Chapter 245: It’s normal to go to Mars, right?
"Why do we need to learn about starships?" Chen Yuanguang asked seriously, his face full of confusion.

For Chen Yuanguang, the temporary silence of the Malaysia strategy has made him more deeply aware that under the current system, even in a remote place under imperial rule like Malaysia, you will still be subject to a lot of restrictions.

These limitations are subjective and objective. Technological advancement has made geographical concepts invalid, and the empire's rule can radiate to every corner.

In Chen Yuanguang's view, a global power vacuum will only appear after China develops and forms a confrontation with America on all levels around the world.

The current situation is much better than before, but it is still not enough, it still lacks a little bit of meaning.

Because what China needs to confront is not just America, but all the beneficiaries of America's global division of labor system.

Even France, which seems most likely to defect, does not want this system to be completely destroyed. What they hope is to climb to a higher position in this system rather than re-adapt to a system created by China.

The Malaysia strategy made Chen Yuanguang realize this more deeply.

Lin Jia hated to see Chen Yuanguang like this: "According to your plan, we are going to build the space station into a space city.

This means that there are at least hundreds and at most thousands of modules that build up a huge star ring.

How much more expensive would this be without the use of starships?"

Chen Yuanguang pretended to be enlightened: "So you said this, before room-temperature superconductivity, this is the best way.

But now that we have room-temperature superconducting materials, I have never thought about using fossil fuels to complete our space city plan. "

Since its birth, room-temperature superconductivity has created a sensation in a short period of time. It is discussed almost everywhere in the world, and it is believed that it will bring tremendous changes to the world.

Especially as China is the country that masters the technology, Chinese netizens are the most enthusiastic, and there are countless related fantasies on Zhihu.

Some Chinese netizens even shouted the slogan "Thank goodness that technology is in the hands of civilization."

As time goes by, there seems to be no change, and it is still at the stage of publishing papers.

We often see in papers that Chinese scientists publish research related to room-temperature superconductivity in top journals such as Nature and Science, but in reality, there seems to be no change.

There are no super batteries, and there are no large-scale transmission networks.

As a result, room-temperature superconductivity is regarded as the same as 5G on Zhihu, and is considered to be China’s own so-called high-tech fantasy that has no impact on reality at all.

As for whether the American AI has changed, the gods did not mention it.

In a sense, the duality of the divine rabbit is the most appropriate adjective.

Fortunately, quantum computers built with the help of room-temperature superconductors have made a big splash around the world this year, and room-temperature superconducting technology has begun to show its potential.

Lin Jia was shocked after hearing this. As the actual manager of Guangjia Aerospace, she had never heard of any plan to use room-temperature superconducting technology to build rockets:

"How come I've never heard of this? Which of our projects uses room-temperature superconducting technology?"

Chen Yuanguang said: "Because EM is so sensitive, all research is done in Mianyang.

There are French, Japanese, and American people inside Guangjia Aerospace. Although everyone needs to sign a confidentiality agreement and there are various confidentiality measures in management, Guangjia Aerospace cannot achieve 100% confidentiality no matter how strict the measures are.

So this project is jointly promoted by me on behalf of Guangjia Aerospace and the China Space Administration, and it is one of the most important projects this year.

It is precisely because of this that I did not put too much energy into the space station and reusable rockets of Guangjia Aerospace this year.

You should be able to see a rocket launch this year that uses a plasma engine.”

Lin Jia is not a newbie who knows nothing. She has worked in Guangjia Aerospace for many years and received professional training at Shenhai Jiaotong University. It can be said that her understanding of the aerospace field is not very professional, but she definitely has at least some common sense.

“Although I really don’t want to swear, I still want to say F**K!
Plasma engine, how did you do that?"

Plasma engines are not a rare concept and have been used in the aerospace field many years ago.

Including China's space station, which is equipped with four plasma engines that use xenon as propellant to ensure precise orbital entry.

