The Three-Body Problem: The Most Competent Wallfacer of All Time

Chapter 324 Geography of Solar System Countries (2)

The main asteroid belt has more than 100 million asteroids with a diameter greater than one kilometer. Some of them are like wanderers who like to travel, cruising alone in the vast asteroid belt.

Others move together like a family, these "family asteroids" are slowly scattered remnants of once larger celestial bodies disintegrated.

About 45 billion years ago, planetesimals formed as the warm inner region of the solar nebula slowly cooled, quickly coalescing around small chunks of rock and metal.

The growth process of each planet is to clean up the planetesimals encountered and near the orbits in their respective orbits, and these rocky worlds have not completed the growth process until no new matter is encountered in the orbits.

As the stars of the solar nebula formed, the regions outside the stars cooled, and the formerly rocky worlds became terrestrial planets.

Outside the orbit of Mars, the attraction of planetesimals and the process of becoming larger planets are continuously interrupted by Jupiter's strong gravitational pull.

Therefore, the area between Mars and Jupiter did not form a large planet.

Although there are many celestial bodies in the main asteroid belt, the emptiness of space dilutes the sense of existence of these celestial bodies.

The two dwarf planets Ceres and Vesta, together with the smaller Pallas and Juno, account for half the total mass of the main asteroid belt.

Although there are many asteroids, their size is too small.

The shape of Ceres basically has the appearance of a ball star, but at close range, there is a huge gap in the south of the dwarf planet.

This gap is not as soft as a crater, but it looks like it was bitten by some monster. The ground is uneven and looks a little hideous.

Ceres City is an industrial city. The mining spacecraft cruises in the main asteroid belt. Usually, after the metal deposits are full, they will be transported to Ceres, or they will wait for Ceres to get closer to them and take the opportunity to unload the metal deposits.

Ceres itself is not a resource-rich dwarf planet. Its mantle layer is rich in ice. These ices naturally become the source of domestic and industrial water in this place with no villages and no shops.

Therefore, at the beginning of the construction of Gushen City, it was aimed at the functions of an industrial city and a supply city.

Over the past two centuries, the countries in the solar system have built thousands of huge mining platforms. They cruise in the main asteroid belt. Sometimes it takes more than ten years to fill up the cargo hold. If you are lucky, you can mine a ship in a few months.

These platforms unload their harvest in Gushen City, then complete the supply and continue the new mining task.

Matching with the mining platform is the system of gradually improving the search for asteroids. Today, the orbits and positions of about 60 asteroids are known, so although the speed of the mining platform is very slow, there are few emptying phenomena .

If you are unlucky and encounter an asteroid with a rocky structure, you can only continue to look for other targets.

However, there are not many such cases. Most asteroids will contain some metal substances, especially iron with the highest content.

The most unlucky thing is to run into an icy asteroid, because Ceres has a lot of ice that can solve the water problem of the entire main asteroid belt.

Whether it is the Earth civilization circle or the Jupiter civilization circle, there is no phenomenon of water shortage, so these icy asteroids are very tasteless and not of much practical use.

Every time this happens, the mining ship will label these icy asteroids and give them an international code name.

The ice is not used now, and it may not be used in the future.

And in the empty space, encountering ice is a very comforting thing, and it can even be regarded as a symbol of life.

The most encountered situation is asteroids with metal resources in rocks. Generally, the content of metal resources is 3%, and the maximum can reach 5%.

Moreover, the metal elements in space are not as difficult to collect as they are on the earth. Take iron as an example. Most of the iron on the earth’s surface is oxidized and turned into powder, while the unoxidized iron is buried deep. underground.

There is no oxidation problem in space, so most metal substances exist in the state of particles, or in the state of a large piece.

This kind of metal substance is easy to filter, and although it will contain some impurities, it is better to smelt than the metal ore on the earth.

In rare cases, the entire asteroid is made of metal. Generally, when encountering such asteroids, you can return to the voyage by collecting one.

Jiang Yu can see from space that there are some moving dots on Ceres, which are all mine carts transporting ice or mining ice.

Gushen City looks like a giant steel beast lying on the body of Ceres. The overall structure is not very high, but the area is not small.

After Jiang Yu landed on the shuttle, he received a warm welcome.

The manual work in modern industry has been contracted by industrial robots, and the workers working here are only responsible for supervision and overall planning.

So although it is an industrial city, the streets are very clean, and everyone's clothes are also very clean. There is no soot dust everywhere as imagined.

Thinking of this, Jiang Yu smiled and shook his head. Today's industries use nuclear fusion as energy, so there is no need to burn coal.

The gravity here is so small that it can be ignored. In such an environment, Jiang Yu visited the process from screening metal deposits, to smelting, to various metal plates.

These metal plates will be transported by cargo spacecraft to where they are needed.

Jiang Yu stayed here for two days, and specifically asked about the safety of the workers on the mining ship and the issue of vacation.

The mayor explained: "Each mining platform will be equipped with five planetary starships. Even if the mining platform works outside for a long time, it will not affect the workers' vacation."

The arrival of Jiang Yu gave great encouragement to the workers in this city.

Although this city has made great contributions to the construction of the solar system country, this city is easily forgotten by people. Jiang Yu is the first senior executive of the solar system country to come to this city so far.

Everyone felt that the solar system countries had not forgotten them, and their enthusiasm for work suddenly increased.

Two days later, Jiang Yu continued to set off for the third stop, Mars.

This trip was relatively long and took more than a month.

During the journey, Jiang Yu got the news that "Blind Zone No. 2" and "No. 3" were completed.

Jiang Yu assigned "Blind Spot No. 2" to He Shanqi, and officially started the "Light Speed ​​Spaceship" project.

The other two "blind areas" are dispatched by Rey Diaz. Apart from the related work on military bases far out in the solar system, there are not many projects that need to be kept secret.

Therefore, these three "blind areas" are enough for the time being, and it will not be too late to build new "blind areas" when the area of ​​the "blind areas" becomes larger.

After reaching Mars, to Jiang Yu's surprise, Yinghuo City fell into decline.

Since Jiang Yu proposed to return to the earth's civilization circle, Guanghan City has ushered in a second spring, but next to Yinghuo City, there is neither the huge market of the earth nor the rich resources of the main asteroid belt, so there is no further development.

The rest of the place is advancing by leaps and bounds, only here the development has stagnated, so it feels like this place has declined.

(End of this chapter)