Super Dimension Technology Era

When the Strait Space Launch Base was working overtime to build, Huang Mingzhe was not idle either.

Inside the launch vehicle assembly factory in Jin City.

Huang Mingzhe was discussing with Chen Yao, Li Guoqing, and John Field, former member of the British Interstellar Society.

At this time, they were in the virtual laboratory, and in front of them was a very rough spaceship, code-named "Daedalus". [Note: Daedalus was the builder of Minos' labyrinth in ancient Greek mythology. ]

The Daedalus is a nuclear fusion spacecraft designed by the British Interstellar Society in the 1970s, and it is currently the only confirmed feasible inter-galactic spacecraft.

Of course the solution is feasible, but the engineering difficulty is huge.

In 1978 AD, the British Interstellar Society announced the final plan of the Daedalus Project, which provided the first detailed design drawing of a nuclear-powered spacecraft in history, aiming to demonstrate the possibility.

The Daedalus is an unmanned interstellar scientific research spacecraft, but the weight of this spacecraft is too impressive. It weighs 55,000 tons, of which 50,000 tons is the weight of fuel, and the weight of scientific instruments is only 500 tons.

Moreover, the spacecraft can only be assembled in orbit. Look at the International Space Station, which is only 300 tons. It took 20 years to assemble.

Even if the New Humanity's Long 5-D has reduced the launch cost to a very considerable level, the Daedalus spacecraft is still very unfriendly in terms of engineering.

The reason why Huang Mingzhe chose the Daedalus plan was mainly because it had no technical difficulty.

There are two types of nuclear fusion propulsion rockets, one is fusion direct injection and the other is nuclear photon rocket.

The working principle of the fusion direct injection rocket is as follows: Nuclear fusion produces a large number of helium nuclei (alpha particles), protons, and electrons, which are ejected through the guidance of a magnetic field. They can achieve high exhaust speed and specific impulse, and the generated thrust and thrust-to-weight ratio are very high. Nuclear power propulsion is even higher.

The Daedalus plan uses deuterium and helium 3 as fusion fuel. Fusion fuel balls composed of deuterium and helium 3 are ignited by high-energy electron beams in an inertial confinement reaction chamber to undergo fusion. The ion gas produced is fused at 1 per second under the constraints of a magnetic field. The speed of thousands of kilometers is discharged from the stern of the ship as a source of power.

Daedalus needs to consume 250 such fuel balls per second. The exhaust gas ejection speed of the nuclear fusion thruster envisioned by Daedalus can reach about 12% of the speed of light in vacuum.

Of course, Huang Mingzhe does not need the spacecraft to reach 15% of the speed of light. On the one hand, there is no need for a cross-galaxy spacecraft for the time being. On the other hand, 50,000 tons of deuterium and helium 3 are a given.

Deuterium is fine and can be extracted from sea water, but helium-3 is a rip-off. Even one kilogram of it on Blue Star is not enough to extract, and more than 20,000 tons of helium-3 are still available. Why not go to the sky?

The moon does have millions of tons of reserves, but unfortunately the Illuminati occupies land on it and there are no conditions for mining.

"Huang, if you don't need a high-speed nuclear fusion spacecraft, the fuel can be reduced a lot." John Field said while using the rocket formula to calculate the results.

Of course Huang Mingzhe knows that if the spacecraft does not need too high speed, the fuel load ratio can be reduced a lot.

For example, to accelerate the Daedalus spacecraft to 0.2% of the speed of light in vacuum, the required fuel-to-load ratio is 0.029.

If the spacecraft is fully loaded with fuel and is required to accelerate from rest to 0.2% of the speed of light in vacuum, and then decelerate to rest at least 10 times, the final fuel-to-load ratio will be approximately 0.77.

That is, a spacecraft with a mass of 10,000 tons other than fuel must be able to carry 7,700 tons of nuclear fuel.

In fact, even 0.01% of the speed of light (30 kilometers/second) is much faster than the speed of the first, second, and third universes.

