Chapter 356: Universe-level Plan
Technological progress itself, achieving leapfrog development, and thereby driving innovation—such innovation is of course the best innovation.
But this is very difficult and even less likely to be effective in the short term.
Different technological integration, achieving an effect much better than the original technology after integration, similar to ideally integrating a refrigerator, color TV, and large sofa into a new energy vehicle—this is also innovation and has achieved huge commercial success.
What Lin Ran needs to do is even more difficult technological integration, because even if existing technology is already mature, in theory, turning the Moon into a data center and doing ground computing on the Moon is feasible, but there are still countless difficulties to overcome in between.
Not to mention that current technology is far from mature.
“Professor Lin, I very much admire your idea, and your company has already taken the first step, with a very solid feasibility study. I still have some questions and hope you can clarify them for me.”
The questioner was Huawei’s executive Xiong Qinghua. AI computing cards were part of the work he previously oversaw, and now they have become the most important part among his many overseen functions.
He was essentially pushed to the forefront by the tide of events.
He knew very well how significant it would be if this matter succeeded.
This is not just short-term overtaking on a curve, but also exploration of next-generation semiconductor materials.
If ultra-low temperature superconducting materials are feasible and enter the commercial cycle, other materials will emerge. This time it’s superconductivity at minus 173 degrees Celsius; next time, will it be minus 100 degrees? The time after that, minus 50 degrees?
Or materials approaching superconductivity at room temperature and pressure.
This is forging one’s own path.
This is a massive engineering project, no doubt, and with the massive engineering come technological breakthroughs—how many derivative innovations can emerge?
First achieve a breakthrough on the Moon, then give back to Earth, and finally achieve comprehensive overtake in the semiconductor field overall.
Such a grand strategy is truly too beautiful. The more beautiful it is, the more it needs to be clarified before it can be effectively promoted, implemented, and turned into reality.
“Professor, how to solve heat dissipation?
On the ground, our heat dissipation mainly relies on air convection. Data centers use precision air conditioners, but there is no air on the Moon, so there is no way to carry heat away through air.
I know that in Shackleton Crater, Apollo Technology found water ice there, but is the reserve sufficient? Using water ice as coolant, with water ice sublimating to absorb heat—isn’t that a bit too extravagant?”
Earth’s water resources will at least return to the Earth’s surface through atmospheric circulation.
After water evaporates into gas, it rides airflows into the atmosphere, and once the water in the clouds accumulates to a certain extent, it falls back as rain.
The ice on the Moon is truly used up bit by bit in the truest sense.
“I know everyone will think that even if there is a lot of ice at the Lunar South Pole, it can’t withstand such consumption.
But in fact, according to our exploration, the amount of water ice on the Moon far exceeds our imagination, and the current preliminary estimate is as high as hundreds of millions of tons.
Our cooling system design will not endlessly consume water ice, because the steam from water ice turning into vapor through heat dissipation will be collected and purified into pure water, and after processing, it will be returned to the crater and refrozen into ice using the crater’s ultra-low temperature.
Additionally, electrolyzing water into oxygen and hydrogen can both be used as rocket fuel.
So actually, heat dissipation is not a big problem at all.
We plan to use a modular design to utilize the crater’s low temperature as the primary heat sink, water ice as the secondary absorber, and thermal radiation as the final discharge path. Theoretical calculations show its cooling efficiency is very high.
Use heat pipes to transfer data center heat from servers to the crater wall or ice layer, extract water ice as heat absorber, and vapor re-condenses through the low temperature at the pit bottom.
Because at the Lunar South Pole, we can also use large-area radiation panels to radiate residual heat into space, avoiding solar heat in the lunar shadowed regions.”
Heat dissipation can be solved by utilizing the constant ultra-low temperature in the lunar shadow regions.
This is the benefit of exclusively owning the entire Moon—you can build however you want without needing to discuss with others.
Even if Shackleton Crater is not suitable, you can slowly find a more suitable location. If this crater isn’t suitable, switch to the next one. If the Lunar South Pole isn’t suitable, then just go to the Far Side of the Moon.
