Technological Hegemony

North America, Washington.

In a spacious conference room, the important figures of the country gathered, they came from the White House, the Department of Defense, the Central Intelligence Agency, as well as the heads of NASA and major laboratories.

Musk is also in the ranks of these people, and is in a more important position. He seems to be playing with the ballpoint pen in his hand a little bored. With a light flick of his thumb, the black ballpoint pen immediately spun in his palm.

"Musk, what do you think about the space elevator?" The old man in a general uniform asked curiously. He seemed to be representing the Ministry of Defense to attend the meeting.

Musk frowned, then stood up, walked to the front of the conference room, where the big screen was, pointed to the No. 0 space station in the picture and said: "My view is very simple, those Chinese people, they have succeeded, so far , Star Technology's space elevator plan has overcome all resistance and moved forward steadily."

"Someone just mentioned the issue of pulling force. They think that each nanotube weighs 360 tons, which completely exceeds the pulling force of station zero. As the construction progresses, more and more nanotubes will eventually bring the space station from synchronization to zero. The orbit is pulled into the atmosphere, resulting in a crash." New 81 Chinese website updates the fastest computer terminal:

"I disagree with this speculation. The weight of the elevator is indeed heavy, but Station Zero is like the counterweight of the space elevator. It is constantly being built and expanded, providing stronger and stronger pulling force."

Swish Swish Swish~

Musk pulled over a whiteboard and began to write quickly, bringing the self-weight of station zero, the speed of the earth's rotation, the length and weight of nanotubes, and a series of parameters into the formula, and finally got a number like 1.6679 . The new 81 Chinese website is updated the fastest Mobile terminal: https:/

"Look, the pulling force provided by Station Zero has always been maintained at 1.6 times the weight of the nanotube line. Star Technology has left enough safety redundancy. In my opinion, they are not radical, or even very conservative. They always put safety Sex comes first in the space elevator."

Mathematics does not lie. Musk’s calculations undoubtedly confirmed the safety of the space elevator. At the same time, this well-known North American genius also showed his strong mathematical skills. He calculated the pulling force of the space elevator without using tools. redundancy.

There was a sigh in the conference room, and everyone was speechless for a long time. Up to now, they still can't believe that a miracle-making space elevator is on top of their heads, and the Chinese who built the elevator, just a few decades ago, They are still too poor to eat.

However, in a blink of an eye, Diaosi counterattacked, and the Chinese actually crushed the invincible North American and Western civilizations in the space field with a destructive momentum. This is embarrassing.

President's special envoy Mitterrand nodded slightly: "The White House does not want to delve into the fact that it has been established, but Mr. President wants to know that the elevator of Star Technology will be completed in February next year. What can we do to surpass those Chinese people?"

Overtake?

Now the conference room became even more silent, and the elites from the scientific community secretly slandered that the president is indeed a layman who doesn’t understand farts. According to the current situation, it would be good to be able to maintain the advantage of Starlink in low-Earth orbit. As for geosynchronous orbit and outer space, North America simply has no strength to compete.

Seeing that everyone was silent, a sense of sadness welled up in Mitterrand's heart. Back then, NASA was the only one in the world, and Armstrong successfully landed on the moon, which shocked the world and attracted worldwide attention. What a sight and courage it was.

In a blink of an eye, the smoke disappeared, and after receiving the news that the space elevator was about to be built, many countries,

Including some allies in North America, they lined up to visit China, hoping to get a share of future space development.

Compared with the small earth, a fool also knows that the future of mankind can only be in the distant sea of ​​stars, and Huaxia is the only existence that can provide tickets for the sea of ​​stars.

"We still have a chance in the field of controllable fusion." Dr. Shulakel said in a deep voice: "At present, we have many laboratories that are investing in the research of controllable fusion at any cost. The Karman vortex street power generation technology, or their space elevator, will be overtaken by our Jedi."

Everyone nodded slightly. North America has invested a lot in controllable fusion research. The famous Ross Laboratory, Oak Ridge Laboratory, Argonne Laboratory, etc. all have fusion research teams.

