Although the children have not graduated yet, they have also received a lot of relevant professional education. It may not be possible to do specific work, but it is still possible to come up with some ideas from a theoretical level.
Just as Zhao Changxing expected, the teenagers burst out with great enthusiasm for this matter. In just one month, thousands of feasible suggestions were put forward, covering materials, structures, optics and many other aspects.
Members of the fusion generator project team carried out verification non-stop, and finally absorbed about dozens of suggestions and applied them to the project.
The research and development of fusion generators has made great progress, but... there is still a long way to go before the final product. Moreover, this distance is no longer something that can be overcome by some whim or structural optimization.
Facing the messy parts and drawings in the laboratory, Chai Cheng and others all looked heavy.
Electricity is the core that drives all construction and is the heart of the entire human base. Without enough power, basically nothing can be done.
Zhao Changxing vaguely felt that he, no, the entire human civilization had encountered another important challenge after the asteroid incident.
Is it true that we can only slowly wait for the industrial level to improve to a certain level before building fusion generators? But this will take at least several decades. In the past few decades, people's time and energy have been allowed to be wasted like this?
Not only that, I'm afraid that the population increase rate of 100 per six months on the Fire Spaceship will also slow down. Because if the population is too large, Zhao Changxing will not have enough food to feed them.
There isn't enough food because no more grow shops can be built. There is no way to build more growing workshops because there is not enough electricity.
The entire development process of human civilization will be delayed for decades because of this reason. Basically an entire generation's life will be wasted.
After thinking hard to no avail, Zhao Changxing sighed, rarely put on his spacesuit, left the base alone, and wandered slowly on the dark red Tolin land of Sedna.
There are so many Thorins on Sedna that they can almost be described as endless. They almost filled Zhao Changxing's entire field of vision. The mountains, land, valleys, and plains are almost all covered by Torin. Just like Zhao Changxing's feet at this moment - this place should have been a huge canyon with a depth of thousands of meters, but at this moment, from the outside, it looks no different from the plains in other places.
Endless torins have completely filled it up. This canyon alone has reserves of at least tens of billions of cubic meters.
This was accumulated bit by bit over billions of years by the cold and lonely Sedna star at the edge of the solar system.
"It would be great if there were rivers on Sedna. I could also build a hydroelectric power station. If there is coal, then we can build a thermal power station. If it is closer to the sun, a solar power station can also be used. But this There's nothing but Thorin, what's the use... Huh? Thorin? Thorin!"
Zhao Changxing's eyes suddenly lit up.
He discovered that not only himself, but everyone had fallen into a misunderstanding.
Faced with the dilemma of insufficient power supply and the inability to manufacture new fusion generators, the first thing people want to think about is how to find a way to build a generator. After confirming that this road was unworkable, we still adopted the thinking of the Earth Age, thinking about building hydropower stations or thermal power stations, and thinking about looking for things like rivers, coal, and oil.
These things are naturally not available on Sedna. There are a lot of Thorins on it. But almost everyone subconsciously ignored Thorin.
But, but... Thorin is also an organic matter! Torin can also be burned!
Thorin is mainly made from simple organic compounds such as methane and ethane that are irradiated by ultraviolet rays and high-energy cosmic rays. It's a mixture. Its calorific value is even higher than coal.
Isn’t this like being a beggar while guarding a mountain of gold and silver?
On the Sedna planet full of dark red Torins, Zhao Changxing stamped his foot hard.
Just as he was about to go back to conduct a feasibility study on the Tuolin Thermal Power Station, Zhao Changxing suddenly thought of another problem.
He found that he was still thinking about the problem with the thinking of the Earth Age, and ignored a very serious matter.
Torin can of course be burned, and it is entirely feasible to use it to build thermal power stations. But, but...
Like coal, tholin requires oxygen to burn.
This problem is not a problem at all in the earth age. Because the oxygen in the atmosphere is almost inexhaustible. But where can we find oxygen here on Sedna?
At this stage, there is actually no shortage of oxygen in the human base. There is a lot of water ice on Sedna. By melting it and electrolyzing it, a large amount of oxygen can be produced. However, there is no problem for the oxygen produced in this way to be used for breathing and industrial purposes. However, it is not possible to use it to participate in the burning of Thorin and build thermal power stations to generate electricity.