“Regarding the heat dissipation design, or whether superconducting chips themselves can exhibit superconductivity in the lunar ultra-low temperature environment, and whether lunar dust static electricity will affect chip operation.
For these, I think we can make a demo and transport it to the Moon to test it out.
It’s still the same point: what we can do now is routine round trips between Earth and the Moon, which is unprecedented and our unique advantage. We must make full use of this advantage.
As long as your company can provide the demo, we can immediately determine the nearest moon landing window and send astronauts to the Moon for experiments.” Lin Ran said.
Lin Ran continued: “For data transmission between Earth and Moon, due to the distance, there will be ultra-high latency, so why not directly transport hard drives full of data via spaceship and then do model training on the Moon.”
(Moon Base Concept Diagram)
How to send dozens of T files from Pengcheng to Yanjing? The fastest way is to have someone carry them physically.
“Good! I think this matter has great potential.
After I go back, I will submit this matter to our rotating board of directors for discussion, but I believe the rotating board of directors will also be very interested in this technical cooperation.” Xiong Qinghua said.
All along, Huawei’s strategy in the AI computing card field has been: if I can’t surpass Nvidia on a single computing card, then I can only do it by stacking quantity.
Similar to: if Nvidia can at most build a computing network with 100 computing cards, then Huawei uses 200 computing cards to build the computing network. If a single computing card can’t match you, I’ll stack up the quantity, and eventually surpass you, right?
Communication has always been Huawei’s strength; it started with communication and has accumulated too much related technology, always with something that fits.
Regardless of whether the AI ecosystem is sound or how the software ecosystem for computing cards is, first surpass you numerically, then slowly build my own software ecosystem.
This is also what the Android camp did in the past: first stack hardware, then optimize the software ecosystem.
But in the past on Earth, your parallelism had an upper limit, and stacking quantity had an upper limit. Now someone comes and tells you to go to the Moon, where superconductors can be used to build this network.
If the limit for computing cards on Earth is 200, then on the Moon using superconductors, the upper limit could be two thousand, twenty thousand, or even more.
How could it not be tempting.
Moreover, Huawei’s executives faintly smelled the flavor of ushering in a new era of technology from this. He believed Huawei executives would not miss such a rare opportunity.
As for the technical problems of superconducting chips themselves, these are originally difficulties to be overcome in subsequent research and development.
All the easy peaches have been picked; now every major innovation is exceptionally difficult.
Brain-computer interface, virtual reality, controlled nuclear fusion, room temperature superconductivity, true artificial intelligence—which one doesn’t require overcoming great difficulties? The proposal put forward by Lin Ran now is already the most feasible among so many proposals.
Such a massive plan is impossible to hide from the outside world.
This is not a military project and does not require high secrecy.
Secondly, the entire plan involves too many people, and all enterprises up and down the entire semiconductor industrial chain need to participate. These people all know what you want to do; it’s impossible for everyone not to reveal it externally.
Finally, you need to recruit a batch of superconductivity talents, and the company’s recruitment announcements will also spark heated discussions outside.
“How to evaluate Huawei offering over 100 PhD positions related to superconducting materials in this year’s campus recruitment? Does this mean LK99 is real?”
Huawei’s autumn recruitment this year is different from previous years. Among the PhD positions recruited this year, it explicitly states the requirement for PhDs engaged in superconducting material research. Combined with the LK99 fever in Korea in early July, LK99 supporters immediately saw this as the most favorable evidence that LK99 is room temperature superconductivity.
“Spill the tea: As a top domestic technology giant, Huawei would never recruit on such a large scale without any warning. One PhD is at least 500,000 annual salary; 100 is 50 million, equivalent to smashing 50 million just on human resources in one year.
This demonstrates great confidence in LK99 materials, voting with real gold and silver.
No matter what opponents say or how they argue that LK99 is not a room temperature superconducting material, a company has already taken the first step.
Additionally, to say a bit more, I approve of Huawei’s behavior. Frontier technology exploration inherently requires enterprise participation. Huawei makes cars, mobile phones, and chips, naturally having many fitting landing scenarios with room temperature superconductivity.
Our country’s enterprises also need to make world-class innovations, from following the era in the past to now needing to lead the era.”