Musk smiled and said: "Nuclear fusion is indeed an opportunity. Although Star Technology's Karman vortex street power generation array is strong, it cannot be applied outside the earth. A spacecraft equipped with a fusion reactor and a super ion thruster can theoretically launch vertically." Falling between the earth and space, in this way, the significance of Huaxia having a space elevator is also offset."

"The liquid oxygen methane engine currently used by space vehicles is very heavy and consumes a huge amount of energy. If we want to develop Mars without fusion technology, we must build a permanent space station in the outer orbit of Mars, and then use Mars The spacecraft performs landing and disengagement operations. Sixty percent of the mass of the spacecraft must be used to load fuel. For example, if it weighs 10 tons, six tons of it are used to load fuel. Otherwise, it will not be possible to return to Mars. "

"Of course, we can also take the luxury of making the Mars spacecraft into two stages. The landing stage sends the spacecraft to the surface of Mars and then it is discarded. When it comes back, we only drive to upgrade it. Due to the weight reduction, we can carry an extra ton or Half a ton of supplies."

"At the same time, we have to build a large number of transport spacecraft to travel between the Earth space station and the Mars space station. Even if the best window period occurs every two years, the distance between Mars and the earth is as long as 78 million. km, and the standard flight time is 609 days, considering that we cannot always send a spacecraft within the window period, so the average round-trip time to Mars will take four to five years."

"We must build at least a dozen transport spacecraft, because the people who stay on Mars will consume supplies every moment, and the distance from the earth to Mars is so long, assuming we don't have enough transport force to send them to Mars. The construction team in the area will run out of ammunition and food, after all, unlike Xingchen Technology, we don’t have robotic technology, and we need to send a large number of human engineers to develop Mars.”

"But if there is controllable fusion, the situation is completely different. A super-large spacecraft equipped with controllable fusion can weigh thousands of tons, or even tens of thousands of tons. It has decades of self-sustainability, let alone Mars. , crossing the Ebola belt, and flying out of the solar system is by no means impossible.”

"So everyone, do you understand? A spaceship equipped with controlled fusion will be as powerful as the Star Destroyer we have seen in Star Wars, and a small broken ship that uses liquid oxygen methane fuel is not a species at all!"

Musk talked eloquently, colonizing Mars is his lifelong dream, and various designs and concepts have already been very mature. The long starry sky and countless risks and difficulties are presented to everyone through Musk's description, which is embarrassing.

After a pause, Musk continued: "According to intelligence, Xingchen Technology has started a fusion experiment in Southwest China. Fortunately, they, like the group of dead-headed Germans, chose the stellarator solution. There will be huge resistance.”

Hahaha~

There was a knowing smile on everyone's face. If the stellarator can be successful, it would be hell. Except for the stubborn Germans, no one has played with this thing for a long time.

Mr. Mitterrand let out a cold snort, and said in a deep voice: "It is rare for Star Technology to make a strategic misjudgment. Since they want to die by themselves, we should seize the opportunity and give them a funeral."

In the end, the big shots of these North American authorities unanimously decided to increase investment in controllable fusion research and invest more funds in this field, as well as in all other fields that may compete with Star Technology.

As we all know, the finances of North America have long been unable to make ends meet, and the deficit generated by increasing investment will be raised through the issuance of national debt.

...

Chengdu, Southwest Branch of Xingchen Technology Fusion Research Institute.

On the eve of the fusion experiment, many people came than expected. In addition to the leaders of the two houses, the military also sent a representative team, and the general's most trusted secretary, Lu Junlin, was also among them.

"The general has a special status, so it's inconvenient to appear here, but he told me to tell you, do it boldly, don't have any worries, no matter what time, the army is your solid backing." Lu Junlin said to Luo Jia.

Luo Jia has heard such words for countless times. Anyone with a discerning eye can see that the relationship between Xingchen Technology and the military is absolutely extraordinary. This probably belongs to the sympathy between tough guys. No matter how you look at it, it's pleasing to the eye.

The two walked into a classroom-like room hand in hand. Due to the large number of people, there was no room to sit in the meeting room, so the administration department arranged another large room for Luo Jia, and Luo Jia wanted to represent Xingchen Technology to respond to the questions of the bigwigs from all sides.

