Will the out-of-control servitor meet the cosmic cat?

But with preliminary detection, Hong overturned this guess.

"This spaceship, it actually has a heat shield."

Seeing that the spaceship has been confirmed to be the black shell of the heat shield, Hong feels his world view has been slightly impacted: "It's still such a thick full-body heat shield!"

According to Hong's preliminary drilling test, the cost of this spaceship's heat insulation is extremely staggering. Not only is it equipped with an ultra-thick heat shield covering the whole body, but it is also equipped with But you can still see its fine high-density cooling circuit.

Obviously, it is absolutely impossible to be a spacecraft that only moves in space, and judging from the heat shield of the whole body instead of the heat shield of the bottom, the atmosphere of the planet it will enter is definitely much thicker than that of the cat alliance's planet.

But even though its outer shell has proved that this spaceship is definitely a spaceship with a high probability of being able to take off directly into orbit from the ground, it is still hard for them to imagine why anyone would build such a spaceship.

It is not the kind of aerospace plane that supports a thousand tons, but a large spaceship with a weight of hundreds of thousands of tons. It can be imagined with the tip of its tail. It wants such a big guy to have dual-use functions in space and space. The cost of it will be extremely astonishing.

Leaving aside the fact that for ground takeoff, the maximum acceleration of the engine must be higher than the local gravitational acceleration, which is undoubtedly difficult for a magnetic confinement fusion engine, and the structure and shell that must be greatly strengthened in order to enter and exit the atmosphere—— Just a power problem is almost unsolvable.

In an ideal state, the propulsion power of the reactor = thrust * jet speed * 0.5, of course, it can also be transformed into working fluid flow per second * square of jet speed * 0.5, depending on which conditions are known.

Now assuming that the spaceship is in Catus with a mass of 100 million tons, then since the local gravity acceleration is 11.8m/s?, such a spaceship with no lift can be directly equivalent to a rocket, so multiply the empirical coefficient 1.2, which means that the full-load acceleration of the spacecraft needs to reach 1.2*11.8=14.16m/s? to ensure that it can take off directly from the surface of the planet.

Very good, now that the mass and acceleration are known, it can be directly concluded that the thrust of this spaceship is 14.16 giganewtons—to be honest, the engineering difficulty of such a large thrust is beyond Hong’s imagination, but here she will Let’s just assume that these civilizations actually did it.

The thrust is known to be 14.16 GN, and the difficulty is reduced to the greatest extent here. Assuming that it can just enter the low orbit after running out of fuel, then the lower limit of the total Δv needs to be 12.5km/s (considering the empirical coefficient of loss and air resistance), and then As a spaceship rather than a rocket, it is obviously impossible to have 90.00% of the propellant like a rocket. Usually, 40% is considered too much. Here, red will make it more difficult, assuming that its mass is 50% propellant.

Now that the mass fraction is known, then applying the rocket equation, it is easy to know that its specific impulse must reach at least 18km/s to ensure that it is just enough to enter orbit-very well, we will now use 14.16 GN and 18km/s Substitute into the previous power formula respectively...

Oh well, 127.44 terawatts.

This is not caused by insufficient technology, but a complete physical limitation, which means that even if your engineering level is as strong as the strongest in the universe, as long as you use a working fluid engine to make this spacecraft, the lower limit of its propulsion power is 127.44 terawatts. Ships below this number will not be able to meet the requirements for direct takeoff from the surface

A 100 million-ton spaceship has only 50 tons of working fluid, and what they need to do is to squeeze 127.44 terawatts of propulsion power into the 30 tons, which is equivalent to a thermal power of at least 2020 terawatts, which is equivalent to [-] total power of human civilization in [-]...

Family members, let's take a look at the space elevator in the distance.

If there is no heat shield, Red can still assume that it is just planning to use the propellant engine to take off on the non-atmospheric planet, and after leaving the surface of the planet for a certain distance, it will directly warp away.

Although the speed after landing at warp speed will not be enough, but away from the gravitational field, relying on potential energy to exchange some kinetic energy, and then using a high-specific impulse engine to make up for the speed, it can be considered to be able to enter orbit normally.

But with such a thick heat shield, it is clear that this thing cannot take off by cheating - having a heat shield means that it is going to enter the thick atmosphere, and the huge mass (atmosphere) around it will make the curved The high-speed engine cannot form a stable warp bubble, so it is obvious that it relies on the hard push of the working medium engine to complete the orbit.

So what is the purpose of this thing?

