Chapter 144: The Nation’s Heavy Weapon
“With our existing technological means, it’s impossible to achieve this. We don’t have the corresponding technological strength.”
His voice was full of dejection and helplessness: “Even today, the deepest well dug by human civilization on Earth is still the one dug nearly a hundred years ago by that once-existent massive nation, under special world situation, which could be called mobilizing the strength of the entire nation—the Kola exploration well, with a depth of about 12,000 meters, taking 22 years.
Subsequently, due to technology and demand, we also dug some exploration wells, but their depths were generally around 10,000 meters and did not continue excavating deeper.
With our current technological strength, if there is enough time, it is theoretically possible to dig through the crust. But… the key lies in time.”
Jiang Yang knew that in this cycle, he had wasted more than ten days in hibernation, leaving only 86 days of preparation time for the human world.
The thickness of Earth’s crust is not consistent everywhere. In the mid-spines of certain oceanic mountain ranges, due to geological activity and the crust having just formed, the thickness can be as low as about 5,000 meters.
On land, the thickness is at least 20,000 meters at the minimum.
The deep sea excavation environment is even more complex, and overall, it might not be as efficient as directly excavating on land.
But whether on land or in the ocean, digging through the crust in just 86 days is an impossible task.
That’s digging through the crust!
As depth increases, the underground environment becomes increasingly harsh. For example, at a depth of about 10,000 meters underground, rocks under pressure will have temperatures rising to around 200 degrees Celsius.
Moreover, due to high temperature and pressure, rocks will exhibit creep characteristics, flowing slowly like fluid and squeezing the well wall, ultimately leading to collapse.
Furthermore, even the most advanced geological exploration means can only roughly and generally detect the underlying structure, making it impossible to predict what might be encountered during the excavation process.
It could be digging into a water-rich rock layer, with massive water surging out and instantly destroying excavation facilities, or digging into a space rich in combustible gas, instantly causing an explosion, or digging into a geologically fractured zone, and so on.
And there’s the most important point.
The excavation facilities themselves are too long, which will also severely impact performance.
A 10-meter-long special alloy steel pole looks very tough and indestructible. But when the length increases to 100 meters, it will exhibit noodle-like softness overall.
So what about when the length increases to 10,000 meters?
It will be softer than noodles. And drilling requires power, so how can the power be transmitted through this 10,000-meter steel pole, softer than noodles, to the drill bit?
High temperature and pressure will also quickly damage the drill bit, requiring frequent replacement. Each replacement requires fully pulling out this 10,000-meter drill pipe.
During the pulling out process, it’s impossible to just lift the drill pipe directly to a height extending 10,000 meters into the sky, right?
This requires disassembling it section by section. After completing the drill bit replacement and lowering it back into the well, it needs to be assembled section by section again.
Replacing the drill bit might take one or two weeks—this speed is already fast enough—and then the new drill bit might fail again after drilling for less than an hour, requiring another replacement.
That year’s Kola super-deep well, after reaching a drilling depth of 12,000 meters, took about 6 years to excavate the final 262 meters of depth, showing how difficult excavation is.
Even today, with great technological advancements, the difficulty of 10,000-meter super-deep well excavation has indeed decreased somewhat, but it still belongs to the category of national strategic equipment.
And even the thinnest part of the Earth’s crust on land has a depth of at least 20,000 meters.
It can be said without exaggeration that the project of digging through the crust is in no way inferior to human civilization’s first manned moon landing in terms of difficulty and meaning!
Completing such a great project in 86 days is not an overstatement when described as fanciful.
Faced with this almost insurmountable real obstacle, everyone in the video meeting room fell silent.
Doomsday plan consultant group leader Sun Changhe thought for a moment and asked: “Is there no other alternative plan for digging through the crust to directly detect the mantle?”
That expert didn’t hesitate and gave a definitive answer: “No.”
“Good. Since existing drilling technology cannot penetrate the crust in 86 days, is there any promising new technology?”
“Yes, ion drilling. Its technical principle is to abandon the traditional rotary grinding, cutting, and using drilling fluid to cool the drill bit and bring rock debris back to the wellhead mode, and instead directly generate high-temperature plasma jetting onto the rock to vaporize it.
Afterward, use gas cooling technology to quench the rock steam, making it condense instantly into microparticles, then blow them out of the wellhead via high-pressure gas for further processing.
As an analogy, it’s roughly like placing a red-hot iron ball on a block of ice.
The iron ball’s heat will instantly melt and vaporize the ice and water, making them evaporate directly, thereby ‘drilling’ a well.
In theory, once ion drilling technology matures, its advance speed is extremely fast, potentially reaching 1,000 meters per day, so a 20,000-meter deep well would only take 20 days. Of course, this is just theoretical speed. And it can only be applied on land, not for seabed excavation.”
Sun Changhe slowly closed his eyes, falling into thought. Nearby, Lu Zhaoming and others with scientific background quickly pulled up information on ion drilling, reading and taking notes.
“Provide detailed information on the current progress, industry scale, practical applications, and other data of ion drilling technology.”
“Yes.”
That leading expert quickly organized his thoughts and slowly said: “Currently in the laboratory, small-scale ion drilling equipment has been successfully developed and has entered the actual verification stage. For practical applications, some tunnel excavation projects have attempted to use it, but due to high failure rates and costs, they ultimately chose to abandon it…”
He detailed the relevant situation.
After another silence and contemplation, Sun Changhe looked at this expert.
“Since a finished product already exists, at least theoretically, manufacturing ion drilling equipment capable of handling deep well excavation tasks over 20,000 meters has no fundamental obstacles, only engineering and technical ones.
Now with 86 days until doomsday, conservatively allocating 50 days for final excavation and data analysis leaves 36 days.
Sun Changhe looked at the deliberation council and decision-making group members who were also attending this meeting: “I suggest mobilizing the strength of the entire world, gathering all experts in related fields, conscripting all research institutions and related parts manufacturers, with unlimited supplies and manpower, to develop usable ion drilling equipment within 36 days!”