"Mr. Luo, when will the fusion experiment start?" an old man wearing glasses asked.

Luo Jia raised his wrist and glanced at the smart watch, "To be specific, there are still three hours and forty-five minutes left, which is one o'clock in the morning tonight. Ignition, at present, my colleague Dr. Xie Tian, ​​is conducting the final inspection and preparation."

"I heard that you not only abandoned the traditional tokamak for the fusion device this time, but chose the stellarator, and you are also different in terms of fusion matter, choosing the deuterium-deuterium reaction?" an old man with a bushy beard from the Engineering Institute asked.

After hearing these words, there was an uproar. Most of the experts present knew that it was too difficult to react with deuterium (knife) and deuterium (knife). Everyone usually reacted with deuterium (knife) and tritium (chuan).

"Reaction with deuterium and deuterium? So awesome!?"

"Did I hear you right, Xingchen Technology has mastered deuterium-deuterium reaction technology?"

"It's a bit unbelievable, don't worry, let me stroke it..."

Seeing the surprised expressions of everyone in the audience, Luo Jia hurriedly explained with a smile: "Senior, your source of information may be misunderstood. First of all, I am really optimistic about deuterium-deuterium fusion because deuterium is really very cheap."

"Deuterium is an isotope of hydrogen. The content of deuterium in seawater is very high. On average, there is one deuterium atom for every 6420 hydrogen atoms. The total tonnage of seawater on the earth is about 1.4 times 10 to the 18th power, which is 400,000 Hundreds of millions of tons of deuterium, without considering the energy conversion efficiency, so much deuterium can theoretically generate 9 times 10 to the 24th power of electricity, which is enough to use the entire earth for 90 billion years."

"According to the current market price, the price of deuterium monoxide per kilogram is 7,000 yuan. After fusion, it can generate 80 million kilowatt-hours of electricity, and the cost is almost negligible. What's more, traditional space probes often carry tons of Liquid oxygen methane is used as a propulsion fuel, and with controllable fusion, we only need to carry a kilogram at random, and we can go back and forth in the solar system, and with a few tons of fuel, we dare to rush out of the solar system and enter the galaxy! "

After listening to Luo Jia's words, everyone nodded their heads. The reason why nearly 20 bigwigs from the two institutes came to the scene was because of the emphasis on controllable fusion. If the experiment is successful tonight, the scientists will wake up laughing from their dreams. Controllable fusion is one of the most critical keys on the road to the sea of ​​stars, which is really against the sky.

"That is to say, deuterium-deuterium fusion is the future goal of Xingchen Technology, not the current one?" An academician understood Luo Jia's words and tried to ask.

Luo Jia said: "That's right. In the experiment early this morning, we used the traditional deuterium and tritium as reactants, but tritium is too expensive. Since the half-life of tritium is only ten years, tritium hardly exists in nature. , and artificial preparation is extremely difficult, and the price per kilogram exceeds 150 million US dollars, and we can't afford it, so we added a proliferation system to the reaction."

"To put it simply, the breeding system is to use the neutrons produced by fusion to react with lithium to generate and multiply tritium, which means to reproduce while consuming it, but the efficiency of using neutrons to generate tritium is not high, so we developed another A second system, the recycling system."

"First, we reduce the retention of tritium outside the recycling loop and maintain the total amount of tritium. Then, we use the plasma material that directly wraps deuterium and tritium in fusion, mainly tungsten, to create a tritium capture and recovery system."

"Anyway, our double-helix stellarator fusion device only needs to consume an extremely small amount of tritium as fuel, and the continuous addition of deuterium and lithium during the reaction is enough to maintain its normal operation, because we have multiplication and cycle capture. Tritium is protected by two auxiliary systems, which are our original creations."

Luo Jia talked about his design ideas. Energy Civilization is indeed a top player in star fusion technology. Just look at the expressions of the experts present to see how advanced the double helix stellarator fusion device is.

At this moment, the room was silent. After hearing about the fusion device of Xingchen Technology and two sets of auxiliary systems that had never been heard before, the bosses from the two houses felt as if they were listening to a book from heaven, and they were all stupid.

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