At this moment, the number of "strongholds" owned by human civilization on Sedna has reached hundreds. Most of these strongholds are various mining sites, such as iron ore, manganese ore, copper mine, water mine, dry ice mine, etc. Depending on the type, most of them are distributed in several comprehensive bases, several planting bases and animal husbandry bases. Surrounding the "living circle" composed of aquatic product bases and industrial zones.
To this day, the main mode of transportation connecting different strongholds is the space vehicle produced by people in the industrial zone. This kind of space vehicle can be equipped with a body behind it and has certain transportation capabilities.
A total of hundreds of space vehicles that shuttle between different mining sites are running on the land of Sedna at all times. While occupying a considerable part of the manpower, it also transported back various minerals and resources, becoming a transportation artery that supports the operation of the living circle.
But this model has to be said to be very inefficient. First of all, the space vehicle body has limited transportation capacity. Secondly, space vehicles cannot be intelligent, but must be driven by a driver, which takes up a lot of manpower. Even now, as various factories and production lines in industrial areas are becoming more and more perfect and production efficiency is gradually improving, the transportation volume of the space vehicle body can no longer meet the demand.
We must find a way to solve this matter, otherwise, this matter will become a bottleneck on the road to industrialization.
At this moment, there are three options before Zhao Changxing.
The first option is the simplest. All it needs to do is to roughly smooth out the traffic roads between different strongholds, and the main mode of transportation remains the status quo, that is, through space vehicles driven by drivers.
Because the roads are smoothed and vehicle speeds can be increased, this method can roughly increase transportation efficiency by about 30%.
The second option is more complicated. This option requires smoothing the road and then using some kind of coagulant to solidify gravel dust and other materials to pave a special road surface. Later, some locators, indicators, etc. will be supplemented to realize the automatic driving of the space vehicle. This can save a lot of manpower while greatly improving the transportation efficiency.
Correspondingly, the investment required for this option far exceeds the first option.
The third option consumes the most resources and manpower, but is also the most efficient. This is rail transportation - laying rail tracks directly on the land of Sedna and using trains to connect different strongholds.
Its transportation efficiency is the highest and it can also drive autonomously.
Faced with these three options, Zhao Changxing encountered difficulties. After thinking for a long time and discussing with several people who had majored in traffic engineering, Zhao Changxing gritted his teeth and directly chose the third, most difficult option.
"Either don't do it, or do your best. Solve the problem once and for all, so as not to escalate it slowly like a fuel tactic."
Zhao Changxing also had the confidence to choose this plan.
Although the total number of adults at the moment is only a few hundred, and industrialization is still in its infancy, Sedna is not Earth.
The gravity here is too low, which means that the quality of the rails does not need to be too high, the roadbed does not need to be too strong, and the traction force of the front of the car does not need to be too high. Moreover, there is no bad weather here, the full vacuum environment is not afraid of oxidation of parts, and there is no demolition, land occupation, or a series of messy things. Taking these factors together, Zhao Changxing made up his mind.
But... if you choose rail transit, there is one thing that people must solve.
"Leader, if we choose the rail transit option, our power supply will be insufficient."
During the discussion, Chai Cheng, who majored in electric power, looked troubled.
In the early days of coming to Sedna, the first, second, and third generations of people did not actually have separate subjects when receiving university education, but all received general education. General education involves all subjects, but not all in depth. The most important thing about this arrangement is to enable people to participate in labor construction as quickly as possible. However, after the population gradually increases, as now, there are thousands of people in the Spark spacecraft, and it will no longer work to promote general education. It is time to change to professional education.
So Zhao Changxing revised the university education curriculum, and a steady stream of professional talents began to be produced. Chai Cheng is the first generation of talents to receive professional education. At this moment, he is responsible for all human bases and all power systems.
The train running on Sedna can obviously only be driven by electricity. Moreover, rail transit is a large consumer of electricity.
Zhao Changxing was slightly startled when he heard Chai Cheng's words.
“Are we running low on power?”
It had been a long time since he'd paid attention to the power supply. The two micro fusion generators originally brought from the earth seemed to have unlimited potential. No matter how many bases Zhao Changxing built, they seemed to be able to assume the responsibility of power supply.
But now, they have finally reached the point where their potential has been exhausted.
"It doesn't matter, let's build a few more fusion generators. During this time, the engineering team will first smooth the road and make initial preparations."