But in the past, the thrust that plasma engines could provide was very small. For example, the plasma thruster used in China's space station had a thrust of only 80 millinewtons. Not to mention escaping the earth's gravity, this force could only blow up a piece of paper at most.

It's probably only one tenth the gravity of an egg.

The ion engines currently in practical use are very small and are basically auxiliary engines. They have very small thrust and acceleration, and it takes an extremely long time for a spacecraft to reach the predetermined flight speed.

So you suddenly say that you want to use plasma engines to launch rockets, and it is a large-scale and intensive launch, the target of which is space cities, and launch missions measured in thousands are to be completed by rockets equipped with plasma engines. The gap between the two is a bit too huge.

The gap is like your son who was still learning elementary school math and suddenly tells you one day that he has just passed the doctoral entrance examination.

If it wasn’t Chen Yuanguang who said this, Lin Jia would have found it hard to believe.

“Yes, it was originally unrealistic, but with room-temperature superconductivity it has become possible.

And we need to recycle everything.

After the rocket sends something up and then returns to Earth, its recovery rate is over 90%. Optimistically speaking, it will only lose one parachute.

Once this goal is achieved, our cost will be even lower than the $10 per kilogram that Musk has advertised.”

$10 per kilogram is already considered a gimmick created by Musk for publicity effects. It is simply unimaginable that the price could be lower than this.

Lin Jia was a little scared because it meant that the global rocket market would be gone as it would be monopolized by China alone.

Except for America and a few countries, Guangjia Aerospace and the China Space Administration can grab all orders.

Chen Yuanguang seemed to see what Lin Jia was thinking: "You misunderstood, when I said the launch cost was as low as less than $10 per kilogram, I meant launching to the space station.

Because it has to be launched into space and then recovered from space.

This requires a vehicle in space to stop it and change its direction.

Because room-temperature superconductors are used as magnetohydrodynamic coils in plasma engines, their energy loss can be ignored.

This means that it will continue to accelerate. As it rises, the Earth's gravity decreases, but its thrust and acceleration will not decrease, but will continue to increase.

If there is no force from within or outside to stop it, it will keep flying.

The space station is what keeps it going.

It's a very simple physical principle. When an axial electric field is applied between the anode and the cathode, the charged coil will generate a unidirectional magnetic field.

Generally, the electric coil is made of metal, which will cause power loss, but the loss of room-temperature superconductors can be ignored. One-dimensional room-temperature superconductors are very suitable for this purpose.

But similarly, after you launch a plasma rocket, you have to control its speed, which is a very difficult thing.

In the past, rocket engines used fossil fuels, which were directly controlled mechanically by simply directing the fuel into the reaction chamber.

But plasma engines cannot do this, especially room-temperature superconducting plasma engines, which have no way of stopping them.

Therefore, our design is divided into two steps. First, we use traditional rockets powered by fossil fuels to launch the first space station module.

In addition to the functions of the regular space station core module, this space station module has a more important task, which is to stop the plasma engine in space orbit.

Then it is launched in the opposite direction back to Earth from the space station.

With this design, the recovery rate of plasma rockets is much higher than that of fossil fuels.”

Chen Yuanguang’s explanation was very easy to understand.

After listening to this, Lin Jia quickly caught the doubts: "Yuan Guang, this realization will naturally be a huge breakthrough.

But I now have some questions about plasma rockets.

We all know that to send cargo into space, traditional fossil fuel rockets only need to be launched into a predetermined orbit and then enter the vicinity of a space station through multiple orbit changes.

When I was taking a class at Jiaotong University, the professor gave us a detailed account of the process of the Shenzhou spacecraft delivering goods to the Chinese space station. During this process, the Shenzhou spacecraft even made a 180-degree turn under the space station in order to successfully complete the docking. "

Whether it is China or Russia, the spacecraft they use to deliver goods to the space station are all disposable. The cost of a single Shenzhou is about 8 million RMB, and it is burned up in one go.

SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft is reusable.

"You're right. So the difficulty now lies in the ultra-high precision control.

