Chapter 245 Is it normal to go to Mars?
"Why do we want to learn starships?" Chen Yuanguang asked seriously, his face full of doubts.
For Chen Yuanguang, the temporary silence on the Malaysian strategy made him realize more deeply that under the current system, even in a borderland ruled by an empire like Malaysia, you will still be subject to a lot of restrictions.
These restrictions are subjective and objective. The advancement of technology has invalidated the concept of geography, and the rule of the empire can radiate to every corner.
In Chen Yuanguang's view, only after the development of China and the confrontation between America and the United States in various areas around the world will there be a vacuum in global power.
The current situation is much better than before, but it is not enough and is still a little less interesting.
Because what China needs to fight against is not just Amerikan, but all the beneficiaries of Amerikan's global division of labor system.
Even France, which seems most likely to defect, does not want this system to be completely destroyed. What they hope is to climb to a higher position in this system, rather than readjust to a Chinese country. system created.
The Malaysia Strategy made Chen Yuanguang realize this more deeply.
Lin Jia hates seeing Chen Yuanguang like this the most: "According to your plan, we will build the space station into a space city.
This means that there can be anywhere from hundreds to thousands of modules to build a huge star ring.
How high would the cost be if starships were not used? "
Chen Yuanguang pretended to suddenly realize: "So you said this, before room temperature superconductivity, this is the best way.
But now that room temperature superconducting materials are available, I have never thought about using fossil fuels to complete our space city plan. ”
Since its birth, room-temperature superconductivity has created a sensational effect in a short period of time. Almost all parts of the world are discussing it, believing that it will bring huge changes to the world.
Especially in China, which is the master of technology, Chinese netizens are the most enthusiastic, and there are countless related ideas on Zhihu.
Some Chinese netizens even shouted the slogan "Thank you that technology is in the hands of civilization."
As a result, as time goes by, it seems that it has not brought about any changes, and it is still more at the stage of publishing papers.
You can often see from papers that Chinese scientists have published research on room-temperature superconductivity in top journals such as Nature and Science, but in reality, there seems to be no change.
Super batteries don’t exist, large-scale power transmission networks don’t exist.
Room-temperature superconductivity is like 5G on Zhihu. It is considered to be a so-called high-tech that China wants to obsess over, and it has no impact on reality at all.
As for Amerikan’s AI, has anything changed? The gods said nothing.
In a sense, the duality of the divine rabbit is a perfect adjective.
Fortunately, quantum computers built with the help of room-temperature superconductivity have made a big splash around the world this year, and room-temperature superconducting technology has just begun to shine.
Lin Jia was shocked after hearing this. As the de facto manager of Guangjia Aerospace, she had never heard of an internal plan to use room temperature superconducting technology to build a rocket:
"Why have I never heard of it? Which of our projects uses room temperature superconducting technology?"
Chen Yuanguang said: "Because it is too sensitive, all research is done in Mianyang.
< br>There are French people, Neon people, and American people in Guangjia Aerospace. Although everyone needs to sign a confidentiality agreement and there are various confidentiality measures in management, in Guangjia Aerospace, no matter how strict it is, There is no way to keep it 100% confidential.
So this project is jointly promoted by me on behalf of Guangjia Aerospace and the Chinese Space Administration, and it is considered one of the most important projects this year.
It is precisely because of this that I did not put too much energy into the space station and recyclable rockets of Guangjia Aerospace this year
This year you should be able to see rocket launches equipped with plasma engines. ”
Lin Jia is not a novice who didn’t know anything before. She has worked in Guangjia Aerospace for so many years and received professional training at Shenhai Jiaotong University. It can be said that her understanding of the aerospace field is not that professional. , the basic common sense is absolutely necessary.
“Although I really don’t want to say bad words, I still want to say fuck you!
Plasma engine, how did you do it? ”
Plasma engines are not a rare concept and have been used in the aerospace field many years ago.
Including China's space station, it is equipped with four plasma engines using xenon as propellant to ensure accurate orbit insertion.