“As expected, it still comes down to Huawei. According to the insider info I heard, Huawei not only recruits PhDs but also poaches scholars doing well in superconducting materials from domestic universities, starting with a million annual salary. I know that universities like West Jiaotong, Western Engineering, and Jiaotong University have had young talents poached by Huawei.
What you see is campus recruitment, but actually Huawei recruits far more than just the surface amount. LK99’s credibility has greatly increased in my view.”
“Spill the tea: Due to work reasons, I can only answer anonymously. I work at Apollo Technology. We recruited a batch of PhDs doing superconducting materials. General Manager Lin’s research sense and vision don’t need further explanation, right? I can only say, everyone should pay more attention to the subsequent progress in superconductivity.”
Discussions around LK99 heated up again.
At this moment, Apollo Technology and Huawei’s official Weibo accounts each posted a Weibo mentioning the other.
What Apollo Technology posted was:
“We plan to build the world’s first superconducting artificial intelligence data center on the Moon, utilizing the extreme low-temperature conditions at the Lunar South Pole. This move will completely revolutionize computing and space exploration.
This initiative is based on our ongoing cooperation with Huawei@Huawei China, marking a bold step for humanity toward a future of multi-planetary existence.
The core of the project is to deploy the data center in a permanent shadowed crater at the Lunar South Pole, tentatively the Shackleton Crater where we have now completed preliminary exploration, where the temperature naturally hovers around minus 173 degrees Celsius.
This ultra-low temperature environment eliminates the energy-intensive cooling systems required on Earth, enabling direct operation of advanced superconducting chips.
The superconducting artificial intelligence data center will serve as foundational infrastructure for Moon operations, supporting real-time data processing for Moon missions, autonomous robots, and deep space communication, while also providing super computing power for artificial intelligence model training on Earth.
By utilizing the Moon’s natural low-temperature environment and the water ice resources confirmed by last year’s major excavation at Shackleton, we will integrate a brand-new heat dissipation solution, including passive radiation cooling and lunar resource utilization, for sublimation heat management.
This not only ensures efficient operation but also paves the way for scalable, sustainable computing centers beyond Earth.
This will be an artificial intelligence supercluster larger and more spectacular than any Earth facility, driven by the Moon’s own environment. This is not just data storage but will open a new era of computing for humanity’s expansion to Mars and beyond.
Thanks to the routine Moon landings of Burning One Modified, we have the capability to turn science fiction into reality.
The plan will begin prototype deployment in the 2024 moon landing mission.
The initial phase will focus on testing superconducting chip prototypes in the crater’s vacuum environment, aiming for full operational capability by 2027, with subsequent continuous expansion.
This initiative aligns with our founder Professor Lin Ran’s vision of stepping out of Earth, while addressing Earth’s growing data demands through outer space infrastructure.
We invite innovators, researchers, and collaborators to join this cosmic-scale endeavor.”
Once the official announcement came out, everyone realized it wasn’t because of Korea’s LK99, but our own superconducting artificial intelligence data center. This news instantly stunned everyone.
What superconducting artificial intelligence data center on the Moon, what low-temperature superconducting chips, what cosmic-scale endeavor—just hearing it is enough to make the blood boil.
Huawei’s Weibo was equally passionate: “Regarding Apollo Technology’s announced Lunar South Pole superconducting AI data center plan, we are honored to participate as a key partner.
This project marks the deep integration of semiconductor technology and space exploration. We will contribute our professional knowledge in semiconductor processes and artificial intelligence to drive innovation in lunar computing infrastructure.
Apollo Technology’s foresight excites us. As a semiconductor manufacturer, we will design solutions for superconducting chip manufacturing, utilizing our existing processes to optimize the stability and performance of low-temperature superconductors in 100K environments.
This is not just technical cooperation but an opportunity to open a computing revolution in the space age.
We will be responsible for the prototype production and testing of superconducting chips in the project, ensuring zero-resistance operation in lunar vacuum and low-temperature conditions, and seamless integration with the water ice cooling system.
This cooperation will further expand our semiconductor application boundaries from Earth to space. We look forward to joining Apollo Technology@Apollo Technology to create a brand-new future.”