"Huang, if you only require the maximum speed to reach 30 kilometers per second, I can compress the fuel load ratio to 0.04. Considering the endurance, the final fuel load ratio is around 0.08, which is most suitable." John Field pointed to the data and explained.

Huang Mingzhe was quite satisfied with the final fuel load ratio data. He nodded and said:

"It can be transformed into a nuclear fusion direct injection engine by directly using a small Jinwu nuclear fusion reactor."

"There are no problems with other components. We estimate that the total weight of the spacecraft will be around 1,200 tons, which means we will need 96 tons of nuclear fuel." Li Guoqing agreed.

Chen Yao shook his head and added: "No, Lao Li, you have forgotten the nuclear fuel required by other nuclear fusion reactors. I estimate it is about 100 tons!"

Huang Mingzhe looked through the current domestic deuterium reserves. The advantage of the Jinwu nuclear fusion reactor is that it does not require helium 3. The nuclear fuel of the spacecraft only requires deuterium.

At present, domestic deuterium reserves are divided into three parts. One part is the power generation reserve of the State Grid of about 1,600 tons, the other part is the strategic reserve of the War Commission of about 1,050 tons, and the last part is the desalination management company's reserve of about 342 tons.

Fortunately, due to the application of nuclear fusion reactors in recent years, there are many heavy hydrogen refining plants in China. In addition, desalination plants refine and separate heavy hydrogen, so there are so many reserves.

Of the 1,600 tons of power generation reserves, up to 600 tons can be taken out, while the War Council's strategic reserves and the desalination management company's reserves add up to a total of 1,992 tons of heavy hydrogen.

It is barely enough to use 20 spaceships. Of course, Huang Mingzhe and the war committee's plan is to build 10 spaceships.

This is a reasonable arrangement that can be made at present.

Huang Mingzhe thought for a while and said: "Lao Li, you can complete the construction of the first batch of components as soon as possible. You can launch them into low-Earth orbit from the other three space launch centers first."

"We are making arrangements, and we have completed part of the main skeleton." Li Guoqing also knew that the situation was urgent.

"In addition, the assembly orbit is selected to be 650 kilometers in low-Earth orbit. You should discuss it with each launch center."

"no problem."

In fact, the aerospace field is currently one of the few areas within New Humanity that has not withdrawn from the wartime mechanism. On the contrary, the scale is expanding like a snowball.

A large amount of manpower and material resources have been invested in the aerospace field. After all, in the war within the Blue Star planet, the new humans have a very obvious advantage.

The war in outer space is what deserves the attention of new humanity.

One long 5-D launch vehicle was manufactured and then quickly put into service.

…

After passing internal discussions between the Scientific Committee and the War Committee, the project code-named "Huo Qubing Class Nuclear Powered Space Warship" was officially launched within New Humanity.

This first-class space battleship will integrate the current top technologies of the New Humanity to realize the New Humanity's comprehensive defense against the Blue Moon system and eliminate the fatal threat of the Illuminati to the Blue Star.

Once the construction is completed, it will be the day when the war between New Humanity and the Illuminati will resume.

Various supporting factories and enterprises have received a large number of orders for spare parts, which involves the cooperation of tens of thousands of factories.

In fact, the most troublesome part of building this kind of spacecraft is the coordination of manpower and material resources.

Moreover, the cost of spare parts is very high, because one part is generally produced in dozens or at most hundreds of sets. Setting up a special production line to produce dozens of sets of parts is a huge waste of manpower and material resources.

But there is no way now. The War Council can be said to be promoting the construction of the Huo Qubing class regardless of the cost.

All seawater desalination plants and heavy hydrogen refining plants along the coast are refining heavy hydrogen nuclear fuel at full capacity.

Under the wartime mechanism, New Humanity can do anything to win, and everything must make way for war. Under this sense of urgency, New Humanity explodes with unprecedented productivity and cohesion.

Thank you all for your support, okay!