Great Power Heavy Industry: Rise

Chapter 364 Planetary Engines

Zhong Cheng and Yang Xi returned to the Star Reacher along the cable, and they took 45 minutes together.

He calculated that even if other people were a little unfamiliar with their movements, they could finish it in one hour.

In this way, it only takes 120 hours to install 10 Zhurong electric pushers.

After he explained the precautions to the out-of-work personnel in the command center, the first batch of 24 engineering personnel began to act.

With Zhong Cheng and Yang Xi's demonstration, everyone's tension was greatly relieved, and they walked towards the rear of the cabin talking and laughing.

With the first cable connecting Icarus, Zhong Cheng was more assured of their safety.

In the Star Reaching Project, the installation of Zhurong electric pushers on the surface of Icarus is only one of the first steps.

Another job is to build a large raw material transfer station on Icarus.

The transfer station is connected to the Star Reacher through the main pipeline, and then connected to the Zhurong Electric Push on Icarus through the branch pipeline to provide fuel for the Zhurong Electric Push.

Because Zhurong electric push not only needs electricity, but also needs propellant, that is, working fluid.

One advantage of ion engines is that they are not picky eaters, and easily ionized atoms can be used as propellants, such as xenon, zinc, nitrogen, iodine, magnesium, bismuth, etc.

Under special circumstances, iron ions can also be used as a working medium by adjusting the parameters of Zhurong Electric Pusher.

In fact, the use of iron ions as the propellant of Zhurong's electric push is the most critical technology in the Star Reaching Project.

Without this technology, they would not even want to bring the nearly 2 million-ton Icarus back to Earth.

According to the law of conservation of momentum, the Star Reacher only weighs [-] tons, and even if all of it becomes working fluid, there is nothing Icarus can do about it.

But if the iron resources on Icarus can be used, it will be completely different.

When replenishing materials from Ceres, they mainly replenish helium-3. As long as there is enough energy, they can use the refining equipment on the Star Reacher to refine the iron oxide on Icarus into pure iron powder. Lowes fuel.

This is to take from one another and use it to another!

Therefore, this raw material transfer station also undertakes the task of cutting the rocks on Icarus and transporting them back to the Asterisker.

The construction of this raw material transfer station is the top priority. In the Star Reaching Project, this will also be the project that Zhong Cheng will personally be responsible for implementing.

The equipment and pipelines of the transfer station have already been prepared, as long as a few cables connecting Icarus are installed, it can start.

Zhong Cheng and Yang Xi rested for an hour, explained their work to Hu Bo and Lin Wei, and then set off again.

This time they will have eight people to complete the installation project together, Zhong Cheng and Yang Xi are the main ones, and the others will help.

In order to transport more than 200 tons of equipment, the Star Reacher adjusted its fuselage, aimed its tail at Icarus, and opened the main channel under the belly of the aircraft.

With the help of the eight cables already installed, Zhong Cheng and others successfully sent the equipment to the largest and deepest impact crater on Icarus.

It took more than eight hours to install and debug the transfer station, and connect the raw material conveyor belt and pipeline to the asterisk.

At this time, 120 Zhurong electric pushers used to stop the rotation of Icarus have been installed.

Everyone worked together, and it took another 4 hours to install the raw material transfer station and the cables and raw material delivery pipelines of each Zhurong Electric Push.

Zhong Cheng breathed a sigh of relief. After 12 hours of continuous homework, he felt tired.

And Yang Xi and the others have already rested three times in rotation.

Zhong Cheng stood next to a Zhu Rong electric pusher and ordered loudly:

"Command center, start the engine, 10% power input!"

The injection port of Zhu Rong Electric pushes out a lavender light instantly, which is the color of iron ions.

Zhong Cheng used a hand-held ultrasonic detector to check the rock on which Zhu Rong's electric pusher was fixed, and found no cracks.

Together with 39 other people, he checked other Zhu Rong's tweets and confirmed that there were no problems.

