I saw everything

Chapter 387 Under Testing
2031, April 10.

The Venus Experiment 8 spacecraft will deploy five dedicated experimental airships, each carrying over 1 tons of scientific equipment, into the atmosphere of Venus.

These experimental airships are both airships and laboratories.

In less than two days, these experimental airships found the origin city of Venus amidst dark clouds and strong winds.

These airships slowly landed above Origin City and then docked at their designated positions. Specially designed slots and mechanical locks firmly secured the experimental airships to Origin City.

At this time, Venus's near-Earth orbit is densely populated with 68 artificial satellites.

There are dedicated communication relay satellites.

There are atmospheric monitoring satellites specifically designed to probe the atmosphere of Venus.

There are geological remote sensing satellites and geomagnetic field satellites specifically designed to explore the surface of Venus.

There are also global positioning satellites used for positioning.

These artificial satellites together form the Venus satellite constellation. Among the experimental spacecraft that arrived at Venus earlier, spacecraft No. 2 and No. 4 were specifically designed to deliver these artificial satellites.

It was precisely because of the existence of so many artificial satellites that the foundation was laid for the subsequent construction of Origin City.

Without these pre-positioned artificial satellites, the difficulty of quickly and safely building Origin City would be significantly increased.

why would you say so?

The reason lies in the dense carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide clouds in Venus's atmosphere.

These dense atmospheric gases severely interfere with communications, and the constant strong winds further exacerbate the difficulty of the airship moving through Venus's atmosphere.

It's not that it can't fly, but it affects the docking between airships.

After all, docking in a windless environment is not too difficult, but docking in a gale-force wind will lead to docking failure as soon as the airflow becomes chaotic.

The Venus 5 experimental spacecraft tested eight docking modes, most of which failed, but a relatively suitable docking solution was found.

This docking method is somewhat similar to the arresting cable system on an aircraft carrier deck. First, one airship uses a net to capture the other airship, and then the two are pulled closer together.

Once the two airships are close together, the docking procedure can be initiated, at which point the airships will connect.

To ensure a high success rate for connections, these airships are typically designed in two different styles.

One is a regular donut shape.

One type is shaped like a concave donut.

Typically, a concave donut-shaped airship can be connected to four normal donut-shaped airships.

Similarly, a normal donut-shaped airship can also be connected to four concave donut-shaped airships.

These donut-shaped airships can be arranged horizontally or stacked one on top of the other to form a floating city.

Those five professional experimental airships were also similarly donut-shaped, except that their central areas were not hollow, but were instead converted into experimental cabins.

One of the original design intentions of the donut-shaped airship was to leave room for modification, and the hollow area in the middle is a very suitable place.

This central hollow area can serve as an experimental module, work module, production module, living module, and also as a transportation passage.

If it weren't designed this way, other types of cabins would be somewhat unsuitable for the environment of Venus's atmosphere.

Why doesn't it meet the requirements?

The answer lies in the dark clouds and strong winds of Venus's atmosphere.

In this special environment, both fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft are somewhat unsuited to the atmosphere of Venus.

On the previous Venus 3 experimental spacecraft, Gu Linyu's team sent a batch of fixed-wing drones and rotary-wing drones to Venus. During the test, these aircraft could not maintain their presence in Venus's atmosphere for long.

Either the battery runs out and, unable to fly back into outer space, it has no choice but to make a "hard landing" on the surface of Venus.

Or they would be tossed about by the strong winds and unable to maintain their flight posture, crashing uncontrollably onto the surface of Venus.

Alternatively, during the docking process, strong winds could cause the machines to collide, resulting in both of them being destroyed.

This is why the experimental module is placed in the middle of the donut-shaped airship; this protects the middle compartment from damage during a collision.

The collisions between airships were cushioned by the airbags, causing them to bounce off each other instead of colliding head-on and causing damage.

The square donut design was abandoned because the presence of sharp edges could lead to misalignment when joined.

While the design of spherical airships is advantageous for cushioning and integration, the interconnection of their internal compartments requires careful design and they are not conducive to stacking, hence their obsolescence.

After much thought, I still think the donut shape is the most suitable.

As for the cigar-shaped airships that are more common on Earth, they are not suitable for use on Venus at this stage.