Looking at the huge engine nozzle covered with coral, shells and other messy things in the camera, Hong felt that these studies not only failed to solve her doubts, but instead made her more confused.

It can't be for the feeling of taking off on the spot, right?

Anyway, she is unknown at the moment—in order to prevent damage to the ship’s hull from flooding the space that may survive inside, Hong’s research can only stay at most on its surface heat shield and those surface modules that have been damaged and confirmed to be flooded. on, and little research has been done on the real hull inside.

Obviously, the top priority at the moment is to salvage this big guy, which weighs at least several hundred thousand tons. Hong has already made several possible feasible plans for this, and is currently conducting feasibility tests on it, while waiting for the heavy equipment in the rear Shipping in place.

This is bound to take a long time.

Fortunately, Hong is used to waiting—you can't eat hot tofu in a hurry, and you need enough patience for everything.

The facts were exactly as Hong expected, from the time she discovered the spaceship to salvaging it and transporting it to the shore, the entire process took three years.

This is already considered to be extremely fast. After all, this is a large spacecraft that has sunk several hundred meters deep and weighs about 70 tons after being partially flooded. On the planet to be developed—it can be said that in order to salvage it, Hong really spent a lot of effort.

Now, it's time to take a look at what's hiding under the hull of this ship.

As soon as she entered the door, Hong encountered a small surprise.

"呲~"

After being exposed to water by three consecutive sealed hatch doors, Hong finally had to be convinced that the cabin of this ship was not filled with water because of water ingress.

By itself, it is filled with water.

This is a spaceship of aquatic life.

"Now they not only have to use the Zentraedi engine to enter and exit the atmosphere, but also have to bring a lot of extra tons of water to keep the cabin aquatic and livable." Hong said helplessly while manipulating the large construction machinery to pump water out, "debuff stack It's just full."

"Why do you need to bring extra water?" Xi'er was a little puzzled, "The working fluid of the spaceship itself often carries water, wouldn't it be good to connect it a little?"

"Forehead..."

Facing this question, Hong hesitated for a moment, then touched Xier's forehead tentatively.

"Cub, I remember you should have stewed fish soup?"

"It's stewed."

Xier tilted her head in response to Hong's somewhat inconsistent questions: "What's the matter, is there any connection?"

"Connecting the water working medium that needs to help absorb waste heat with the cabin environment, isn't this just stewing fish soup?"

"Oh, yes."

Xier suddenly realized.

"Cub, why don't we go to school for another two years." Hong looked very worried, "I always feel like you are getting more and more stupid after having a baby."

"No way!" Hearing this, Xi'er's ears immediately perked up, "I'm obviously so smart!"

Regarding this, Hong just touched Zai Zai's head with a smile, didn't say anything, and seemed to have said everything.

"nya!"

The two cats immediately fought together.

Sif, who was looking up information on the thesis website, sighed helplessly in the face of the constant noise of playfulness behind her.

What to do, my mother seems more like a cub than me.

Tired.

Fortunately, the fight between the two didn't last too long. After all, Xier was still quite interested in the civilization of aquatic species—although she didn't know whether this aquatic species was a fish or something, but just being aquatic, It is already called very strange.

Shui Sheng!

Although for their most mainstream water-solvent carbon-based life, water is a well-deserved source of life, the water content in the body is 5.00% [-], and the liquid water environment is so far, from the perspective of chemical elements Let's look at the most suitable environment for life to exist.

However, the fact that water-solvent life is easy to appear does not mean that aquatic civilization is easy to appear. In fact, as far as the current situation is concerned, the aquatic environment may be the most difficult environment for the development of technological civilization under the category of water-solvent life.

An environment where fire cannot be used is the natural enemy of the currently known technical routes - anyway, Hong can't think of any way to stably operate a species to the interstellar without getting stuck with bugs such as amphibious and underwater holes era.

So, how do these creatures, who don't know what they look like for the time being, do it?

Hong hopes that the deeper environment can bring her the answer.

"However, judging from the water pressure, this species should mainly live in shallow seas." Looking at the data sent back by the underwater robot, Hong felt that the possibility of this conjecture became more likely, "Maybe it's really amphibious." bug."

No matter what kind of aquatic species you are, as long as you successfully get stuck in the amphibious bug, even if it is only a short-lived amphibious, the difficulty of developing technological civilization will immediately drop several levels - as long as you can enter the dry land environment, it will represent civilization If the fire is lit, all that remains is "difficult" rather than "difficult".

If water is the source of life, then fire is the source of civilization—the two are opposed to each other, but they complement each other.

