At this moment, the steel plant is completed, but it is currently unable to be put into production. The reason is simple, it currently has no energy supply.
It is unrealistic to rely on cables to directly transmit power from Base No. 1. The only solution is to solve it on the spot. For this reason, Zhao Changxing made a special trip back to the Fire spaceship and brought back the only small fusion generator.
The Spark spacecraft only brought two of these things from the earth. One is installed in Base No. 1, and this one is installed in the industrial area. In the future, all factories in industrial areas will need it to provide energy.
Its power is of course limited, but Zhao Changxing is not worried about what will happen if the power it provides is not enough in the future. The reason is simple. When the power it can provide is insufficient, it means that humankind's industrial level must have developed to a certain stage. By that time, humans must have been able to build their own fusion generators.
It is impossible to make high-performance materials like those on earth, and it is impossible to make a fusion generator with such a high energy efficiency ratio. So, can it always be done to build a fusion generator with only 20% of its capacity?
What should I do if the 20% power fusion generator does not generate enough electricity? It's simple, just build a few more.
After the fusion generator is installed and the circuit is connected, the first steel plant with a high level of industrialization in human "history" can finally start production.
When the dark red molten iron flowed out of the electric furnace with astonishing heat and was then initially processed into building materials such as steel plates and steel bars, everyone cheered from the bottom of their hearts.
Especially among the third generation, some girls were so excited that they shed tears.
For the first time, they truly experienced what it felt like to rely on their own strength to accomplish something of great significance.
After the steel plant was completed, construction of a second plant began. However, the second on the schedule is not a metal casting and processing plant, but an automated mining plant.
Facing a steel plant with a daily output of at least 100 tons of steel, it is obviously not feasible to rely on manpower plus crushers and excavators to mine ore as before. In order for the steel plant to reach its design capacity, the supply of ore must be significantly increased. And this can only be achieved by mechanization and automation.
With a large amount of steel supply from the new steel plant - in order to reach its peak production capacity, Zhao Changxing had to assign two people to mine other types of ores to provide additives for the steelmaking operation - where at Base No. 1 The metal processing production line can finally operate at full power, although even if it operates at full power, the processing capacity is not much. But at least it's possible to support the equipment needed to build a mining plant.
As a result, a mining plant including drilling crushers, excavators, automatic transmission crawlers, mineral processing equipment and many other equipment gradually appeared on the land of Sedna amid people's struggle.
Among the equipment it contains, drilling crushers, excavators and other construction machinery are all newly manufactured by people relying on their own industrial capabilities. It's just that because some precision materials cannot be manufactured through metal processing plants, people have to use 3D printers again to print them out.
Their performance and quality are far behind those built on earth. After all, the processing accuracy cannot reach the level on earth, but it can be used as a makeshift. If it breaks, just reinvent it.
Their power source is certainly not gasoline, nor is it Thorin - as long as there is enough oxygen, Thorin is also a relatively efficient combustible material, and it is extremely abundant on Sedna and can be found everywhere. In theory, they can also Ability to drive machinery.
However, after comprehensive consideration, Zhao Changxing believed that the technical requirements for building a Thorin engine were still too high, and ultimately rejected the plan and switched to electric energy.
So people had to build a special charging station at the mining plant for the use of vehicles.
After the mining plant was completed, the steel plant finally had a sufficient supply of ore to produce 126 tons of various types of steel per day.
The next step to be built is a metal casting and processing plant. However, before starting construction, Zhao Changxing took the adults back to the Fire spacecraft to welcome the birth of a new batch of fourth-generation humans.
There are a full 100 babies in this batch, reaching the upper limit of babies born in the same batch of the Spark spacecraft. Because there are so many, the two adults staying in the Spark spacecraft are obviously too busy - in fact, taking care of 60 children of the third generation is enough to give them a headache.
Zhao Changxing personally went into battle and worked with people for four days, and finally successfully delivered all 100 babies and placed them in incubators.
Now, the population of human civilization has reached a new high, reaching an unprecedented 205.
