Chapter 461 - 452 Recognition_1

The base can build airplanes, rockets, and even robots and tractors, but it really doesn’t have a background in mining and metallurgy.

Although lunar laser smelting differs greatly from Earth’s smelting processes, it still relies heavily on many traditional technologies and can’t invent an entirely new ore smelting technique from scratch.

After finalizing the Moon Mining Base plan, New Yuan reached out to well-known domestic steel companies, such as TaiSteel and BaoSteel, to research how to smelt the needed steel and rare metals on the Moon in a simple and convenient way.

The laser smelting satellite, which can provide two to three times the extreme high temperatures of traditional smelting furnaces, indeed drastically reduces the use of chemical raw materials through absolute brute force, but the massive demand for water in metal smelting is unavoidable.

Traditional processes like ore selection, sintering, coke making, iron smelting, steel making, and steel rolling all require large amounts of water. Although most of the water can be recycled with modern processes, on aggregate, each ton of steel still consumes roughly 1 ton of actual water.

Looking to future potential, the smelting base should be closer to a water source rather than the mine, hence transporting ore becomes an issue.

If the rhenium ore richness is 1%, 10 tons of rhenium would require the transportation of 1,000 tons of ore, and according to current surveys, the nearest water source is at a straight-line distance of 200 kilometers from the mining site, which includes ring mountains. If a road is built, it would need to be about 300 kilometers long.

But without a road, it’s a no-go. The lunar surface is too rough, filled with big and small craters. The ore transport vehicles are heavy, and their speed can’t be too slow, so a flat road must be built to ensure transportation safety and efficiency.

Another issue is that high-speed transport vehicles will inevitably attract large amounts of charged moon dust, which will greatly increase mechanical wear. If there is a paved road, it will substantially extend the service life.

The only advantage is that gravity is low on the Moon, so construction difficulty isn’t significant. Road standards don’t need to be as high as on Earth, and there’s no disturbance from wind, rain, earthquakes, or floods. Once completed, it’s likely the road could be used indefinitely.

Although the overall construction difficulty isn’t greater than Earth’s highways, it’s still a 300-kilometer road. While it is technically feasible to build, costs should be minimized as much as possible.

After listening to the whole story, Academician She was speechless for a moment, not expecting the pre-mining investment to begin with a major project like a 300-kilometer highway, which would be considered a significant project even within China.

To get rich, first build roads. Although no money has been made from the Moon yet, the classic step of road construction is unavoidable.

On the Moon, the resources needed for road construction shouldn’t be much since most materials can be sourced locally. Space cement is already a product in the world, which can be referenced, but the development and launch costs of construction machinery might not be small figures either.

Moreover, the procedure of constructing lunar highways will undoubtedly greatly differ from that on Earth, and preliminary verification processes are essential, presenting an entirely new challenge.

"Let’s do this, we can follow our old practice and solicit opinions and ideas from scientific research institutions across the country for the Moon highway plan. We can also list it as one of the Aerospace Development Committee’s public tender projects."

Lin Ju felt this was a great idea. His original intent was to try to get the domestic sector involved as much as possible, which could also serve as significant publicity.

"Then if it’s decided, domestic civil engineering majors could start a Space Construction Division."

Academician She: "..."

...

Capital.

McMaster sat in the front row of the Great Hall, which suited his status very well.

There were representatives from many other countries present, gathered to celebrate the "successful completion of the Dawn III manned Moon landing mission and rescue operation" at the award ceremony.

First and foremost, the other representatives were looking forward to the astronauts who had landed on the Moon and would soon take the stage, and secondly, they were surreptitiously observing McMaster’s reaction.

They already knew that the two astronauts from the Artemis mission, upon arriving in the Capital, were sent for a "medical checkup," and under the pretext of "screening for an unknown virus and checking lung health," the space agency rejected the American negotiation delegation’s request to visit, asserting that all astronauts were treated the same without any discrimination.

But McMaster deeply suspected that they were trying to prevent him from meeting with the astronauts in order to disrupt the carefully planned celebration (shame) ceremony.

The astronauts had returned to Earth yesterday morning, and now they were hastily convening a major conference today—this was too obvious!

To avoid becoming the butt of jokes, McMaster could only maintain a professional smile, unable to say whether he was happy or unhappy.

However, the other delegates were not so discreet; they saw the precarious situation of NACA and discussed it loudly without any regard, completely ignoring McMaster’s clenched fist.

In this atmosphere of total discomfort, the awards ceremony officially began.

But when he saw Victor and Koch following behind the three Chinese astronauts, entering on the red carpet, McMaster still felt breached.

He had hoped that the two would find some reason related to ill health or something else to decline attendance, but to his dismay, Victor was smiling and greeting everyone until his movements briefly stiffened when he saw McMaster.

The seniors first bestowed high honors on Zhang Zhiguang, who had taken the first step on the Moon, spending the first half hour awarding the national medal to Dawn III, which was the highest domestic honor of the time.

After rewarding the three jubilant astronauts, he went on to praise Victor and Koch for their bravery in the face of danger, then presented each of them with a commemorative medal for the Dawn III mission.

Koch was somewhat reserved, but Victor happily touched the exquisite medal; this was a path he had never imagined.

McMaster’s face below the stage was as dark as could be, clapping as if swatting flies with great force.

Luckily, the parade of floats later in the day did not include the two foreigners, so McMaster hastened to convene the negotiation delegation after the morning’s awards ceremony.

Facing each negotiator, he ground his teeth and said sternly:

"I don’t care what the results of the negotiations are, but immediately, right now, best if right this instant, get those two disgraceful guys sent back. Don’t waste any more time with the Chinese people. I will contact John at any moment, we must end this farce as soon as possible!"

Deputy Director Jim Frey of NACA, who had just arrived, frowned and said:

"Then I’m afraid we may have to make even more concessions. Bezos has privately asked them to use robots to search for the ’Blue Moon’ black box, which I heard has already been removed. We have to get our hands on the data inside as quickly as possible, as it’s critical to the final investigation outcome."

McMaster: "Is the black box that important?"

Jim: "With the black box, we’ll know what went wrong. The Navy can’t go to the Moon to salvage the wreckage—we have to rely on them for now."

"Alright, go try to negotiate an acceptable agreement. I will agree as long as it isn’t too outrageous.

Remember, the United States has paid a lot for NACA’s failure."