The reason is very simple. Electrolyzing water also requires electricity! And through a very simple calculation, you can know that doing so will completely lose money.
The electrolyzed water electrolyzes out a part of oxygen, and all this oxygen is used to participate in the combustion of tholin, and then electricity is generated. The generated electricity is then used to electrolyze water, and at most, only 0.75 parts of oxygen can be electrolyzed.
The more electricity you generate, the more you will lose.
The only solution is to find enough pure oxygen on Sedna - it must be pure oxygen, not oxygen compounds. Otherwise, just decomposing the oxygen will consume too much energy and cause it to lose value.
But, is there pure oxygen on Sedna?
The answer is yes. Over the years, the ten geological exploration satellites have searched the surface of Sedna countless times, and have found some oxygen elements that have been frozen into solid state, which are called oxygen minerals.
But...their reserves are too low. It is barely enough for daily breathing, and it is just a drop in the bucket for power plants.
The most critical problem is that there seems to be no theoretical possibility for Sedna to have much pure oxygen reserves. The only oxygen ores are most likely formed by various chance coincidences.
"Is the thermal power solution really unworkable? Is it true that we can only slowly wait for industrial development and the construction of new fusion generators to solve this bottleneck?"
Zhao Changxing did not accept this situation. He put down the rest of his work and devoted all his attention to reviewing the information.
He is looking at the theoretical possibility of allowing a cold dwarf planet far away from its star to have large amounts of oxygen.
Only by finding this possibility from a theoretical level can it be possible to use theory as a guide for practical action.
During the long database search, some statements in a paper that seemed completely unrelated to the current predicament caught Zhao Changxing's attention.
"We have observed that under certain special circumstances, through ultraviolet rays or other high-energy rays, certain compounds of the oxygen element - such as water, iron oxide, etc., can react spontaneously to purify elemental oxygen... "
Zhao Changxing's heart immediately started beating. He keenly discovered that the so-called special environment in the experiment described in this paper seemed to have certain similarities with that on Sedna.
The first is low temperature. The temperature on Sedna is obviously very low. Second is low pressure. The atmospheric pressure on the surface of Sedna is simply zero. Again, long exposure. The surface of Sedna may have withstood billions of years of radiation...
Zhao Changxing immediately began to use this as a basis to search for more relevant papers, and finally came to a preliminary conclusion.
There may also be huge reserves of oxygen minerals on Sedna! The key point of the search is to first find a large amount of oxide storage points - hydrogen oxide, which is water, or iron oxide, sodium oxide, etc.
They must be in the open air as much as possible. The depth of the veins is not important but they must be wide. They cannot be located deep in canyons or in places where they cannot be exposed to cosmic radiation.
Zhao Changxing immediately started screening based on the existing observation data. A vast dry ice mine was eventually chosen.
In the previous search, this dry ice mine also contained some oxygen minerals, but because the reserves were too low, Zhao Changxing gave up. But now, under the guidance of the latest theory, this dry ice mine obviously has a higher value.
At least it's worth Zhao Changxing's on-the-spot exploration.
During this period, the construction of the road network and roadbed has now been completed. The steel plant has even started producing rails and has begun preliminary laying. Under this situation, Zhao Changxing drove a space vehicle, speeding on the surface of Sedna, heading straight for the dry ice mine.
After clearing away the surface covering of Tolin, Zhao Changxing began intense inspection of various prospecting equipment. When a large shadow finally appeared on the monitor - the shadow meant the existence of solid oxygen ore - Zhao Changxing's heart suddenly relaxed and he waved his fist fiercely.
"I knew that there must be huge reserves of oxygen minerals on Sedna!"
They may have been formed billions of years ago, and after their formation, they were covered by layers of tholin over a long period of time. It was only now that Zhao Changxing discovered the trace.
Preliminary detection shows that the oxygen ore reserves in this dry ice mine are at least hundreds of millions of tons, which is completely enough to support the operation of thermal power plants. In particular, it is not too far away from the living circle. As long as we extend the railway less than fifty kilometers to the mining point closest to it, we can reach here.
For such a huge oxygen mine, Zhao Changxing believes that it is completely worth building a railway to extend here.
"Chai Cheng, don't think about the fusion generator anymore. Start preparing to build a thermal power station. I found an oxygen mine."