"With our current industrial capabilities, I'm not sure we can build a fusion generator..."
Chai Cheng hesitated in his words.
Zhao Changxing waved his hand, his face full of confidence: "If you can't build a fusion generator with 100% power, why can't you build a fusion generator with 20% power? If it's really not possible, 10% will work. At worst, you can build a few more."
Zhao Changxing also has certain professional knowledge. It was this knowledge that supported his judgment.
"I'll try."
Chai Cheng agreed.
After that, Zhao Changxing immediately made a road network drawing with the help of Xiao Xi and several relevant professionals.
The rail transit network obviously has to focus on the living circle. There are six lines extending out from the core, and then scattered again at a fixed point halfway along the road with varying numbers of extension lines, connecting all the mining points scattered outside with twists and turns.
The place where the extension line is scattered is designed as a station. The station and the final mining point are connected by light-load trains. Different light-load trains transport various mineral resources to the station for collection, and then transfer them to heavy-load trains. Finally, the heavy-load trains transport them to the living circle for further processing. deal with.
It is estimated that in the early stage, only one heavy-haul train will be needed on each backbone of the road network to meet current requirements. When the demand for cargo resources increases in the future, trains can be added at any time.
Its transportation potential is still huge.
After confirming these things, Zhao Changxing immediately mobilized all mobile forces to start the preliminary roadbed leveling and construction work. The production of rails also started immediately at the steel plant.
It has to be said that the difficulty of building a railway on Sedna is several orders of magnitude lower than that on Earth. Just talking about the roadbed is not that easy.
First of all, there are no earthquakes on Sedna, so there is no need to consider earthquake resistance. The surface temperature of Sedna is extremely low, everything is frozen solid, and there is no need to consider ground subsidence. There are no geological disasters, and there is no need to consider things like landslides. The so-called roadbed construction is actually just clearing away the tolin, moving away the big rocks, and filling in the potholes.
If it were not considered that the running of the train would cause the rails to vibrate, and the rail vibrations would generate heat by friction with the surface of Sedna, and the heat would cause the gas to melt and cause the ground to subside, Zhao Changxing would have even considered laying the rails directly on the surface.
Even taking this into account, the remedial measures Zhao Changxing needed to do were to provide some support on both sides of the rail every two meters to prevent the rail from directly contacting the ground.
With the help of space vehicles and various equipment, roadbed construction is progressing rapidly. Even when faced with the biggest obstacle on the road to roadbed construction - a mountain that stretched for several kilometers and was tens of meters high, Zhao Changxing just brought some TNT explosives and blew a gap in it.
More than a dozen groups worked together to build a road network with a total length of thousands of kilometers. In just one month, almost half of it was completed.
At this moment, everyone is high-spirited and full of confidence. At this time, Chai Cheng found Zhao Changxing again.
"Leader..." Chai Cheng's face was full of shame: "My several attempts have all failed."
Chai Cheng is quite capable, smart enough and has strong hands-on skills. What's more, this matter also got help from other people.
"How could it fail? Isn't this matter very simple?"
On the premise that there is a mature technical route and all the drawings and documents are available, it is enough to produce a product with only 20% or even less power of the original fusion generator. How can this be difficult?
Zhao Changxing did not believe in evil, so he temporarily put aside the roadbed work and started technical research with Chai Cheng. After trying for another half month, Zhao Changxing had to admit failure.
This thing is really difficult. It's far from as simple as I thought before.
If the steering gear is not precise enough, it will be unable to accurately converge several laser beams onto the core of the reaction cavity. If the laser intensity is insufficient, the fusion material cannot start the fusion reaction. The material has insufficient heat resistance and is prone to deformation...
Zhao Changxing's stall was too big, which resulted in the power generation capacity of the two fusion generators being insufficient at this stage. You must know that in the original plan, these two generators were enough to support the industrial development to a considerable extent and to create a copycat version of the generator.
The reason why Zhao Changxing is so urgent and has spread his stall so big at this stage is also very simple.
He is afraid, he is afraid. He can't wait to make human civilization prosperous and strong again. Only in that way can we resist those unknown risks.
For example, the risks posed by signals from unknown sources that Xiaoxi received, such as asteroid impacts...
Zhao Changxing thought for a moment and made a decision: "Let the children in the university also participate in technical research. There is strength in numbers, and maybe we can find a way to solve these problems."
