Chapter 730 The Beginning (3)

Pacific Ocean, Equator.

Since Noah's America was annexed by the Federation, the Pacific Ocean has now become the Federation's inland sea.

In the equatorial waters of the Pacific Ocean, among the Gilbert Islands, this place has been operated by the Sui people for several years. It is no longer the small broken island it was before, but an economically prosperous maritime city.

Of course, when Huang Xiuyuan chose to control this place, he actually had another ambition, and today this ambition has finally met all the conditions for its realization.

A huge fleet, including 50 large engineering ships, 50 transport ships of 200,000 to 500,000 tons, and 1 nuclear fusion power generation ship (Endeavor), departed from the Port of Tarawa in the Gilbert Islands .

Huang Xiuyuan appeared in the fleet in person. Due to the unprecedented strength of the Federation, the external threats he faced were greatly reduced, and he was no longer under secret security as before.

What's more, we are now in the hinterland of the Pacific Ocean, with federal control areas in all directions. Attacking Huang Xiuyuan here would be no less difficult than attacking the core cities of the mainland.

The destination of this huge fleet is Baker Island, 1,240 kilometers away from here. This island was also one of the small Pacific islands that Noah would previously control.

Huang Xiuyuan was on an engineering ship, flanked by more than a dozen researchers and engineers. A huge sand table model was placed in front of them.

This is the seabed topography near Baker Island, which the Suiren Department has been working hard to collect over the past few years.

What exactly is there on Baker Island that is worthy of the Federation going to such great lengths to send such a large fleet over?

First, look at the geographical and geological conditions.

Baker Island is located in the center of the Pacific Ocean. The equator passes by the south side of the island's base. The crustal plates here are relatively stable and are not a volcano-seismically active zone at the junction of the plates.

Second, the climate conditions here are relatively stable. Although there are typhoons and the like, because it is near the equator and is controlled by tropical depressions all year round, typhoons are actually not common.

Third, the area around Baker Island is sparsely populated and is filled with large areas of ocean.

Except for Howland Island on the north side, the distance between other islands is generally about thousands of kilometers, which is a typical isolated island in the Pacific.

The purpose of Huang Xiuyuan and his party coming here is not to go sightseeing, but to build a super project - the construction plan.

The Jianmu Project is actually the space elevator project.

Although the Academy of Sciences, the Academy of Engineering, and the Sui Ren Department each have their own ideas, the Federation, with its deep pockets, can support multiple projects with the same destination. Even if some of the projects fail, as long as one or two succeed, it will be a profit.

The location of the space elevator is actually not something that can be chosen casually.

First of all, the ground station of the space elevator must be built on the equator, and then the climate is required to be relatively stable: the wind force is below Level 2 all year round, cumulonimbus clouds do not often appear, and it is far away from various pressure zones and monsoon circulation.

Considering that the cables of the space elevator have the possibility of breaking, they must be kept away from human gathering places.

Finally, the geology is stable, and the earth's crust can easily fix cables.

Therefore, among the equatorial regions around the world, we first exclude the equatorial regions of Central America, Southeast Asia, and the central Black Sea region, leaving only the equatorial regions of the Pacific, Atlantic, and Ceylon Oceans.

Of these three sea areas, the equatorial waters of the Atlantic Ocean are the first to appear.

The reason is very simple, because in the equatorial waters of the Atlantic Ocean, not only are winds and waves high, the average sea water depth is too deep, and there are no islands, there are also plate fault zones passing through, and the mid-ocean ridge is in the land-building stage, so the geology is unstable.

Then there is the Ceylon Ocean, which is also not suitable here. The eastern section of the equatorial waters of the Ceylon Ocean is adjacent to a fault zone; while the western section of the equatorial waters of the Ceylon Ocean has complex climate, ocean currents and social conditions.

Finally, only the equatorial waters of the Pacific Ocean remain.

In this sea area, from 180 degrees longitude to around 120 degrees west longitude, various conditions are very suitable for the construction of ground stations for space elevators.

Especially now, since the Pacific Ocean is the internal sea of ​​the Federation, it is easier to protect and operate than the Atlantic and Ceylon Oceans.

Baker Island is one of the sites, and there is another option to the east, namely Jarvis Island and the submarine mountains of the Line Islands. If land reclamation is used, it can also be used as a ground station.

Setting up a ground station for the space elevator on Baker Island will achieve twice the result with half the effort.

According to the master plan of the construction plan, the ground station on Baker Island will be a huge building covering an area of ​​30 square kilometers. The height of the building is 3.5 kilometers, showing a pyramid layout. This is also the limit of current construction materials.

If the height of the building exceeds 4 kilometers, even if various nanomaterials are used, unless the bottom is entirely filled with solid filler, there is no way to build it.

At a height of 3.5 kilometers, it will be stuck below the safety line.

The reason why a ground station with such a large area and such a high height is built is mainly to bind the pulling force of the synchronous orbiting space station, which is equivalent to the ground counterweight.

After all, it is impossible for a space elevator to use a compression body, but a pull body.

If you want to use a compressed structure, it will be similar to building high-rise buildings from the ground up. As mentioned above, the current building height limit is 3.5 to 4 kilometers.

Under this material condition, it is obvious that the pressure structure cannot be used.

If there really are materials to achieve it, then there is no need to build a space elevator, just build a mass projector at an altitude of 30 to 50 kilometers.

Therefore, the space elevator can only use the pull type, which uses the synchronous orbiting space station to pull the cable and straightens the cable through the weight of the synchronous orbit.

This is also the key point of the construction of the space elevator, which is to first send the cable to the synchronous orbiting space station, then splice it together bit by bit, and gradually lower the cable to the ground.

Otherwise, there would be no way to construct it. After all, the length of the cable would reach 35,786 kilometers, and it would be unrealistic to pull it up from the ground.

As for the synchronous orbital space station, it is now under construction. In order to achieve the purpose of counterweighting, the total weight of this space station must reach at least 8,000 to 12,000 tons.

The total weight of the Jianmu Synchronous Orbital Space City designed by the Jianmu Project is 52,000 to 65,000 tons.

This weight is just a drizzle for the current federation, and it can be completed in less than half a year.

As for the material of the cable, it was originally planned to use carbon nanotubes. The federal carbon nanotube synthesis technology made a breakthrough around 14 years ago. Weaving a cable with a length of 35,786 kilometers was not a big problem.

However, the breaking limit length of carbon nanotubes is about 4,716 kilometers, which cannot reach the height of synchronous orbit at all.

Since the cable has to withstand tens of thousands of tons of pulling force, it is obviously impossible to calculate it based on the ultimate breaking length. It is estimated that about half the length is almost the limit.

With a length of more than two thousand kilometers, it obviously does not meet the requirements of a space elevator.

Until around October last year, Xie Qing's team used electric field synthesis technology to synthesize a new type of nanowire on the moon - multiple carbon nanotubes + silicene heads, forming silicene-super carbon nanotubes.

The ultimate fracture length of silicene-supercarbon nanotubes is about 170,000 kilometers, the tensile strength is 540,000 MPa, and the specific strength is 390,000.

The comprehensive performance is one order of magnitude higher than that of carbon nanotubes, which is just enough for the manufacture of ultra-long cables.

Therefore, Huang Xiuyuan said that the various conditions of the space elevator have reached the construction standards, and the only remaining problem is the engineering difficulty.

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