Earth Era - Chapter 31

Chapter 31: The Busy Equatorial Market

The launch process has come to an end here. In the following, the Crimson Heart spacecraft will take three days to circle the Earth about seventy times, and during this process, the orbit of the Red Heart spacecraft will become flatter, the apogee will become farther, and the perigee will become closer. Finally, the Crimson Heart spacecraft will depart from Earth’s orbit at the apogee and travel into deep space for a period of six to eight months.

During these three days, the five astronauts will conduct the last inspection and debugging of the Red Heart spacecraft with the assistance of ground personnel before they embark, because now the Crimson Heart spacecraft is still in Earth’s orbit, and if there is an accident, it can be repaired through the launch rocket. If an accident occurs after entering the vast space, there is really no way to solve it.

The spaceship Red Heart uses both conventional engines and ion engines as power sources. Wang Tang explained to Zhao Hua Sheng, “For short acceleration and deceleration, as well as adjusting trajectory and attitude, the spacecraft uses conventional engines. During the journey to the sun, the spacecraft does not need to adjust its trajectory too much, and so it uses ion engines.”

Conventional engines use high-temperature gases generated by chemical fuel combustion as a power source. It has great power and can apply a huge force to the spacecraft in a short time, but it consumes a lot of fuel. Ion engines are different. It ionizes the propellant first and then uses a strong electric field to accelerate the ions so that they are ejected from the back to gain thrust.

The ion engine also obtains acceleration through the reaction force, but its utilization efficiency of propellant is more than fifteen times that of the conventional engine. This means that the spacecraft can save a lot of fuel. With the same amount of fuel, the ion engine can drive the spacecraft to fly farther, and if the time is long enough, the speed will be faster.

The ion engine has a fatal flaw, which is its lack of thrust. Like the ion engine installed on the spaceship Red Heart, under full power, it can only increase the ship’s speed by 0.5 cm per second. But little by little, at 0.5 cm per second, day one can accelerate the ship by more than 400 meters per second, so compared to this, the ion engine is still an efficient propulsion.

Zhao Huasheng knew all these things, so after hearing Wang Tang’s words, Zhao Huasheng just nodded.

“In space flight, the spaceship will also use the gravity of Venus to accelerate. After two and a half months of flight, it will enter an orbit 300 million kilometers from the surface of the Sun, and then orbit around the Sun for two to four months, collecting detailed data on the sun to determine what exactly is the inverse fusion layer.”

In the solar system, the planet closest to the sun is Mercury, but even though the distance between Mercury and the sun is almost 600 million kilometers, the distance of the Red Heart is only 300 million kilometers, almost half of the distance from Mercury.

“Personally, I have no faith in relying on our human technological power to change the sun. Wang Tang said softly, I only hope that the data collected by the Red Heart No. spaceship and the nearly thirty solar exploration satellites to be launched later can provide some clues and inspiration for your puzzle solving.”

Zhao Huasheng nodded silently.

No one has said these words explicitly, but I know that all the insiders, including the leader, have the same idea. We have indeed made breakthroughs in this period of time, and even we know about the existence of the inverse fusion layer, but the more we know, the more desperate we are. Wang Tang’s hands began to tremble slightly. That is the inverse fusion layer that wraps the whole sun… How can we humans have the power to break it?

“Sorry, I was a bit out of control.” Wang Tang said, “What are you going to do next?”

Zhao Huasheng said, “I’m going to Equator City. I have some vague ideas now, and I believe I can figure out what it’s all about soon.”

“Good, good,” Wang Tang nodded. “Aren’t you going to Life City? It’s still orderly and stable there. Equator City is a bit chaotic now.”

“No, I’ll go to Equator City first,” Zhao Huasheng said.

“Well then, wish you a safe journey,” Wang Tang patted Zhao Huasheng’s shoulder.

“Wish the Crimson Heart a smooth journey too. Goodbye.”

Leaving the launch base, Zhao Huasheng boarded the plane to Equator City. During the southward journey, the surface he saw gradually changed from pale and withered to other colors, and green began to appear.