The Shenzhou spacecraft is the one that approaches the space station, while the Tiangong spacecraft is more of a stationary craft in its own orbit, waiting for the Shenzhou to dock with it.

The thrust of the plasma engine it carries is too small to support it to make a large number of trajectory changes and acceleration movements.

We will give our space station more thrust so that it can complete the orbit change and get closer to the plasma rocket.

The downside is that plasma rockets are fired at a constant speed, which requires extremely high-precision calculations.

The space station also needs to be equipped with a plasma engine, use solar energy to store energy, and even be equipped with a nuclear fission power generation device.

In fact, these difficulties can be overcome in the early stages. The most difficult part is that as the size of the space station increases, for example, when it becomes a giant spacecraft constructed of 20 modules, how can you achieve such high-precision orbital docking?

Because according to the design of our space station, it is more like a space train, and each module is like a carriage, traveling in space orbit.

Once the number of carriages increases, and the carriages are cluttered with objects like the Indian trucks, it will be a big problem to achieve such high-precision track docking.

Of course, we can choose to leave the problem to the future, until two-dimensional or even three-dimensional room-temperature superconductors are developed in the future, and plasma engines have made progress by then.

If it can change orbit automatically like fossil fuel rockets, then the space station will not be so troublesome, they just need to wait in orbit.

But we can’t completely discount this possibility right now.”

After Chen Yuanguang finished speaking, Lin Jia asked: "Why can't we use a combination of multiple engines?

The fossil fuel engine and plasma engine are combined. Fossil fuel is used before docking with the space station, and the plasma engine is used when returning to Earth.

Chen Yuanguang explained: "We use plasma engines to replace fossil fuel engines because fossil fuel engines are too heavy.

Fossil fuel engines need to carry a large amount of fossil fuel. In addition to fossil fuel, they also need coolant and a large number of metal connectors.

Take the heavy-duty rocket as an example. Its mass before takeoff is as high as 4000 tons, but the actual cargo it carries is only 40 tons.

If we still use the model of combining traditional fossil fuel engines and plasma engines, it will make no sense.

Even if it can be recovered, there will still be no essential difference in launch cost compared to a starship.

Using plasma engines can save a lot of mass, and cooling systems like fossil fuels can be directly cut off.

If we don’t consider the future, we can actually say that we have succeeded now.

We will be doing our first plasma rocket launch soon.

If you want to go and watch the rocket launch in person, please tell me and I will help you find the contact.

The light emitted by plasma is completely different from the light emitted by fossil fuels.”

Technical information such as the precision docking of spacecraft in space may be found in the future, but finding it does not mean that it can be used directly.

The real-world environments on both sides are so different that you simply can’t find a technical solution that can be used directly.

The parameters inside are completely useless in the present time and space.

Therefore, for both Chen Yuanguang and China Aerospace, this is an extremely large project, and all the technical difficulties involved must be overcome one by one.

It is considered the biggest project of China's aerospace industry in recent years. For China, being able to develop a plasma rocket is already a huge win.

Because we have plasma rockets, we can send it directly to Mars by calculating the orbit.

People are thrown on it and a hibernation capsule is installed on it. People can go in and sleep. According to their calculations, it will take 39 days to reach Mars.

It's just a little troublesome to get back, but not too troublesome. As long as the plasma engine doesn't explode and the nuclear fusion power generation device doesn't have problems, there won't be any problems getting back.

Besides, no matter how great the risk is, there are still many Chinese astronauts willing to embark on the journey to be the first to land on Mars.

Therefore, for China's space industry, it's time to open the champagne. America has not yet gone to Mars, but they can already go to Mars.

So artificial intelligence may not be a technological singularity, but room-temperature superconductivity is definitely a technological singularity. Even if it is only one-dimensional room-temperature superconductivity, it can realize projects that would originally take a lot of time to achieve.

But for Chen Yuanguang, going to Mars is not that meaningful except for its symbolic significance.

You can't build a recyclable ecosystem on Mars, and humans cannot survive on Mars.

(End of this chapter)