Only in this gap between water and fire can the most suitable soil for the growth of civilization be bred.

"This hatch is also stuck."

Looking at another hatch that had been damaged by a long time, Hong helplessly asked the underwater robot to take out another bundle of special explosives, and took away this hatch with a muffled sound.

In fact, along the way, she couldn't really use the ship's own method to open any door at all. Rather than exploring, she was blasting along the way, forcibly blasting a way.

However, after the hatch was broken open, finally, there were no longer the previous maintenance passages that were almost carved out of the same mould. Only a small part of the huge cabin can be seen clearly through the light path from the searcher.

"Good guy, it turned out to be this thing."

When the light accidentally hit the wall, Hong finally knew what these mysterious creatures were.

"Is this... okay?"

Looking at the still vaguely recognizable creature on the wall that looks like some kind of elongated oversized hexagonal starfish, Hong tilted his head: "It's okay, starfish."

"I feel that when this news reaches the human side, I'm afraid the Internet will have another bloodbath."

Seele, who has played many human games over the years, commented.

Facts have proved that what Xier said is very true.

Although from the current point of view, the starfish-shaped intelligent creatures painted on the wall are so different from the images in those classic games that they can't be hit at all-the starfish in the game are designed purely to make up an upright walking dish. With that appearance, it is obviously impossible for a creature that is truly evolving in the sea to grow like that.

But the difference is huge, and it will not affect everyone's minds for playing memes. Rather, it is precisely because they have the same elements but the real images are quite different that everyone can play memes here. Starfish canned emoticons are all over the Internet.

If they really looked very similar, or even exactly the same, they probably wouldn't have the mind to play tricks, but should think about how to find out the alien civilization vacationers hidden in human civilization.

The fun is back to play, the trouble is back to trouble, and the serious detection and analysis work has not been affected.

After successfully entering its interior, Hong has been able to confirm that this spaceship did not really take off with the fusion engine.

The reason is very simple. She found the air inlet blocked by the heat shield on the surface of the ship, and at the same time found a large number of ramjet engines inside the corresponding position-these phenomena all indicate that the spaceship relies on the Jet engines, or at least mostly powered by jet engines.

Especially when Hong found the engine of this spaceship and found that it could not even meet 10% of the previously imagined performance requirements, the propulsion power in the most ideal case may only be [-] to [-] terawatts.

Obviously, rather than saying that it is a spacecraft capable of dual-use in space and space, it is actually a fusion version of a 70-ton... space plane?

Obviously, with the tip of the tail, it is impossible for a normal terrestrial planet to support such a heavy aerospace aircraft. Combined with its thick full-body heat shield and some new discoveries about its spacecraft structure, finally, the answer The truth came out.

That's right, spending such a high price to design a spacecraft that can take off from the ground is completely meaningless in the short to medium future, including the level of this starfish civilization.

In fact, judging from the estimated performance, the thrust-to-weight ratio of this spacecraft is probably around 0.1 or 0.2. wake up.

But it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter at all-because this starfish civilization never intended to let this space plane operate on an terrestrial planet.

This is actually an aerospace plane operating on the surface of a gas giant planet.

Its function is very simple, but it is also very important. It is so important that after combining it with the power demand that has been greatly reduced due to the fact that it does not need to take off from the ground, it actually made Hong think "this thing is really useful". idea.

because of it.

It is used to scoop up Helium III.

--------

PS: The keyboard has been sent.

Probably the hidden damage to the main board happened again. Take it back in two days and let the repair shop take a look at it. It would be best if it can be repaired.

It took me eight hours to type a chapter with my mobile phone, and the joint behind my thumb is still sore and sore—fortunately, the computer will arrive tomorrow, otherwise I can barely hold on for a day, and two more days is really Can't stand it.

Weeping.

Volume 283 Industry and Power: Chapter [-] Never Again

When Hong found a large separation and purification unit and distinct storage tanks inside its hull, all doubts were resolved.

After all, after discovering that this aerospace plane does not need to take off from the ground at zero speed, and the engine power has dropped by an order of magnitude than previously expected, the technical difficulty of this thing has dropped by a big step, except for the 2945 belonging to the Apart from the Pan Rui civilization, if several other advanced ancient civilizations were to build, they should be able to create something similar.

According to the previously estimated take-off power on the ground, no known ancient civilization warship can match it—perhaps the two mysterious ancient warships code-named "Dawn Core-Alpha" and "Taga-Alpha" Civilization has a chance. After all, although the things they left behind are not so advanced, judging from the currently known details, these two civilizations started as Type [-] civilizations. civilizations, including those in Lupers, have a very large generation gap, so it is reasonable to speculate that if it is specially designed for this indicator, these two civilizations should be able to do it.