But in the past, the thrust that plasma engines could provide was very small. For example, the thrust of the plasma thruster used by the Chinese space station was only 80 millinewtons. Not to mention breaking away from the gravity of the earth, this force could blow up a piece of paper at most. stand up.
About only one-tenth of the gravity of an egg.
The ion engines that are currently in practical use are very small and are basically auxiliary engines. The thrust and acceleration are very small. It takes an extremely long time for the spacecraft to reach the predetermined flight speed.
So you suddenly said that you will use plasma engines to launch rockets, and it will be large-scale and intensive launches. The target is a space city. Launch missions measured in units of thousands must be completed by rockets equipped with plasma engines. The gap between them is a bit too huge.
This gap is like your son who was still studying primary school mathematics and suddenly one day told you that he had just passed the doctoral entrance examination.
Had it not been Chen Yuanguang who said this, Lin Jia would have been unbelievable.
“Yes, it was originally unrealistic, but with room-temperature superconductivity it has become possible.
And we need to completely recycle it.
Rocket After sending the thing up and then returning to the earth, the recovery rate is over 90%. It is optimistically estimated that it will only lose one parachute.
Once this goal is achieved, our cost will be lower than the US$10 per kilogram promoted by Musk. ”
10 US dollars per kilogram has been considered a gimmick created by Musk for publicity. It is unthinkable to go lower than this.
Lin Jia was a little frightened, because it meant The global rocket market will be dominated by China.
Except for Amerikan and a few countries, Guangjia Aerospace and the Chinese Space Administration can grab all orders. < br>
Chen Yuanguang seemed to see what Lin Jia was thinking: "You may have misunderstood. The launch cost I am referring to is as low as less than 10 US dollars per kilogram, which means launching to the space station.
Because it has to be launched into space and then recovered from space.
This requires a carrier in space to stop it and change its direction.
Because normal temperature superconductors are used as the magnetic fluid coils of the plasma engine, its energy loss is negligible.
This means that it will continue to accelerate. As it rises, the Earth's gravity decreases, but its thrust and acceleration will not decrease, but will continue to increase.
If there is no force from itself or outside to stop it, it will keep flying.
The space station is what makes it stop.
A very simple physical principle, an axial electric field is applied between the anode and the cathode, and then the charged coil will generate a single magnetic field.
Generally, metal is used as the material for charged coils, which will cause a loss of electrical energy. However, the loss of normal temperature superconductors is negligible. One-dimensional room-temperature superconductivity is very suitable for this.
But similarly, after you launch the plasma rocket, you have to control its speed, which is very difficult.
In the past, rocket engines used fossil fuels. The fossil fuels were directly controlled mechanically, and the fuel was stagnant and entered the reaction chamber.
But the plasma engine cannot do this, especially the normal temperature superconducting plasma engine, and there is no way to stop it.
Therefore, in our design, we divide it into two steps. First, we use traditional rockets using fossil fuels to mount the first space station module.
In addition to the regular space station core module functions, this space station module also has a more important task. It needs to stop the plasma engine in space orbit.
Then launch it back to Earth in the opposite direction from the space station.
With this design, the recovery rate of plasma rockets is much higher than that of fossil fuels. "
Chen Yuanguang's words were very easy to understand.
After listening to this, Lin Jia quickly caught the doubt: "Yuanguang, this realization will naturally be a huge breakthrough.
But now I have some questions about plasma rockets.
We all know that traditional fossil fuel rockets send cargo into space. They only need to be launched into a predetermined orbit and then enter the surroundings of the space station through multiple orbit changes.
When I was taking a class at Jiaotong University, the professor told us in detail the process of delivering goods to the Chinese Space Station by the Shenzhou spacecraft. During this process, the Shenzhou spacecraft would even make a 180-degree turn under the space station in order to successfully complete the docking. sports. ”
Whether it is China or Mao, the spacecraft they deliver to the space station are all disposable. The single cost of Shenzhou is about 800 million RMB, and it is burned out in one go.
SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft is reusable.
“You’re right. So the difficulty now lies in ultra-high-precision control.
