Chapter 327 Space Elevator

As the number of robots landing on the surface increases day by day, a huge railway network transportation system begins to be built first.

"To get rich, build roads first", this sentence is very correct on any planet.

According to the plan, there are two or three thousand scattered mining areas. It is impossible to equip every small mining area with smelters, power stations and transportation bases. Doing so will only cause waste, but industrial efficiency will not necessarily increase.

Therefore, the major mining areas need to be connected in series by railways to transport minerals or semi-finished products to one area for centralized smelting.

And nuclear-powered trains are always the cheapest means of transportation.

This road-paving technology has been developed very maturely and fully automated. As long as the staff draws a few lines on the computer, the robot will work automatically.

At the same time, people have started the next step: a huge space elevator project!

The total height of the elevator is 8,800 kilometers!

"Space elevator" is a new technology developed by humans on Nix Star, which is essentially equivalent to an ultra-high elevator of more than 8,000 kilometers.

More than a hundred years ago, in order to transport the massive amount of materials needed for the "Deep Space" into space, people suffered a lot and tried all kinds of ways.

It is absolutely not cost-effective to use rockets or spacecraft for space transportation. The cost of spacecraft fuel and engine alone is very high. Even with ion engines, the propulsion capacity is greatly improved, it is still not cost-effective.

The transportation cost of airships is very cheap, but it is limited to the atmosphere and cannot reach such a height.

"It is better to transport water directly from the other side of the universe than to suck it up from the surface of the planet!" This sentence was a huge complaint of scientific and technological workers during the Centennial Plan...

But it clearly points out the first major problem of human exploration of space: people are in the "gravity well" of the planet.

Just like a real well, the gravity well constrains human space engineering.

A person standing at the bottom of a 10-meter-deep well has to spend all his strength to climb out of the well; but walking 1,000 meters on the flat ground beside the well does not require much effort.

Therefore, "entering the space orbit from the surface" requires a super large rocket, but "from the orbit to other planets" only requires a small space capsule.

For example: in the Apollo program in the 20th century, the Saturn V rocket on the surface, with a total of more than 3,000 tons, launched the 45-ton Apollo spacecraft into the lunar orbit.

However, the takeoff weight of its lunar module ascent stage was only 4,670 kilograms.

Therefore, it is absolutely not cost-effective to transport by rocket, especially in the case of high gravity and dense atmosphere like Nix.

In order to climb the gravity well, humans have thought of two ways to solve it.

First, collect minerals directly from the satellite of Nix, and then transport them into space!

After all, the satellite has a small mass and low gravity, which saves more industrial costs!

Second, of course, it is the "space elevator"!

It was also the focus of people's research and development at that time.

If the construction cost of the elevator is not considered, the transportation cost of the space elevator is only one percent or even one thousandth of that of a rocket or spacecraft. Because it only uses cheap electricity, and there is no need to consider air friction and the like!

In terms of the scale of material transportation, the space elevator is also superior...

The construction of the space elevator is also the reason why the Deep Space stays in the synchronous orbit of the GB131 planet and maintains the same angular velocity as the planet!

The theory and specific principles of the space elevator are not difficult. It is equivalent to hanging a few ropes from the "Deep Space". If you want to transport something, just use the rope to forcibly lift it up.

Of course, the rope cannot reach the end in one go. There are several transfer stations in the middle to control it.

Its key technology, of course, is the elevator material!

Ordinary materials cannot be competent for this kind of rope. For example, if a steel wire is hung down for nine kilometers under the gravity of the earth, it will be broken by its own weight, so ordinary materials are completely useless.

Fortunately, the invention of carbon nanotubes has given people hope for the "space elevator".

Carbon nanotubes, as one-dimensional nanomaterials, are light in weight, have perfect hexagonal structures, and have many abnormal mechanical, electrical and chemical properties.

It is very small, but its strength is comparable to that of diamonds, and it has good flexibility and can be made into long fibers.

Theoretically, a nanotube cable that is 1 meter wide and thinner than paper can support a weight of 13 tons (Earth gravity), while its own mass is less than a few grams.

Therefore, this nanomaterial allows humans to see the possibility.

The comprehensive breakthrough of nanotechnology is to reach the L3 level of interstellar civilization. However, it does not mean that people cannot invent in advance. The simplest nanomaterial, "carbon nanotubes", has achieved initial results in the Earth period.

After a long period of research, people finally invented a way to mass-produce carbon nanotubes with a length of tens of kilometers in the Nix period. Its powerful function gives people a preliminary glimpse of the potential of nanotechnology...

In this way, the machines are roaring, the motors are roaring, and a large number of industrial systems are re-mobilized by the government.

Many scientists have also become active and are enthusiastically designing the relevant parameters of the elevator.

Of course, compared with Nix, GB131's space elevator is much simpler, because the gravity of this planet is very small and easier to operate. And with a super-massive spacecraft like the "Deep Space" in the sky, the elevator will basically not shake.

As long as the spacecraft sprays ion flames at regular intervals, it can offset the orbital changes caused by the elevator's rise and fall.

In this way, the space elevator extends from the Deep Space a little bit.

This highly complex work cannot be done by robots for the time being, and must be operated by humans, so there are a large number of astronauts busy outside at all times.

They are wearing power armor, tied with safety ropes, and there are ion spray devices behind them, which can flexibly adjust their positions.

From a distance, these astronauts are like blue fireflies...

Seeing this busy scene, Yu Yifeng is also full of energy, and he can't help but think of a report he saw a few days ago...

Cosmic sociology points out that the overall action power of a civilization is an important manifestation of measuring the "entropy value of civilization."

The stronger the cohesion of a civilization, the faster it does a big thing, and the stronger the civilization.

Such a civilization often has greater potential.

In turn, the "entropy value" of the civilization will be smaller.

"Just like a young man, who is still in the stage of thriving growth, his nerve reaction speed and motor ability are very strong. He will do whatever he thinks of, and he has a high growth potential!

"The same is true for civilization! "

On the contrary, if it is very difficult to gather the power of the entire civilization, and people drag their feet in doing things, it often means that the civilization is in a period of decline.

The potential for progress of such a civilization is not great.

"Such a civilization is equivalent to an old man... It has low growth potential and may even decline!"