Chapter 190, Smelting Asteroids

Li Fu did not return to the ground for the time being, because he had learned from his secretary Ding Xuan that there were dozens of people in the company who wanted to see him, and each of them was very important, either representatives of world powers, or representatives from the world's top financial groups, and even people with great backgrounds in China, all of whom were very difficult to deal with.

Li Fuzhong also knew why they came. Fuyun Group had the only spacecraft that could go to the asteroid belt to mine asteroids, and asteroids were now synonymous with gold and silver mountains. If you just pull an asteroid to the earth, it would be a huge return of tens of billions or even hundreds of billions.

So Li Fu simply chose to stay in space first, let Fang Zheng, who was good at handling these things, handle it, and he simply stayed in space to smelt the asteroids he pulled back.

In the void not far from the Sky City, there is a huge solar power plant, which is also the largest solar power plant in space. It covers an area of ​​more than 15 million square meters. The annual power generation is equivalent to almost 2 Three Gorges Dams. Since then, Fuyun Group has never worried about electricity, and can even sell electricity to the outside world.

You should know that the current Fuyun Group is a behemoth. After years of development, the number of employees in Fuyun Group has reached millions. Various factories, laboratories, etc. are all electricity-eating monsters, and the electricity bills paid every day are hundreds of millions.

At this time, the asteroid brought back from the asteroid belt was dragged into the void by the spacecraft at the solar power plant, maintaining the same speed as the solar power plant, forming a relatively static state.

"All units report the situation."

Yu Liang, who was in charge of directing the asteroid smelting this time, gave orders in a loud voice.

"The power plant is ready."

"The metal separation group is ready."

"The safety group is ready,"

"..."

One group after another continued to report the situation, and everything was ready.

"Start smelting asteroids."

Yu Liang listened to the reports of each group, nodded with satisfaction, and issued an order to smelt asteroids.

As his order was issued, each solar panel in the solar power plant began to rotate slowly. The supercomputer calculated everything. The angle and direction of each reflective mirror were controlled by the supercomputer, without any error!

One after another, the sun began to gather on the asteroid placed in space. At the beginning, there was no reaction, but as more and more sun gathered, the space where the asteroid was located began to become bright and dazzling.

The normal temperature in space is more than 100 degrees below zero. Now that more and more sun is gathering, the temperature of the void where the asteroid is located begins to rise sharply, and soon rises from more than 100 degrees below zero to a high temperature of several hundred degrees.

At this time, some gas and water on the asteroid began to evaporate and dissipate, and were collected by the collector that had been prepared long ago. In space, resources are very precious, and even the smallest mosquito meat must be collected.

As more sunlight is concentrated on the asteroid, the temperature quickly rises to more than 1,000 degrees. At this time, the metal on the asteroid has begun to liquefy. This asteroid is almost entirely composed of iron, and the melting point of iron is more than 1,000 degrees.

Because all the concentrated sunlight is controlled by supercomputers, and the amount of sunlight controlled by the computer is determined according to the temperature on the asteroid.

This iron-containing asteroid, the sunlight mobilized always keeps its temperature at about 2,000 degrees. This temperature can melt the entire asteroid as quickly as possible, and at the same time, it will not reach the boiling point of iron due to excessive temperature, causing the molten iron to evaporate.

The outside of the asteroid has melted into molten iron, but the inside is still solid. It needs to be continuously heated and heated to melt the iron inside into molten iron. The temperature of about 2,000 degrees is just right, and it just takes some time.

At the same time, two strange machines use long magnetic pliers to continuously use magnetism to attract the melted molten iron and shape it according to the required shape at the same time.

You should know that there is no gravity in space or it is only affected by microgravity. All liquids appear in spherical structures. The huge and red iron balls are shaped by strong magnetism and molded into various parts. At the same time, they are cooled by the ultra-low temperature of more than 100 degrees below zero in space. These parts soon turn from red to black.

The strength and hardness of the metal smelted in this way are very high. And because it is smelted in space, it is like kneading noodles. You can knead any shape you want and smelt it as big as you want. It is many times better than assembled parts.

