Deep Space Wandering Fleet-Chapter 78 - : Core Industries
Chapter 78: Chapter 78: Core Industries
Senior Brother Zhao smiled, “Our heat dissipation capacity isn’t enough, leading to insufficient wastewater treatment capacity. Do you know how much water each of us has on average?”
Zhang Yuan shook his head.
Zhao Qingfeng held out his hand: “5 tons, the entire spaceship only has a little over two million tons of water, which averages out to only 5 tons per person. And how much does an average person on Earth have? 0.13 cubic kilometers, that is to say, 130 million tons.”
“One person has fifty times the total amount we have!”
“Just think, with so little water, our self-purification capacity is almost zero. The water we use has to be processed across several levels, including drinking water, industrial water, domestic wastewater, and so on. Among these, drinking water needs to be distilled again—do you know how much energy that requires?”
“Energy isn’t the problem as there’s plenty from nuclear fusion, but the heat generated from these industrial processes—if not dissipated in time—leads to heat accumulation issues… to the point where our heat dissipation capacity is completely inadequate.”
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“Sigh, that’s true,” Zhang Yuan nodded; he understood that the spaceship’s industry was a series of interconnected processes.
A wastewater treatment unit on its own isn’t complex, but when linked with other systems, it becomes quite troublesome.
A mistake in any link could lead to the collapse of the entire system. And a spaceship must maintain a pretty high fault tolerance.
He said, “So, the extra heat we currently can’t handle, we’re simply ejecting into space through material discharge?”
“That’s right, we’ll replenish our supplies when we reach Jupiter’s moon… but after arriving at Jupiter, there will be no more resources to resupply, everyone will need to hibernate then. Populations will sharply decline, and our heat dissipation capacity will be completely adequate.”
As they chatted, the orbital car reached its first station, the core industrial zone.
This was a vacuum zone; with no gravity and not being able to borrow any external force, moving around is exceptionally troublesome.
To facilitate movement for astronauts, there were electromagnetic generators placed on the floor. Once targeted by the infrared probe on the space suit, emitting a signal, it would generate a certain electromagnetic force to pull one over.
Zhang Yuan was no stranger to these devices and quickly mastered their tricks, gracefully soaring through the corridors.
Through a thin sheet of glass, many workers inside the production room were busy at work.
Zhang Yuan saw an old acquaintance—Ye Kaifu was intently focused on an electronic screen, but Zhang Yuan didn’t run over to say hello.
Actually, there wasn’t a need for so many people in the production room, but in order to increase everyone’s proficiency, the management still decided to train through saturation work. In any case, it’s never wrong to train.
A brief tour of the whole industrial process, and not many machines were running.
The industrial production in space had its advantages and disadvantages.
First, the disadvantages: the very conventional process of “extraction” couldn’t be directly implemented.
For example, if water and oil are put into a bottle and shaken violently, using the different solubilities of solutes in water and oil to separate and extract them, this process is called “extraction.” It is very simple on Earth, but in space, it’s troublesome; in microgravity, water and oil cannot separate.
Similarly, chemical engineering processes like distillation, absorption, sedimentation, and bubbling cannot be straightforwardly implemented in a zero-gravity zone.
However, precisely because of the lack of gravity, centrifuges shine.
Using a centrifuge equates to creating artificial gravity, allowing for distillation, absorption, sedimentation, and bubbling to proceed.
Moreover, in space, centrifuges are not affected by gravity, can be made larger, and can separate substances more purely.
Senior Brother Zhao asked, “This supergravity distillation machine can generate 500 g of gravitational acceleration. How many times faster is the separation speed than that of distillation towers on Earth? Do you know the formula?”
Zhang Yuan frowned, thinking for a minute.
What was that packed tower association formula?
“7.9 times faster!”
Zhao Qingfeng was slightly surprised; he didn’t expect the youngster to know such an obscure formula.
But the surprise was only brief, as geniuses naturally come with expectations.
“Very good, the speed of distillation is directly proportional to the cube root of the acceleration. The faster the rotation, the faster the chemical purification speed.”
“On our Moon, there’s a very complete silicon purification industry, a pity you can’t see it now. Through repeated acidification and distillation, pure silicon ingots of extremely high purity can be refined, about 99.9999…%, roughly 15 nines, while Earth’s industry can only refine 11-12 nines. And then due to oxygen and other reasons, it’s very difficult to go further.”
Pure silicon ingots are the foundation of chips.
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The higher the purity, the higher the chip yield naturally. Thus, the Moon has become the center of cutting-edge manufacturing.
The two continued moving forward.
If he remembered correctly, the machine ahead was the famous YS-3D photolithography machine.
It was about as tall as a building and looked a bit like a large oven.
However, it was temporarily being neglected, since “Earth Era” couldn’t produce any chips at all. What exquisite structures it contained inside, Zhang Yuan couldn’t see.
“Will it be broken after 3000 years?”
“No, do you think it’s like a TV set at home that’ll break if left unused for a long time?”
Zhao Qingfeng laughed and said, “We’ve already specially processed it in advance. This is the universe space, after all, without oxygen to cause oxidation corrosion. Though there may be some quantum movement, preservation for several thousand years is not a problem.”
That also makes sense, vacuum environment plus ultra-low temperatures allows almost anything to be preserved for a very long time.
Even the bodies of humans and animals can be long preserved.
As the space industry developed, more than fifty thousand human bodies were drifting in the Solar System; some returned safely, some death unseen, quietly hidden in some corner of the Solar System.
A few years ago, Zhang Yuan personally witnessed a drone bring back the body of an astronaut.
He was as dry as a mummy, surrounded by frost.
The still-evident terror on his face spoke of his last moments.
This was a worker who died during the construction of the Space Elevator a hundred years ago, named “Carter Brandenward.” A hundred years later, he finally returned home, to the embrace of Mother Earth.
In the past, people looked up to the Milky Way, tracing heroes among the constellations.
And now, we still look up, but the heroes are driven by coldness.
A civilization seeking to progress will inevitably come with sacrifices; Zhang Yuan just hopes for peaceful times, and that in the future, humanity may experience fewer such disasters…