After all, this is a tropical region, so even if the solar radiation has dropped by fifteen percent, it still remains warm. It’s just not known for how long this warmth can be maintained.

In addition to the natural scenery, Zhao Huasheng also saw a lot of artificial objects. There were heavy trucks lined up like a dragon, and each one meant at least fifty tons of materials. Just by glancing down from the sky, Zhao Huasheng could see at least ten thousand trucks in that area. This was just a small section of road. How many more trucks were traveling to Equator City on the other roads? Zhao Huasheng couldn’t tell.

Zhao Huasheng also saw a railway. On that railway, a train more than one thousand meters long would whistle past almost every three minutes, loaded with coal, oil, salt, grain, cement, steel, and other materials. On the opposite track, there were also many trains passing by, but they were all empty and carried no cargo.

Even just this one railway, which transports goods to the equator city every day, is an astronomical number. The number of railways leading to the equator city has now surpassed 300, according to Monzou. This is just for freight railways and does not include passenger transit.

On the ocean, there are countless cargo ships. Most of these ships have a flat, wide deck, and on the deck there are densely packed containers stacked together. Countless giant ships are spread over the sea surface, and from a high altitude, almost all of the sea surface is covered. In addition to highways, railways and ships, the sky is also very busy.

The height of the helicopter was only a few hundred meters, while in the sky thousands of meters, even tens of thousands of meters high, there is always a jet plane shuttle, and the huge engine roar is something even Zhao Huasheng sitting in the helicopter can hear.

Before arriving at the Equator City, Zhao Huasheng felt the busy breath coming over. The huge execution power of human civilization is here, and it is so huge that it can make people gasp in awe.

Zhao Huasheng knew that at least tens of millions of people were busy on this line. Train drivers, bus drivers, sailors, airplane pilots, docks, airports, cargo stations, dispatchers, loaders, etc.—these people together form a lifeline, sending huge amounts of blood from all over the world to the Equator City, so that people in the Equator City can live.

“Statistics show that recently, the various types of goods transported to the Equator City have reached 1.57 billion tons, not including the local output from the four million square kilometers of land in the Equator City.” Monzuo said, “In order to expand the transportation route, they even dismantled the railway tracks built elsewhere and installed them here. They even modified river cargo ships and put them into long-distance transportation. Almost all the trucks in the world have been requisitioned and controlled by the government. In order to save the wealth created and scattered around the world before the land is frozen, human civilization has used all its strength.”

Zhao Huasheng nodded, still not saying anything. The helicopter continued to move forward.

The closer he got to Equator City, the more intense the hustle and bustle. Zhao Huasheng had already seen countless underground construction sites, almost connected in a jumble, large greenhouses for growing food, and busy and crowded people.

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In order to speed up the construction process, we adopted a modular construction method where a large amount of building materials would be produced upon leaving the factory, and upon arriving at the construction site, they just needed to be processed simply and then assembled like building blocks. The workers worked day and night, and it only took half a month to build a fifty-story building, which could provide living space for at least five thousand people. Of course, comfort was out of the question. In this end of the world, it was not bad to just survive, and the government had no energy or resources to consider comfort. The currency system had been reformed so that the previous currency was converted at a very low rate into contribution points. A worker working for one day could get about thirty contribution points, which could maintain the lowest level of living assurance for five people. There were also rationing restrictions, that is, the amount of material each person could buy per day was limited. Even if someone had a large number of contribution points, he could not buy too much material.

“The entertainment and leisure industries are strictly restricted; luxury goods are prohibited from production; alcoholic beverages are limited in production.”

Meng Zhuo kept explaining the current situation in Equator City in a low voice to Zhao Huasheng, who was listening quietly.

Finally, the helicopter flew over the towering buildings and bustling construction sites and eventually landed in a quieter and wider area.

“This is Zone 337 in Equator City C District; you will temporarily live here; if you have any other requests, I can satisfy you at any time.” Meng Zhuo said.