Great Power Heavy Industry: Rise

Chapter 362 The Insurmountable Chasm

At this time, except for the 9 old sailors on the Star Reaching, everyone else was exhausted.

After living and working in the weightless environment on Ceres for 18 days, they couldn't eat well, sleep well, and their work tasks were stressful. Almost everyone lost a lot of weight.

There were even more than a dozen people who were carried on the asterisk.

After the asterisk set sail, Zhong Cheng ordered everyone to reduce their workload for a period of time and try to adjust their bodies to the best condition.

Because capturing an asteroid is a more difficult task, and there is no previous experience to refer to, there are a lot of unknown risks.

……

Since the Asterisk vacated more than 1200 tons of carrying capacity and replaced it with supplies and power materials, this provided the possibility of sailing at a higher speed.

After discussing and calculating with Yang Xi, Hu Bo, and Li Qiwei, Zhong Cheng formulated a conservative plan to increase the speed of Zhaixing from 50 kilometers per second to 100 kilometers per second.

Sailing at this speed, it will return to Earth with 80% of its power stock.

This is to reserve the need to change the orbit and accelerate the asteroid after capturing it.

Traveling at a speed of 100 kilometers per second, they will only need 29 days to find the asteroid Icarus.

Three hours later, the Star Reacher left Ceres more than 100 million kilometers away, and Ceres has been integrated into the brilliant starry sky.

Zhong Cheng, Yang Xi, and Lin Wei came to the observation cabin at the tail of the Star Reacher, staring at the distant Ceres, feeling deeply moved.

They are about to embark on their way home, and the people on Ceres will wait for an unknown return date in this distant starry sky.

In the next two years or so, due to the different revolution speeds, Ceres will be farther and farther away from the earth, and finally reach a distance of 6.72 million kilometers from the earth.

Although this is the core area of ​​the solar system, the voyage is still calculated in months.

Even if two or three years later, the speed of the spacecraft reaches 1000 kilometers per second, it is only three thousandths of the speed of light.

It still takes two or three months to reach the Kuiper Belt at the outer edge of the solar system at this speed, and it will take a year to fly out of the solar system.

And the closest star to the solar system, Proxima Centauri, is also 4.22 light-years away, and it takes 1400 years to fly.

Therefore, Zhong Cheng, Yang Xi, and Lin Wei discussed the possibility of going out of the solar system in the future.

In the end, the three had to admit that human beings would never be able to get out of the solar system by using jet propellant to obtain power.

Whether it is a jet engine, a rocket engine or the most advanced nuclear fusion engine at present, it is driven by the principle of conservation of momentum.

The only difference is the speed of the injected working fluid.

And it is the principle of conservation of momentum that draws an insurmountable gap for human aircraft, that is, the speed of one percent of light.

Leaving aside the energy and momentum loss of the accelerating working medium, the current injection speed of the working medium in the nuclear fusion engine is about 10000 kilometers per second.

To accelerate a spaceship with a weight of 100 million tons to 1000 kilometers per second, 10 tons of propellant is needed, and 10 tons are needed to decelerate.

This is actually the limit, because it is impossible for a spaceship not to carry cargo.

Even if Yang Xi has the ability to increase the injection speed of the nuclear fusion engine working medium to 30000 kilometers per second, which is one-tenth of the speed of light.

The theoretical limit of the speed of a spaceship is one percent of the speed of light.

However, increasing the ejection speed of hundreds of thousands of tons of working fluid to one-tenth of the speed of light will consume an extremely terrifying amount of energy.

The weight of raw materials used for nuclear fusion reactions will account for a large proportion of the weight of the spacecraft, which will fall into an endless loop.

Therefore, the aircraft driven by the principle of conservation of momentum cannot surpass the gap of one percent of the speed of light at all.

And it will take 422 years to reach Proxima Centauri at [-]% of the speed of light, which is also desperate!
If the engine technology does not make a major breakthrough in the working principle, human beings will be forever shackled in the solar system.

All three believe that the most popular curvature engine in the current scientific world is the most likely to be realized. As for "wormholes" and space jumps, they don't even have a spectrum.

The so-called curvature-driven concept refers to driving the spaceship by changing the space-time itself, using loopholes in the laws of physics to break the insurmountable limit of the speed of light.

The space in this universe is not flat, but has curvature.

If the universe as a whole is imagined as a large membrane, the surface of this membrane is curved, and the whole membrane may even be a closed soap bubble.

Although parts of the membrane appear planar, spatial curvature is ubiquitous.

To make a simple analogy, a rowing boat is on a flat river.

Because the river is flat (equivalent to zero curvature), the boat does not speed up.

But if there is a downward waterfall suddenly ahead (the curvature of the waterfall is considered to be infinite), the boat will quickly reach a very fast speed.

In fact, at the Kunlun Research Institute, Yang Xi has already established a curvature drive technology research center, and Luo Na is in charge.

But five or six years later, there has been no substantial progress.

The three of them chatted for a while, and they all felt that their interest was languishing.

This research topic is a completely unfamiliar field for them, and they are now entangled in mundane affairs, and it is no longer possible for them to devote themselves to specialized study and research as they did back then.

Zhong Cheng patted the shoulders of the two old buddies, "We can't do it, but there is the next generation!"

Lin Wei smiled, "Yeah, we can't let us finish everything!"

Yang Xi was also relieved, and said: "It is a long-term career for human beings to go to the starry sky. If one generation fails, there will be the next generation. The torch will be passed on from generation to generation, and that day will come!"

Having said that, the three still hope that they can walk out of the solar system in their lifetime, but is this possible?
There are too many uncertainties in the development of human beings, who can tell clearly?
……

In the sea of ​​stars, the sky and the sun cannot be distinguished, and a month has passed in the blink of an eye.

2034 4 Month 18 Day.

Under the guidance of the Deep Space Network, Zhaixing took everyone to the inner edge of the asteroid belt.

In the lonely deep space, a dark brown, irregular spherical asteroid is spinning and flying forward leisurely.

Its surface is full of scars and pits, and the number is more than a few hundred, recording its vicissitudes of life.

Yang Xi and others have repeatedly observed through the observation system on the Zhaixing spacecraft. The diameter of this asteroid is 1.6 kilometers in maximum diameter and 1.4 kilometers in minimum diameter, and it rotates once in 2 hours and 16 minutes.

Spectral analysis data show that the asteroid is composed of 50.00% nine iron, 20.00% one oxygen, and other elements such as carbon, silicon, hydrogen, titanium, potassium, and magnesium.

This is the Icarus asteroid they were looking for.

The personnel in the command center gave cheers, across "thousands of mountains and rivers", and finally found you!

Zhong Cheng ordered, "Execute the plan to reach the stars, catch it!"

All crew members took orders and took their positions, and everyone immediately entered a tense working state.

Other personnel were also excitedly watching and discussing in the command center and public activity cabin.

Star Reacher turned off its nuclear power engine, started the recoil engine to slow down, descended from above the ecliptic plane, and slowly approached the asteroid.

Icarus is traveling along an elliptical orbit around the sun at a speed of 36.6 kilometers per second.

It doesn't know that the arrival of this group of unexpected guests will completely change its fate.

It will leave the trajectory of life that has not changed for hundreds of millions of years, and be taken to another huge planet to undertake a task that it has never imagined: to be a counterweight!

(End of this chapter)