In less than an hour, the asteroid containing more than 9 million tons of iron was smelted into various parts. The mechanical arm on the Dumbo spacecraft dragged it back to the sky city to wait for use. Some super large parts can only be moved to a special place because of their long length.

These parts need further processing before they can be truly used. For example, the stress inside the metal can also be eliminated by placing it in space.

The methods and speeds of metal smelting in the interstellar era far surpass those of the terrestrial era. Nearly 10 million tons of steel can be smelted in one hour and processed into parts at the same time. The power of science and technology is so great!

"It seems that the number of asteroids we have mined is still too small. It has only been an hour, and one asteroid has been completely smelted. It doesn't feel satisfying enough."

When Yu Liang saw the empty void, he curled his lips slightly. The efficiency of using space solar energy to smelt metal was really too high. Nearly 10 million tons of metal were easily not only smelted, but also processed into what he wanted. Parts, this speed is definitely not comparable to relying on smelting furnaces on the ground.

"In the future, there will be plenty of asteroids for you to smelt. The key now is to create more spaceships."

Li Fu on the side smiled slightly. Almost all the steel smelted this time was used to make new spaceships. Li Fu was also in urgent need of a large number of spaceships to go to the asteroid belt to mine asteroids.

"Hey, with nearly 5 million tons of steel this time, we can build a larger spacecraft. By then, bringing back hundreds of millions of tons of asteroids at a time will be enough for us to use for a while."

Yu Liang's eyes lit up when he heard about the construction of a new spaceship. The Dumbo spacecraft is just a spaceship larger than the space shuttle. It can only drag 10 million tons of asteroids at most. This is already its limit. It's the limit.

In the planning, Fuyun Group actually wants to build a larger spacecraft, the "Djinn God" spacecraft. The "Djinn God" spacecraft will be ten times the size of the current Dumbo spacecraft. The engine alone It is comparable to an aerospace plane, and its thrust will be enough to pull a massive asteroid with a mass of hundreds of millions of tons.

Just to build such a huge spacecraft, the steel resources consumed will be very huge, and because of its large mass and strong thrust, the core keel must be a whole piece forged at one time. If it is split into many If the parts are assembled again, they will not be able to withstand its huge thrust.

There is no problem processing such huge parts on the ground, but there are no tools to transport them to space, and the aerospace plane is only a few dozen meters long.

Therefore, if you want to manufacture such huge parts and then create the "Djinn God" aerospace plane, you must smelt metal in space, forge parts, and complete the core keel and parts directly in space.

This is why Li Fu built the space solar farm first, because it is used to smelt asteroids. The asteroids are mined, smelted directly in space, and super large parts are forged at one time for the next step. Prepare for a bigger spaceship.

If you want to build space battleships and so on in the future, you will naturally have to do it step by step. It is absolutely impossible to build large spaceships and space battleships just on the ground.

"I feel depressed after saying this. Originally, we could just build 20 'Djinn God' spaceships this time, but half of them were given to the country. I guess they will definitely give these steel resources to Waste it, their eyes are always fixed on the moon, and it will take a lot of steel to bloom everywhere on the moon and seize resources. "

Chen Bin on the side also shook his head helplessly. The country required that the newly smelted steel be made into a single piece of steel plate according to standard specifications. At a glance, it was clear that it was for use on the moon, not for use on the moon. Used to build spacecraft.

"What's so depressing? Countries all over the world are now fighting fiercely on the moon. The far side of the moon has almost been carved up. I heard that the chickens and the south sticks are fighting each other for a piece of territory on the far side of the moon. , It was almost like a lunar version of World War.”

"It is also a good thing for China that our country has more resources on the moon. We have occupied 80% of the resources on the moon. We will not have to worry about resources for a long time in the future. After all, the moon is far away from our earth. The nearest planet, and the various resources on the moon are very rich.”

"Even if we mine 10 million asteroids in the asteroid belt, we still won't be able to make it into the moon, and we have to travel hundreds of millions of kilometers. Old Tang and the others see it much more clearly than we do."

Li Fu on the side smiled and shook his head. Fuyun Group also occupies a huge territory on the moon, and it is very clear how rich the resources are on the moon.