But how to put it, even it is a bit difficult for them to do this thing, one can imagine how difficult it is to take off a super heavy spacecraft on the ground.

It's as if you insist on sailing a [-]-ton ocean-going aircraft carrier on land. It's not impossible at all, but it's very unnecessary.

Even if the technology is sufficient, it is like a fighter plane that can fly and transform into land combat. In the end, it cannot defeat professional fighter planes in the sky and cannot defeat professional tanks in the ground. Heavy proportion.

It cannot be said that it is completely useless, but it is obviously not a regular main force.

But mining Helium-[-] immediately adds a full "necessity" to it-for now, if you successfully develop a reactor that can use Helium-[-], and really want to use the conventional deuterium-tritium fuel of Helium-[-] No matter how it is improved, it is impossible to have unique advantages, so a spaceship used to enter the atmosphere of a gas giant planet to retrieve helium-[-] becomes a necessary equipment.

That's right, its efficiency is indeed not high. Even after the power demand drops sharply, the cost of this thing is destined to be high. This thick, precise, and extremely expensive heat dissipation casing has to be completely replaced after only a few times, and the output is also very low. However, the helium-[-] that can be filled for one ship may be enough to fill up dozens of warships of the same level once.

However, it is very necessary.

From the foreseeable future, if you really plan to use helium-[-] on a large scale, then fishing from the atmosphere of the gas giant planet is the only feasible means - like scraping dirt from non-atmospheric rocky planets, satellite surfaces, etc. It's just a gimmick, and it's basically drawn when doing alien exploration PPTs. Few people really plan to take this thing as their goal.

After all, for civilizations with enough technology to use helium trifusion, it is not much more difficult for them to go to a gaseous planet than a modern transoceanic flight, and to scrape all the soil on the surface of the moon to ensure that there is no leakage, only 100 million tons of helium trifusion That's all, maybe it's not enough to add fuel to a fleet-with this spare time, how cost-effective is it to go to the giant planet to make money?

As for the junior space civilizations who have just gone to the sky and can only go around in front of their homes, Helium-[-] is too advanced and technically difficult. They generally only use deuterium-tritium fusion, which cannot use Helium-[-] at all.

It may be a little joke in the history of civilization development to despise what is valued but not to use it.

Of course, if the technology is too strong, you can still go to the stars to fish. Although the abundance is similar to that of gaseous planets, due to its large size, its reserves are several orders of magnitude higher than gaseous planets, which is enough for a long time.

In addition, when considering the size of the civilization level, there is a more systematic way to obtain it, which is to use deuterium-deuterium fusion-although the difficulty of deuterium-deuterium fusion itself is much higher than that of deuterium-helium triple fusion, and its energy release It is still far inferior to helium-[-], and even the most elementary deuterium-tritium cannot beat it.

But deuterium-deuterium fusion has three very good advantages. First, its fuel requirements are the simplest, as long as deuterium is enough. Although the abundance of this thing is not high, it is simple and easy to obtain. It can be separated and purified directly from seawater. .

Second, although it is not neutronless fusion, there is only a 50% probability of emitting a neutron in its reaction equation, and the energy of this neutron is only 2.45MeV, which is better than 100% deuterium-tritium fusion releasing a neutron of 14.1MeV The more you do it, the safer it is.

Three, and most importantly - it can produce helium three.

Students who have studied nuclear physics know that there are two reaction equations in deuterium-deuterium fusion. Equation A produces a tritium and a 3.02MeV proton, and equation B produces a helium triton and a neutron. The two equations The probability of each is 50% - which means that in the ideal full reaction situation, you pour 5000 million deuteriums into the reactor, and 500 million reactions will occur, producing [-] million helium tritium and tritium each.

And because the fuel for deuterium-deuterium fusion is very easy to find, it is enough to build a purification station to dazzle seawater wildly. Therefore, with reasonable planning, it is entirely possible to use deuterium-deuterium fusion for civilian power generation facilities that are not sensitive to performance; the tritium produced provides For cheap deuterium-tritium fusion reactors, such as other civilian facilities, spacecraft and the like; and the helium three produced are provided to the military fleet, in order to obtain the most powerful performance and a clean environment with almost no neutrons.

Obviously, there are many advantages to doing so-the premise is to master deuterium-deuterium fusion.