He ordered again, "20% power input!"

This operation has been repeated ten times. After 2 hours, 120 Zhurong electric pushers began to work at full capacity.

This new type of Zhurong electric propulsion has strong power, and the maximum thrust can reach 100 tons. A little carelessness may crack the fixed rock.

But the actual situation shows that Icarus has been tempered by meteorites for hundreds of millions of years, even if it is not stronger than an iron ball, it is almost the same.

Zhong Cheng led people to cut dozens of rocks weighing several tons on the surface of Icarus, put them into the crusher at the raw material transfer station, crush them into fine stones, and transport them back to Xingxing.

Zhong Cheng returned to the command center, and Hu Bo reported to him that the rotation speed of Icarus had dropped significantly, and the rotation would stop within 50 hours at most.

Lin Wei then also came to the command center and reported that the iron ore refining equipment on the Star Reacher was running successfully, and the refined and processed pure iron powder had begun to be transported to the raw material transfer station on Icarus.

Only then did Zhong Cheng feel relieved. Except for the accidental injury of four engineers, the plan was progressing very smoothly.

Under everyone's persuasion, he went back to the cabin to sleep after having dinner in the restaurant.

Four days later, Icarus completely stopped its rotation, and the first step of the star-seeking project was completed.

Zhong Cheng happily announced that the second action plan was to be implemented to correct Icarus's forward route.

The current orbit of Icarus has an included angle of 32 degrees with the earth, because the earth is also moving forward, counting the advance, and there is an included angle of 23 degrees when it arrives at the meeting point with the earth.

The second step of the Star Reaching Project is to use Zhu Rong to push and correct the trajectory of Icarus.

But during the four days waiting for Icarus to stop spinning, everyone was not idle.

In addition to 12 people mining on the planet at any time to provide propellant raw materials, other people have installed another 240 Zhurong electric pushers on the hemisphere of Icarus.

Zhong Cheng ordered to activate 50 Zhurong electric pushers on the side of Icarus to push Icarus away from the original orbit.

Three days later, Icarus' direction was adjusted to the scheduled route, and the second step of the star-seeking plan was completed.

Immediately after that is the third step of the Star Reaching Project, to accelerate Icarus.

At this time, the 120 Zhurong electric pushers that were originally used to stop the rotation on the Icarus have been taken out and reinstalled on the back of the Icarus.

In this way, there are 360 ​​Zhurong electric pushers providing a driving force of nearly 4 tons, pushing Icarus forward.

Based on such a driving force, it will take nearly a month for Icarus to accelerate to a speed of 1 kilometers per second.

But after flying at this speed for a maximum of two or three days, it will also take a month to reinstall 360 Zhurong electric pushers to the front of Icarus to slow it down.

During this period, it is necessary to continuously mine the rocks on Icarus for refining to provide the huge consumption of Zhurong Electric Push, and it is estimated that 100 million tons of rocks will be mined.

2034 4 Month 26 Day.

The slender Star Reacher towed the huge asteroid on its nearly 3 million-kilometer voyage back to Earth.

Zhong Cheng said gratifiedly to Yang Xi: "I didn't expect that the idea of ​​capturing asteroids you put forward last year was really successful!"

Yang Xi sighed: "The power of human beings is still too small, even capturing such a small planet is so laborious."

Lin Wei laughed and said, "I've seen a sci-fi movie "The Wandering Earth" before. In the movie, humans actually used 12000 planetary engines to drive the earth. Is this possible?"

Yang Xi also said with a smile: "Let's not talk about whether it is possible to build such an engine with a diameter of [-] to [-] kilometers and whether the earth's crust can withstand such a huge driving force. Let's talk about the propellants needed for the operation of these planetary engines to lift the earth to the sea. All the land on the plane is not enough to fill the combustion chamber!"

Zhong Cheng jokingly said: "Our 360 Zhurong electric pushers can be regarded as planetary engines, but they are a bit small!"

(End of this chapter)