After all, according to the plan, Blue Whale Aerospace will only build one floating city or one floating continent in the atmosphere of Venus in the future.

Transportation within its floating continent is primarily via pipeline-type rail transport.

As for external transportation, the floating continent and outer space will be connected using floating towers and electromagnetic catapults.

Transportation to the surface of Venus has not yet been planned.

The main problem is that Venus's atmosphere below 50 kilometers in altitude is covered by a layer of sulfuric acid blasting hell, which poses a great threat to spacecraft and buildings. Blue Whale Aerospace is currently finding this a challenge.

Without new breakthroughs in materials technology, humanity can only gradually deplete Venus's atmosphere by working like ants, until the atmosphere is worn away before considering the complete colonization of Venus's surface.

However, this method of moving house like ants takes too long.

It's important to know that the density and thickness of Venus's atmosphere far exceed that of Earth's atmosphere. While the technology itself isn't the problem in consuming or fixing so much gas, the sheer scale of the engineering work would be astronomical.

In fact, humanity should be grateful that Venus has such a dense atmosphere, because the existence of this atmosphere has provided many conveniences for human colonization of Venus.

For example, at this moment, inside cabin number 1 of the experimental airship.

After the airship and Origin City completed their docking, the scientific research artificial intelligence built into the airship began to carry out scientific research tasks according to the mission instructions set by the system.

The research equipment in Experiment 1 is all related to how to synthesize carbon fiber.

According to the task instructions, the scientific research artificial intelligence activated the gas extraction equipment to draw gas from the surrounding atmosphere. High concentrations of carbon dioxide gas entered the equipment and then underwent rapid impurity removal to separate gases such as sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, and hydrogen sulfide before the impurity gases were discharged.

The remaining high-purity carbon dioxide is processed using a specially designed process to convert it into oxygen and pure carbon powder. The pure carbon powder is then used to synthesize carbon fiber filaments.

The experimental cabins of these airships are equipped with nuclear battery devices, which can provide a stable power supply.

In addition, Experiment Module 3 is a dedicated test module for wind power generation systems.

The main reason for not using solar energy is that the carbon dioxide concentration in Venus's atmosphere is too high, making it difficult for sunlight to reach the surface of the airship at an altitude of about 75 kilometers.

After all, carbon dioxide is quite effective at absorbing sunlight, especially high concentrations, which have an excellent heat-retaining effect.

Blue Whale Aerospace does have a Venus photovoltaic project, but it's not inside the atmosphere; it's in Venus's near-Earth orbit.

In the future, Blue Whale Aerospace will build a photovoltaic ring-shaped space city that circles Venus in near-Earth orbit, and then attempt to transmit electricity to the floating city on Venus using microwave power transmission.

As for floating cities on Venus, they can only use wind power or nuclear power.

At this moment, a bladeless wind turbine extends upward from Experiment 3. In the fierce winds of Venus's atmosphere, this wind turbine has a very high power generation efficiency and is continuously supplying power to the energy storage system inside the experiment module.

Then some of the power was transmitted to another experimental chamber next door.

This experimental chamber is number 4, and it tests a special energy storage system.

Since it is difficult to produce organic batteries in Venus's atmosphere, it is necessary to study efficient energy storage technologies suitable for Venus's environment.

The first energy storage technology tested was a carbon dioxide energy storage device.

The technology was developed in the laboratory of the Hailufeng Group's Monan branch. Its principle is very simple: it uses a special compound to create a solid that can store carbon dioxide.

Simply by using pressure, carbon dioxide gas can be forced into nanocontainers made of this compound, allowing the carbon dioxide to be stored in a stable subsolid state for a long time.

However, when needed, carbon dioxide in its subsolid state can be rapidly sublimated into a gas through specific temperature and microcurrent stimulation.

In this process, solid carbon dioxide turns into gaseous carbon dioxide, which expands rapidly in volume and absorbs heat from the surroundings.

The research team utilized the principle of rapid expansion of carbon dioxide during the solid-to-gas transition to drive a steam turbine and generate electricity.

In current laboratory tests on Earth, the system's energy storage time can reach about 15 months, and its energy regeneration efficiency is 83.6%, which is much higher than traditional pumped hydro storage and gravity storage.

