Chapter 685 - 666: Colorful Flags

"The mass launcher... that’s the idea."

Zhong Cheng automatically ignored the previous term; the space elevator was still too far off, likely unreachable within ten years.

However, the mass launcher was different. The technology of a mass launcher based on superconducting electromagnetic acceleration tracks was not complicated, especially considering there already was a lunar mass launcher construction plan on paper by United Mining.

The greatest difficulty in using electromagnetic acceleration tracks to launch ore into space was not the technology, but rather the scale of construction and cost.

Aside from rocket and aero-space plane technologies, this was the most viable cheap transport method humanity was likely to achieve first.

Lin Ju: "The problem is that it’s too limited. On Earth, cheap methods will still have to wait for the space elevator; other transport capabilities are too small, with very strict requirements on size and weight."

Zhong Cheng: "But even with carbon nanotubes, it’s very difficult to control the center of gravity. This would necessitate constructing a very large super space station, and there are also issues with materials. The strength of the carbon nanotube technology we currently have would need to be 50 times higher, and its toughness would need a significant increase."

Zhong Cheng was naturally familiar with the space elevator. In fact, the earliest related concept should be traced back to the father of astronautics, Tsiolkovsky. He published an article in 1895 that envisioned a "Celestial Castle" extending up to the geostationary orbit.

In 1960, a Russian engineer modified this idea and officially proposed the "space elevator," which is the most common scenario of suspending a cable from a geostationary orbit.

To people at the time, this plan seemed feasible.

At the geostationary orbit’s altitude of 36,000 kilometers, spacecraft there would remain stationary relative to the Earth’s surface, and the hanging cable would only need to support its own weight.

In the initial plans, it was also necessary to place a "counterweight" in a higher orbit above the geostationary orbit. It would be connected to the space station at the geostationary orbit to balance out, maintaining the space elevator system’s center of gravity at the geostationary orbit. Otherwise, the entire system would fall towards Earth during operation, and eventually, the cable would tear due to the speed difference.

Latter on, it was realized that this placed too high a demand on materials, so the standard was lowered:

No longer did the cable’s end need to connect to the ground; instead, one end would attach to a satellite in low Earth orbit, and the other to a satellite higher than the geostationary orbit, making their center of gravity also precisely at the geostationary orbit.

The aim was to lower the signal power of the high-orbit satellite while maintaining communication strength. The signals from the two satellites would be relayed through the connecting cable.

In 1972, the Tethered Satellite System went through a transformation, with some suggesting that it be combined with the space shuttle.

By 1974, this evolved into a concept where the space shuttle would deploy a cable that could cut through Earth’s magnetic field lines during its orbit, testing its use for power supply of spacecraft.

In 1992, the Atlantis Space Shuttle conducted the first test, where the cable jammed after being released for 200 meters.

In 1996, the Columbia Space Shuttle attempted the second trial, unspooling the cable for a full 19.3 kilometers and generating a voltage of dozens of volts, before the cable snapped.

Entering the new millennium, with breakthroughs in carbon nanotube materials, the space elevator became a hot topic again. However, detailed calculations still led to a major disappointment.

Even with the most advanced technology of the time, if a hollow carbon nanotube cable with a diameter of 2 cm and a density of only 1.7g per cubic centimeter were built, such a long cable would still weigh 76,000 tons.

This meant that a counterweight with a mass not much different would have to be launched above the geostationary orbit, effectively a 76,000-ton space station, which was simply unachievable by human efforts.

This is merely one cable, and according to the ideal model, at least 100 cables are necessary for a space elevator. That amounts to 7.6 million tons, the equivalent of a block of lead measuring 700,000 cubic meters.

Even with advances in modern carbon nanotube materials, they hover around only roughly 1g per cubic centimeter. Calculating it all, a space elevator remains impossible to achieve.

To reach a level that human effort can attain, the material’s density must decrease by 2, at least 1 order of magnitude, and its strength must increase by more than 1 order of magnitude. In other words, there needs to be an improvement of a hundredfold, or even a thousandfold, when combining these factors.

Therefore, it was precisely because Zhong Cheng System studied such technologies that it was rather pessimistic about the prospects of the space elevator. In comparison, constructing a 1000 kilometer acceleration track on Mount Everest seemed so much easier—it could at least be possible with ample funding.

Zhong Cheng obviously didn’t believe it, but Lin Ju didn’t elaborate further.

The base possessed the complete technical documentation for "Chi Ren" and had already completed a comprehensive analysis. According to several leading physicists, once the space weak force/super strong magnetic constraint laboratory is built, producing "Chi Ren" on a small scale will not be an issue.

If "Chi Ren" is used as the material for the space elevator, a 36,000-kilometer long cable would weigh only 600 tons, and a minimum of 6 cables would satisfy the actual needs. This implies that the mass of the geostationary space station should be over 3,600 tons, which is entirely feasible.

And if it is only for preliminary verification and testing, 5 tons of material would be sufficient. Although there is basically no practical significance, as long as it can connect the geostationary orbit with the ground without breaking, it would already prove its superior performance.

As the two feverishly discussed the future, thousands of kilometers away, Qiongzhou launched the "Tianwen-1" probe on schedule. The New Yuan-2B rocket, with an additional third stage, ascended successfully, marking the beginning of large-scale Mars exploration.

...

"I once again raise the flag of the Huayin Organization and announce the success of humanity’s first multinational collaborative Moon mission. Guanghan Palace Base will become the first international outpost beyond Earth (in Russian, French)."

Oleg Kononenko, Meng Senlin, and Thomas Speke together forcefully planted the flag pole into its base, reciting the prepared words to the broadcast camera.

Meng Senlin then slightly rotated the flagpole to display the Huayin Organization’s flag to its fullest extent.

The Huayin Treaty Organization’s flag design included multiple elements. It featured a red background with a ring of stars in the center, within which were two hands clasped together. On either side of the ring were several mainstream rocket patterns and an olive branch, with the bottom adorned by ribbon made of 12 national flags, and Mount Hua’s pattern at the top of the ring.

The three astronauts then took turns to unload a pile of folded alloy tubes from the landing module to assemble, and planted 6 flags on each side of the Huayin flag, making a long line of 13 flags—the grandest array.

Originally they also intended to include the United Nations flag, but America flatly refused, and in the end, they had to forgo it.

The installation of these 13 flags was essentially the main mission of Dawn IV, and merely setting them up took over three hours, making the live-streaming audience a bit impatient.

Finally, after all this work was completed, came TV addresses from several major signatories on Earth. With all these activities, the first day’s mission for Dawn IV came to an end.

As soon as the live broadcast camera was turned off, Kononenko finally exclaimed, as if liberated:

"Buret, Dawarishili, I want to drive your lunar rover."

Li Wei and Fu Xiangjie had arrived an hour earlier and were sitting on a small hillock not far from Dawn IV, waiting to escort them to Yushu Base.

"Kononenko, happy to see you again."