The Shenzhou spacecraft is a spaceship that comes close to the space station, while Tiangong is more stationary in its own orbit, waiting for Shenzhou to dock with it.
The thrust of the plasma engine it is equipped with is too small to support it to make a large number of orbit changes and acceleration movements.
We will give our space station more thrust so that it can complete orbit changes and approach the plasma rocket.
The disadvantage of this is that the plasma rocket is launched at a constant speed and requires ultra-high-precision calculations.
The space station also needs to be equipped with a plasma engine, which needs to use solar energy to store energy, and even be equipped with a nuclear fission power generation device.
In fact, these difficulties can be overcome in the early stages. The most difficult thing is that as the scale of the space station increases, such as a giant spacecraft built with 20 modules, at that point, how do you achieve such high precision? orbital docking.
Because according to our space station design, it is more like a space train, and each module is like a carriage traveling in the space orbit.
Once the number of carriages increases, and the carriages are like Indian trucks with objects on top, bottom, left and right, how can such high-precision track docking be achieved? This will be a big trouble.
Of course, we can choose to leave the problem to the future. If two-dimensional or even three-dimensional room-temperature superconductors are developed in the future, by then plasma engines will have made progress.
If it can automatically change orbit similar to fossil fuel rockets, then the space station will not have to be so troublesome. They only need to wait in orbit.
But we cannot completely ignore this possibility now. ”
After Chen Yuanguang finished speaking, Lin Jia asked: "Why can't we combine multiple engines?
Combine fossil fuel engines and plasma engines. Fossil fuels are used before docking with the space station, and plasma engines are used to return to the earth."
Chen Yuanguang explained: "We use plasma engines to replace fossil fuel engines because fossil fuel engines are too heavy.
Fossil fuel engines have to carry a large amount of fossil fuels. In addition to fossil fuels, It requires coolant and a large number of metal connectors.
Take the heavy rocket as an example. Its mass before takeoff is as high as 4,000 tons, but the actual cargo carried is only 40 tons.
If we still adopt the model of combining traditional fossil fuel engines and plasma engines, it will make no sense.
Even if it can be recycled, the launch cost will still not be fundamentally different from that of a starship.
Using a plasma engine can save a lot of mass, and the cooling system of fossil fuels can be directly cut off.
If we don’t consider the future, we can actually say that we have succeeded now.
Soon we will do the first plasma rocket launch.
If you want to visit the rocket launch site at that time, you can tell me and I will help you contact someone.
The light emitted by plasma and the light emitted by fossil fuels can be completely different. ”
Like the precise docking of spacecraft in space, this kind of technical information can be found in the future, but being able to find it does not mean that it can be used directly.
The real environments on both sides are very different. No matter where you are, you can't find a technical solution that can be used directly.
The parameters in it cannot be used at all in the current time and space.
Therefore, whether it is Chen Yuanguang or China Aerospace, this is a very large project, and the technical difficulties involved must be overcome one by one.
This is the biggest project of China Aerospace in recent years. For China, being able to develop a plasma rocket is already a big win.
Because of the plasma rocket, you can send it directly to Mars after calculating the orbit.
People throw it up, put a hibernation capsule on it, and sleep in it. According to their calculations, it can be sent to Mars in 39 days.
It's a little troublesome to come back, but it's not too troublesome. As long as the plasma engine doesn't explode and the nuclear fusion power generation device doesn't have any problems, it won't be a big problem to come back.
Besides, no matter how great the risk is, there are still a lot of Chinese astronauts who are willing to embark on the journey in order to be the first to land on Mars.
So for China Aerospace, the champagne can already be opened. Amerikan has not gone to Mars yet, and they can already go to Mars.
So artificial intelligence is not necessarily a technological singularity. Room-temperature superconductivity must be a technological singularity. Even one-dimensional room-temperature superconductivity can realize projects that would have taken a lot of time to realize.
For Chen Yuanguang, apart from its symbolic significance, going to Mars is not that meaningful.
You cannot build a cyclic ecology on Mars, and humans cannot survive on Mars.
(End of this chapter)