Great Power Heavy Industry: Rise

Chapter 353 Deep Space Network
The three medium-sized nuclear fusion engines on the Star Reacher began to eject charged ions, and the huge fuselage began to move slowly.

The Star Reacher taxied east along a runway of more than ten kilometers long, and the speed was getting faster and faster.

Three minutes later, it shot obliquely into the sky like a sharp arrow.

After 5 minutes, it disappeared into the sky.

Sparse cheers came from the crowd on the ground seeing off, most of them were heavy-hearted and didn't have the mood to cheer.

Zhong Cheng's journey took at least half a year, and he went hundreds of millions of kilometers away, deep into the starry sky.

Many people feel empty in their hearts, and only hope that they have a safe journey and return soon!

……

One hour later, under the command of the old "sailor" Hu Bo, the Star Reacher entered a geosynchronous orbit at an altitude of more than 1 kilometers.

Star Reacher continued to accelerate its flight, escaped from the gravity of the earth, and moved away from the earth towards the outer reaches of the solar system on a parabolic trajectory.

Everyone in the command center has stood up from their seats.

Hu Bo jumped up and down in front of Zhong Cheng like a child in surprise, feeling the gravitational force coming from the floor of the cabin.

Yang Xi and Lin Wei had never experienced the pain of weightlessness because of their first space flight, but they did not feel this way.

Zhong Cheng leaned over and stood up a few more times, and felt it carefully. Although it was roughly the same as the feeling on the ground, there was still a slight difference.

That is the gravitational force on the head, which is smaller than the gravitational force on the soles of the feet.

Lin Wei answered Zhong Cheng's question. The attraction of Taiyi alloy 401, which is produced by the field energy of the Zhong-322 element, is greatly affected by distance.

In the case of maintaining a distance of 1 meter with normal earth gravity, the distance decreases to close to zero gravity at a distance of about 8 meters.

Therefore, with Zhong Cheng's height, there is a 20% difference in gravity from the soles of the feet to the head, which normal people cannot feel.

If you want to reduce this difference, you can only increase the power input of Taiyi Alloy 401, but it is not necessary.

Due to the high cost of Taiyi Alloy 401 and power consumption, only the floor of the main cabin for personnel activities is laid on the Star Reacher, and twenty tons of Taiyi Alloy 401 were used in this way.

Hu Bo said that if Yang Xi and Lin Wei want to experience the feeling of weightlessness, they can go to the cargo hold, where there is no artificial gravity.

Hu Bo didn't mean to be ridiculous when he said this, he was extremely grateful to Lin Wei who invented the Taiyi alloy.

Although Lin Wei's explanation was mainly due to Mrs. Zhong Cheng's contribution, it still did not reduce the admiration of the old "sailors" of the space agency for him.

In today's space age, astronauts who go to outer space to explore and sail still habitually use the traditional titles on the earth's ocean ships. Captain, first mate, second mate, boatswain, sailor, etc. are collectively called sailor .

In the era of great voyages on the earth, apart from the threat of natural disasters, those sailors had to face the torment of septicemia caused by lack of vitamins.

In the space age, "sailors" also have to face the torture of weightlessness, and the damage to human health caused by weightlessness is comprehensive, and even irreversible in the long run.

Today, the old sailors finally saw this disease eliminated on the Asterisker, and their excitement is beyond words.

Hu Bo even claimed that if he was given the Asterisker, he would dare to fly to the Kuiper belt at the outermost edge of the solar system to explore and open up more territories for the Federation.

However, Yang Xi carefully calculated for him. The Kuiper belt is 40 billion to 80 billion kilometers away from the earth. Calculated at the shortest distance, it will take about 3 years to fly with the Star Reacher.

If you bring enough food, it should be feasible, because deep space travel only consumes a lot of power supplies during the acceleration and deceleration stages of the aircraft.

In principle, flying from the earth to Mars, which is 5500 million kilometers away, consumes about the same power resources as flying to Pluto, which is 45 billion kilometers away in the Kuiper belt.

The Kuiper belt is similar to the asteroid belt, but much larger, 20 times wider than the asteroid belt.

Some of the asteroids found in the Kuiper belt are larger in diameter than Ceres, and there are a large number of them, which are important goals for the third stage of human development of the solar system.

Zhong Cheng didn't join the discussion, his eyes were attracted by the starry sky outside the star.

The space of the command center is in the shape of a semicircular cone. Except for the cabin floor and the rear passage, the front several directions are all windows made of transparent high-strength nanomaterials.

In the command center, you can watch the starry sky at a glance. There is no interference from the atmosphere, and there is no obstruction from the ground plane. There is no distinction between day and night, and there is no distinction between heaven and earth.

It makes people feel as if they are standing alone in the cosmic starry sky, among the bright galaxies, and can only sigh the insignificance of human beings and the vastness of the cosmic starry sky.

The word "universe" is used together, and it first came from "Zhuangzi": "Beside the sun and the moon, the universe is in harmony with it."

At this time, "Yu" refers to all space, and "Zhou" refers to all time.

In "Wenzi·Nature" there is: "The four directions are called the universe, and the past and the present are called the universe." The meaning of the universe here is already a standard concept of time and space.

Zhong Cheng lamented that it is a pity that thousands of years have passed, and human beings' understanding of the time and space of the universe is not much better than that of the ancients, and most of the theories are just conjectures.

Facing the universe and starry sky, human beings are just toddlers!

At the same time, Zhong Cheng also found that because there is no nearby reference object, even though the Star Reacher is flying at a high speed of 50 kilometers per second relative to the earth, it feels as if it is still on the plane.

It's like being in the vast ocean of the earth, without the reference of the land. If there is no compass or the stars in the sky to guide, the sailors can't tell the difference between the south, the east, and the north.

Hu Bo explained to Zhong Cheng and others how to navigate in the starry sky.

In order to give these newcomers to space travel a better understanding, he starts from the beginning of the development of navigation.

Sailors on Earth who navigated the oceans early on used an instrument called a sextant, which allowed you to measure the angle between the stars and the horizon.

For north-south voyages, or latitude, all a sailor needs to do is measure the angle of the North Star, and the ship is at the North Pole when the North Star is directly overhead, and at the equator when the North Star is on the horizon.

But it is more difficult to measure the longitude, which is the east-west direction. When the earth rotates, because of the different time zones, the situation that the sun is overhead appears in different places on the earth every moment.

In modern times, the navigation of satellites or aircraft in earth orbit is mainly carried out on the ground, and radio receivers on the earth can detect the position and speed of the spacecraft.

But once off Earth, things get more complicated.

To properly travel deep into the solar system, do astronauts need to know where the spacecraft is?

This requires having an accurate map of the solar system and knowing where the spacecraft is going?

Now basically with the help of the Deep Space Network, which is a giant radio antenna array positioning system.

The base stations of the deep space network are distributed on the earth, the moon, and Ceres, and will be established on Mars, Venus, and Mercury in the future.

With these base stations, the Deep Space Network can communicate without interruption with any aircraft in the solar system.

In addition to sending commands to spacecraft and retrieving data and photos, the main function of the Deep Space Network is to guide deep space vehicles.

By comparing the vehicle's position with a static map of the stars in space and a map of the orbits of all objects in the solar system, the vehicle's position and velocity can be precisely calculated.

After listening, Yang Xi summed it up, "This is the solar system version of the global satellite positioning system GPS!"

(End of this chapter)