Although it does not achieve the 91% energy reuse rate of sponge batteries, its advantages of low cost, easy maintenance, and rapid expansion of storage capacity still make it a noteworthy technology in this experimental project sent to Venus.

Because the compound used in this technology is a sulfur-carbon polymer, the material is readily available in the atmosphere of Venus.

Compared to sponge batteries that require transporting raw materials from Earth, pumped storage that consumes large amounts of water, and gravity and flywheel storage that require large amounts of steel, the advantage of sulfur-carbon polymer gas storage materials being able to source materials locally becomes the key factor in determining the outcome.

Sure enough, in the following series of tests, other energy storage technologies either performed poorly or were eliminated due to the difficulty of obtaining materials.

In the wind turbine test project, the bladeless wind turbine also stood out.

The other eight types of wind turbines all encountered problems adapting to Venus's atmosphere.

Even the few types that don't have problems can't compete with bladeless wind turbines because of the difficulty in obtaining the materials.

The various tests were proceeding smoothly.

The relevant experimental data was continuously sent back to the Earth command center via communication relay satellites, and then the data was categorized, packaged, and sent to various relevant laboratories.

Zhou Xiyi, who was in the command center of Zhuricheng, had just finished reading a report and hadn't even caught his breath when he heard a familiar voice behind him.

"Old Zhou, thank you for your hard work."

He spun his chair around and looked at Gu Linyu, who also looked exhausted: "Did you get things sorted out on your end?"

"It's all settled. I've been in meetings for the past two weeks adjusting various projects, and my throat is practically hoarse from talking so much." Gu Linyu took out a box of ginseng candies and popped two into his mouth.

Zhou Xiyi took the box, poured out a ginseng candy and popped it into his mouth: "I'm fine here, all the experimental tests are going smoothly."

"Oh, that's really good news." Gu Linyu's face showed a hint of joy.

"You can take a look."

Taking the document, Gu Linyu chewed on a candy while carefully reviewing its contents: "Did the agricultural equipment tests in Experiment 2 meet expectations?"

"Of course! Venus's gravity is similar to Earth's. With just a few minor adjustments, it can usually be seamlessly integrated on Venus. On the other hand, there are a whole host of problems in agricultural equipment experiments in Earth's near-Earth orbit."

Gu Linyu nodded slightly: "That's true, it was expected."

Jiang Miao chose Venus as the first exoplanet for human colonization because of its gravitational conditions.

The gravity conditions on Venus are very similar to those on Earth, which is not only conducive to long-term human life and work, but also to agricultural and industrial production.

Based on the data from the various projects tested so far, Gu Linyu can clearly see that all the devices operate smoothly in the Venusian atmosphere.

This was an order of magnitude less difficult than their test on New Tiangong-2 space station.

In near-Earth orbit, various problems arise in agricultural production simulations, medical treatment simulations, and industrial production simulations.

Often, it's not just a matter of improving the technology; it's equivalent to developing a completely new set of technologies, which increases the difficulty.

Gu Linyu estimates that it would take at least 15 to 20 years for humans to replicate various production technologies in a low-gravity environment.

However, replicating the production technology of Venus's atmosphere only takes a few years, even considering that Venus's atmosphere has no metallic minerals and its water resources are limited.

If Mars' gravity is similar to Earth's, then Jiang Miao would most likely choose Mars as humanity's first colony.

Unfortunately, the gravity on Mars is very different from that on Earth.

Humans can only choose Venus.

Every choice has its advantages and disadvantages.

The key is to weigh the pros and cons.

Gu Linyu had to admire Jiang Miao's long-term vision. The Asian Alliance's choice of Venus as its first colony was a very important move, as it advanced the Asian Alliance's colonization of other planets by at least 10 years.

The saying goes, "If you're one step ahead, you'll be ahead every step of the way."

While the Northern Alliance was still debating the Moon, Mars, and Venus, the Asian Alliance had already achieved internal alignment, which was extremely important.

After all, the effects of concentrating resources and dispersing resources are different. Even the financially powerful and technologically advanced Asia Alliance would find it difficult to support three colonization projects on the Moon, Mars, and Venus simultaneously, and must make some choices.

(End of this chapter)