Great Power Heavy Industry: Rise

Chapter 347 Difficulties
After hearing that, Zhong Cheng raised his hand to stop the argument.

He calculated an account for everyone, based on the maximum cargo delivery capacity of 1 million tons per year designed by the ladder.

Shipping from the central region of Asia to the southernmost equatorial region, the one-year shipping fee will be more than ten times the power consumption of maintaining the ladder in the mid-latitude region.

And if a large number of cargo flights need to be added, the cost will be calculated in the trillions.

The ground base station of Tianti is far away from Beishan, and there are still many unknown and uncontrollable risks.

In the long run, it is more economical, more convenient and safer to build the ladder at or near Beishan.

Everyone is engaged in technology, and Zhao Wei and others have nothing to say when they talk about data.

In fact, they are also a kind of inertial thinking.According to previous assumptions, in the absence of economical and applicable ion engine and nuclear fusion generator technology, building the space elevator near the equator is the only option.

Although everyone agreed to build the ladder nearby, there are still disputes over the specific construction location.

Beishan or even Xijing City is not the best choice. Although the ground base station of Tianti will not occupy too much area, as a ground space port for massive materials and personnel to return to space, the land area that needs to be occupied is too large.

This spaceport will send hundreds of millions or even billions of humans into space, and it will be a huge city.

Zhong Cheng decided that next month he would personally go on a field trip to choose a suitable location in the no man's land on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.

The climatic conditions and altitude on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau are more suitable than those in the Sichuan Basin, and there are a large number of uninhabited areas, so there is no trouble of land occupation and demolition.

A discussion ensued regarding the materials used to build the ladder, the size of the ladder, and the design of the cargo or passenger compartments within it.

The main material for the construction of the ladder is determined to use the new type of soil wire material invented by Deng Lin, that is, the carbon nanotube composite material. The performance of the soil material may not be the best, but it is definitely the cheapest.

Moreover, this new type of soil wire itself is also a conductive material with ultra-low resistance, and can also provide power supply.

The sky ladder will be tens of thousands of kilometers long. According to Zhong Cheng's plan, the diameter will be about 100 meters, and there will be 36 huge vacuum lifting passages inside, which can be used for hundreds of "elevators" to run at the same time.

Although it is a hollow structure, it requires a lot of materials.

The elevator cabin is the part that runs up and down in the ladder passage, let's call it an elevator, but it is actually a space orbiter.

After all, the space elevator is not a traditional elevator. It is impossible to hang an extra long rope from the sky to lift the elevator up.

The elevator has to find a way to climb up by itself. The easiest way is to install a large Zhurong electric pusher on the elevator to provide upward power.

The power of the Zhurong electric pusher can be obtained from the cable of the ladder.

Because it runs in a vacuum ladder channel and can take advantage of the centrifugal force of the earth's rotation, it can easily obtain extremely high speeds.

The last is the construction position of the space station on the ladder.

In order to ensure the stability of the ladder system, the space station must be the center of gravity of the entire ladder system, and this center of gravity must be in the earth's synchronous orbit.

In Zhong Cheng's design, the sky ladder is fixed at a fixed point on the earth's surface, and a counterweight needs to be attached to the other end for balance. The middle part of the sky ladder is the space station.

Everyone calculated on the spot that even if this "counterweight" is placed on the outer orbit 10 kilometers above the ground, the weight will reach hundreds of millions of tons.

Because the space station connected by the ladder will be extremely huge, at least a huge dock that can assemble spaceships will be built at the beginning.

In the future, it will develop into a city in the sky.

And the "balance hammer" is already the limit of 10 kilometers from the ground, which is equivalent to about a quarter of the distance from the earth to the moon.

If it extends further out, it will be more affected by the moon's gravitational force, which will interfere with the stability of the space station.

Before the sky ladder is built, it is almost impossible to rely on aerospace planes to transport things weighing hundreds of millions of tons into outer space.

It seems that everyone has thought about it seriously in the past few days and proposed many solutions.

For example, Jiang Yan proposed to purchase pig iron on the moon, and then transport it to the sky above the earth to assemble it into a "counterweight".

Accessing space from the moon is much simpler, and the human industrial base on the moon also has enough steel production capacity.

But Zhong Cheng calculated that although this plan would save a lot of cost compared to sending it from the earth to the sky, the transportation capacity and cost it would consume would still be daunting.

Gui Bin proposed another way of thinking, first build a smaller ladder, with only one small elevator, and first build the shelf of the ladder system.

Use this small elevator to transport counterweight materials from the ground, gradually increase the weight of the "counterweight", and then increase the carrying capacity of the ladder to expand the space station.

This is a step-by-step plan, which is the best in terms of feasibility and economy.

This was originally Zhong Cheng's original plan, but there was a problem, the construction period was too long.

It could be adopted ten years ago, but the current development progress has been left far behind by others, and there is no time to gradually advance.

Zhong Cheng did not completely deny the above two options, if he really had no choice, he would choose one of them.

Others have also proposed some ideas, but there are more problems.

Zhong Cheng didn't expect to solve all the problems today, he stopped the discussion on this problem and asked everyone to think about this problem after going down.

Then everyone discussed the planning of the space station, the construction sequence, and the life support system.

Finally, everyone put forward some opinions on the safety of the ladder system.

As the solar wind exerts pressure on the ladder system, the gravitational pull from the moon and sun will make the ladder wobble.

The ladder of tens of thousands of kilometers may cause space traffic obstacles, and may also collide with artificial satellites or space junk debris. Such a collision will cause the ladder to crash.

To this end, the ladder system must build air node base stations, that is, at intervals, such as 100 kilometers inside the atmosphere and 1000 kilometers outside the atmosphere, build a manned workstation with maintenance and protection functions and equipped with propellers.

The symposium lasted from work in the morning until 10 pm, when Zhong Cheng announced the adjournment.

Since the next day was a holiday, he asked everyone to relax and continue the discussion after work.

There are still more than four months before the official start of the project after the Spring Festival next year, and at the beginning of the project, it is mainly the civil engineering of the sky ladder ground base station and the preparation time for the production of sky ladder and space building materials.

There is enough time for everyone to perfect the plan.

After the holiday, Zhong Cheng no longer thinks about work, and travels with his family with peace of mind.

The four families of Zhong Cheng, Zhou Hu, Ye Wenhao and Yang Shuzhen all dispatched together and formed a tour group of more than 20 people to go to the Tarim Basin.

The fly in the ointment was that Zhong Yi and Zhou Long couldn't come back, and Zhong Xin couldn't go to the postgraduate entrance examination. Fortunately, there were two little girls, Ye Qian and Lu Yue, who were also very lively.

These old people in the family are getting older, and if they don't travel as soon as possible, they may not be able to go out in a few years.

This is also the main reason why Zhong Cheng put down his work and went out to travel in his busy schedule. Although work is important, it is equally important to be with his family.

It is impossible to have both, we can only do our best.

(End of this chapter)