The rise of nanometers

The moon, the base of Guanghan Palace.

Lin Guangzong, the base director who had just taken up his shift, looked at the progress of various recent work in the lunar area.

At present, the lunar region has been officially included in the administrative management system within China and is no longer the relatively simple scientific research base before.

The China-Moon Zone has three areas under its jurisdiction, namely: Imbrium area (the capital is Guanghan Palace City), the lunar equatorial area (the capital is Mendeleev City), and the lunar orbit area (the capital is Toad City).

Among them, the lunar equator area was a new base established in April this year. Currently, only an exploration base with 60 cabins has been established on the edge of the Mendeleev crater.

As for the Imbrium area and the lunar orbit area, these are further integrated and restructured based on the previous ones.

Lin Guangzong only came to the Moon from Blue Star in mid-April this year. The current headquarters of the Lunar Zone is in Guanghan Palace City (former Guanghan Palace Base).

As the local industrial raw material production capacity of Guanghan Palace City continues to increase, this provides a strong foundation for the rapid expansion of the Lunar Zone.

He looked at the lunar industrial production capacity data for April. The industrial production capacity of the lunar zone was concentrated in Guanghan Palace City.

Industrial production capacity last month: 2.37 billion kilowatt-hours of power generation, 7,514 tons of silicon steel foam, 2,536 tons of aluminum alloy, 332 tons of lead composite panels, 8,527 tons of calcium silicate filler, 8.6 tons of titanium powder, 11,000 tons of oxygen, and 5,361 tons of groundwater extraction tons, 836 tons of nitrogen...

In addition to being unable to produce precision instruments and electronic products, the moon can basically be self-sufficient in ordinary materials. There is no need for Blue Star to waste transportation capacity and transport bulky building materials and water resources.

Even the spaceport in Guanghan Palace City can replenish part of the fuel.

However, recently, there have been great differences between the Department of Sui and the Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Engineering regarding future engine fuels.

At present, the mainstream engine of China Space Administration is mainly detonation rocket engine, supplemented by hydrogen-oxygen engine and oxygen-kerosene engine.

The detonation rocket engine originally fueled by N20/N30 is the most cost-effective in Blue Star, low-Earth orbit, and synchronous orbit, and its specific impulse and thrust are also very powerful.

However, N20/N30 solid fuel encounters a problem on the moon, that is, the moon lacks nitrogen sources. Even if a small part of minerals or the lunar stratum contains a certain amount of nitrogen, its total abundance is very small.

Without enough nitrogen, there is no way to synthesize N20/N30 series fuel on a large scale on the moon.

As a result, spacecraft traveling between Blue Star and the moon will have no way to obtain N-series fuel supplies on the moon.

Therefore, we must find a way to solve this problem so that fuel can be obtained locally on the moon.

The Department of Sui Ren, the Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Engineering, as well as the Aerospace Science and Industry and the Space Administration, all have different views on this matter.

The Aerospace Science and Industry and Space Administration hope to use hydrogen-oxygen engines to replace part of the N-fuel engines so that the two fuels can complement each other.

The Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Engineering advocate the electromagnetic projection plan and plan to establish a mass projection base in the middle of the equator on the front of the moon.

Use mass projection to launch the spacecraft back to the Blue Star.

As for the Suiren system's plan, it plans to build a nuclear-powered particle engine, directly using nuclear power as a power source to heat and ionize atoms, eject hot ions, and propel the spacecraft forward.

The advantages of this solution are super endurance and convenient fuel replenishment.

The energy of the ion engine is electrical energy, and the fuel (working fluid) is an element that is easily ionized. However, if under certain conditions, ordinary alumina, iron oxide, calcium oxide, silicon oxide, etc. are also acceptable. The best is efficiency. Drop some.

Moreover, the difficulty of ionization between elements is not static.

According to today's popular electric field synthesis theory, each element or compound has specific high-efficiency ionization conditions.

These specific conditions are generally temperature, light wave frequency, magnetic field intensity, pressure and current and voltage intensity.

For common compounds such as silicon oxide, iron oxide, and aluminum oxide, the Suiren Department has figured out the most cost-effective ionization conditions.

Under optimal conditions, energy consumption drops significantly while ionization efficiency increases.

This is also one of the reasons why the Suiren Department wants to develop nuclear-powered ion engines.

For space exploration around Blue Star and the Moon, perhaps using a nuclear-powered ion engine would be overkill, and the speed may not be as fast as a chemical fuel engine.

But if humans want to get out of the Blue Star-Moon planetary system and move toward other planets in the solar system, the advantages of nuclear-powered ion engines will rapidly increase.

As the core of energy, nuclear power can ensure that spacecraft do not need to replace nuclear fuel for more than ten years.

Iron oxide, calcium oxide, aluminum oxide, or other common compounds can be used as working fluids, which effectively reduces the difficulty of supplying working fluids.

Suppose there are two spacecrafts now, one is a conventional chemical-powered spacecraft and the other is a nuclear-powered ion spacecraft, both targeting Mars.

The nuclear-powered ion engine, which can continuously accelerate midway, has very obvious advantages in long-distance flights.

After arriving on Mars, the soil on the surface of Mars can be directly excavated to be used as engine working fluid.

Conventional chemical power, even the most easily available hydrogen and oxygen, requires specific ionization plants and related supporting facilities.

There is definitely no way to fit an ionization plant into the current spacecraft, because to do so, it would be better to just use a nuclear-powered ion engine. Why take off your pants and fart - it is superfluous.

The plans of the three parties each have their own merits.

The plans of the Aerospace Science and Industry and the National Space Administration are relatively conservative, but very sound.

The lunar mass projector plan of the two academies has a huge amount of work and no technical problems. However, there is a hidden danger, that is, the mass projector will cause the moon to accelerate away from the Blue Star.

The Suiren system's nuclear-powered ion engine plan has good prospects, but there are certain difficulties in using nuclear power to launch a spacecraft.

According to the Suiren system's plan, it is to directly skip the nuclear fission reactor and use the nuclear fusion reactor in one step.

The problem is that the current nuclear fusion reactor is too large. The new generation Jinwu nuclear fusion power generation unit (power 4,000 megawatts) designed by CNNC can be reduced to about 57,000 tons.

A single generator set weighs 57,000 tons, which cannot be accommodated on an aircraft carrier, let alone a spacecraft with a maximum weight of only a few thousand tons.

Now the three parties have been arguing about the technology development route for more than four months, but they still have not come up with a reasonable solution.

If the nuclear fusion power generation unit can be compressed to less than 5,000 tons, then the space agency will definitely be willing to launch a nuclear-powered ion engine.

However, the nuclear fusion power generation unit is a technology that makes things easy but makes things difficult.

Even if the power generation power is compressed by 400 megawatts, the volume and weight will not decrease much, because many things have been fixed within a certain range due to material and design issues.

But it's not that there are no solutions. The basic principles of Jinwu and Tanggu are the same. The researchers from the Suiren Department came up with a solution that treats the symptoms rather than the root cause.

It’s just that this plan requires support from the moon.

Lin Guangzong came to the moon to be the base director, largely because he wanted to come here to host a new industrial base.

The planned location of this industrial base is southeast of Guanghan Palace City, about 572 kilometers away, and in the middle of the Imbrium Sea.

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