Three women who were in the early stages of pregnancy and could no longer participate in the construction of the industrial zone, as well as four healthy women, stayed on the Fire spaceship to assist the robot aunt in taking care of the 100 babies. Zhao Changxing left in a hurry with the remaining people and started industry again. District construction.
At this moment, the number of people involved in the construction of the industrial zone has dropped to 26.
Metal casting and processing plants have a different meaning from mining plants, steel plants, and chemical plants. The most important factor is that metal casting and processing plants are closer to the application level. They directly face people's daily needs and can directly produce various products that people need. In comparison, mining plants, chemical plants and steel plants are more like its raw material suppliers.
It must be able to produce many kinds of products, from as small as a screw to as large as a space vehicle, it must have the production capability. Although the more types of products it can produce, it means that it is less efficient at producing a single product, but at this stage, people must arrange it this way.
The metal casting and processing plant covers an area of 4,000 square meters, making it the largest of the four plants. It also consumes more people's time - especially now that there are fewer people involved in the construction work, it takes longer.
Its construction took more than a year of people's time. This is under the premise that raw materials are almost sufficient and there are multiple machines as assistance. If Zhao Changxing had been allowed to build it with two hands in the past, he would probably not even think about it for ten to twenty years.
After building this factory, people concentrated their energy on the last and most difficult factory, the chemical plant.
The dangers of various chemicals are well known, especially here on Sedna. Although there are medical emergency centers, many common illnesses cannot be solved, let alone things like poisoning by dangerous chemicals.
The construction of chemical plants must be done with great caution and as many safety guarantees as possible must be installed. Moreover, if it can be done using automated tools, it must not be done manually.
This will obviously greatly increase the amount of work, but no one dares to neglect matters that involve the overall interests of civilization and personal interests. After all, no one can say who will come to operate this chemical plant in the future.
Also, chemical plants are not like metal casting and processing plants, where different products can be mixed on one production line - unless one wants to blow up the entire industrial area to the sky. Not only cannot they be mixed, but the production environments of each production line even need to be strictly isolated. Otherwise, if you are not careful, the chemical raw materials will explode for you.
At this moment, three and a half years have passed since the construction of the first building in the industrial zone started. However, there are still at least two years left before the expected completion time. As a result, the time reserved for the construction of the No. 2 Comprehensive Base is only up to half a year.
It may not be realistic to build the No. 2 comprehensive base in half a year. Zhao Changxing convened several gatherings of adults to discuss it, and finally decided that the chemical plant would not be fully completed yet. Only the most important chemical production lines would be built, and the rest would be temporarily postponed.
As a result, pipes of special specifications began to crisscross the chemical plant building, and equipment such as fume hoods, reactors, storage tanks, etc. began to settle here. When several of the most important chemical production lines are completed, various minerals required for initial start-up - such as sulfur ore separated from pyrite, water ore, nitrogen ore, dry ice ore, tolin ore, etc. are also in place After that, the production lines can finally be started.
Yes, whether it is liquids like water, gases like nitrogen and carbon dioxide, or things like Thorin that do not exist at all on the planets in the inner solar system, they all exist in solid form on Sedna. and has an irregular distribution. To collect these things, people must first find places where these things are rich, like prospecting, and then mine and transport these things there like mining minerals, and then put them into production.
Whether chemical plants, mining plants, steel plants, metal casting and processing plants, they all extremely need a large amount of external resources to maintain production, such as water, or certain specific gases. This forced Zhao Changxing to assign people to collect these minerals to temporarily maintain the operation of the factory.
At this moment, several production lines in the chemical plant have started production. Everyone's faces were full of excitement, but Zhao Changxing was still worried.
"Alas, there is no resource recycling and processing center here in the industrial zone. The waste of various resources is too serious."
This resulted in people having to replenish a large amount of raw materials for these factories every day, which seriously occupied manpower.
But there is nothing we can do about it. After all, people's goal is to get these factories running as quickly as possible and produce products as quickly as possible. The construction of a resource recycling and processing center, which is essentially a building that optimizes efficiency, can only be postponed for the time being.
