves nearly a hundred times the cost.

But don't forget.

What Lu Chen needs to build is not a space station, but a space city.

How many resources does a space city need to consume?

According to Ling's calculations, the initial ring-shaped space city will have a total population of about 1 people, and it is estimated that the quality of building materials consumed will reach at least 10 billion tons.

What is the concept of transporting a billion tons of objects to geosynchronous orbit?
Based on the transportation cost of the Tianshu, the cost will be as high as 13.5 trillion Xia Yuan.

With so much money, even if Lu Chen didn't go bankrupt, he would still be hurt.

Not to mention, 10 billion tons of building materials are only the initial materials for building a space city. In the future, this sky city will further expand, and the resources required will be even more astonishing.

After careful calculation, even Lu Chen, a local rich man, would have to shout loudly that he couldn't bear it.

No country in the world can afford this kind of consumption.

Whether or not all mankind can work together is a matter of two opinions.

When Lu Chen calculated the account to Lu Zhou with a dark face, Lu Chen began to think about it.

half an hour.

He raised his head: "Boss, in my opinion, if we want to achieve the goal of building a space city, we can't focus on the idea of ​​relying on the Tianshu to transport materials from the earth."

Lu Zhou paused, then continued, "Look, boss, the Tianshu itself weighs 10 tons plus its load, and every time it overcomes the gravity of the earth to go to space, it costs too much.

Therefore, I think we can change our thinking and use it as a space mining ship. "

"Space mining ship?"

Lu Chen was stunned. He gave up the materials on the earth and got materials from space?

It has to be said that this idea is quite jumpy.

Normally speaking, even though it is close to the nearest earth, the Tianshu does not collect materials nearby, but instead goes to farther space to mine!

Isn't this seeking distance?

Under normal circumstances, this behavior does have a bit of cerebral palsy.

But Lu Zhou also said before that Tianshu is a spacecraft suitable for traveling in a gravity-free environment like space, and the energy it carries can easily travel to and from Earth and Mars.

It is a spaceship in the true sense, although it is incomparable with the warp engine spaceship flying faster than the speed of light in sci-fi movies.

But for the current human beings, this space transport spacecraft is completely a fantastic existence.

Coupled with its super high load, it is determined that Tianshu will become a transport spacecraft that can be truly used for space mining.

The most important point is that compared with transporting materials from the earth to space, Tianshu can fully utilize its own advantages in space mining.

That is, there is no need to care about energy consumption, and the service life of the spacecraft is greatly improved.

In this way, the cost of building a space city will be reduced exponentially.

Seeing that Lu Chen's brows were furrowed, Lu Zhou continued to persuade: "And we don't build a space city in one step. We can build a space factory in space first, process the collected mineral materials in the space factory, and then Used to build space cities.

In this way, we can at least solve more than 80% of the materials needed to build a space city. As for the remaining 20% ​​of materials, boss, you can use aerospace transport planes, or build space elevators to transport materials slowly in the future. of! "

Hearing Lu Zhou's confident words, Lu Chen didn't know that he already had a complete plan.

Lu Chen smiled and said: "Okay, if you have any plans, just tell them all!"

"Yes!"

Lu Zhou smiled and continued, "According to Ling's control over the global satellites, we discovered a planet numbered f-1704, which will fly to the closest orbit to the earth in three months."

"Oh? How far?"

Lu Chen asked with interest.

He has always heard about asteroid mining. It is said that there is an asteroid named 16 Psyche, which is only 3.7 million kilometers away from the earth, which is closer than the distance from Mars to the earth.

And this planet is almost composed of high-purity gold. If it is captured, everyone on the earth will be able to share gold worth more than 900 billion U.S. dollars.

Of course, if this asteroid can be successfully captured, it is estimated that the price of gold will also fall to the bottom, and it may not be as cheap as steel.

Seeing that Lu Chen was interested in his proposal, Lu Zhou hurriedly said, "It's about 341.5 million kilometers away from the earth."

"So close?"

"Correct!"

Lu Zhou nodded excitedly, "Not only that, this asteroid is also a metal planet. According to Ling's observation, this planet is rich in iron, aluminum, manganese and other metal minerals, with a total weight of at least 100 billion tons."

(End of this chapter)