Chapter 134: Moxie System
The crowd filed into the pressurization chamber, where pressurization was carried out while injecting oxygen.
After pressurization was complete, they could directly take off their heavy spacesuits here and enter the base interior.
“General Manager Fan, with your company’s help, our base has now been expanded to a scale of 500 square meters, and now every spaceship prioritizes transporting materials, mainly expansion building materials.
This stage’s plan.”
Neto said, pausing for a moment, then recalling the tone of Mark and Fan Ren’s conversation earlier, before continuing:
“This stage’s plan is to expand the base to 1000 square meters, while increasing the resident population to 100 people. At that time, expansion work will be paused to begin the next stage plan.
The next stage plan is for us to head out, and with the help of a series of equipment, begin a long journey to the North to find the Arctic Ice Sheet, to determine if there is a water source there. This will determine the future development direction.”
After he finished speaking, the crowd also entered the base interior from the pressure chamber.
“There is indeed a huge area of glaciers there, which I had already confirmed before coming, A’dai.”
Fan Ren took over the conversation, shouting toward those behind him.
Hearing this, A’dai walked forward and took out a small sampling container that had been in their hand.
“Do you have water source detection equipment here? If not, I’ll take it back to Blue Star for testing.”
Listening to the Xinghai boss in front of him speak so casually, Neto didn’t know how to respond.
Mars, North Pole, glaciers, sampling.
These few words were easy to say, but extremely difficult to achieve. Their Mars Project had been going on for nearly two years and was still in the base development stage.
Their activity range was even limited to a pitiful 50 square kilometers around.
Once they went far, there was a high chance they’d have to spend the night outside, and Mars’ nighttime temperatures were extremely low. Now in summer it was okay, around minus 70-80 degrees.
But once the long winter arrived, nighttime temperatures would reach a terrifying minus 130 degrees or so.
Under those temperature conditions, their spacesuits could potentially experience accidental leaks.
Even with solar battery vehicles as transport, under those temperature conditions, whether the battery vehicle’s components could operate normally was questionable.
Precisely because of this, until the base support work reached a certain level, they didn’t dare venture too far.
But now, Fan Ren’s words sounded like a joke to him.
The core of their ‘Mars Project’ currently was to determine if there was solid water in the white area at the North Pole.
For this, they had spent an unknown amount of financial resources and resources.
Yet now, looking at the sampling container that the bald young man in front of him had placed before him, he felt somewhat bewildered.
He knew the Xinghai Technology boss in front of him wouldn’t joke about such a matter, otherwise there’d be no point in coming all the way to Mars.
“We have it, we have it. This friend, please follow me.”
The female team member Lia, who hadn’t spoken much, seemed to guess the captain’s inner thoughts and quickly broke the brief silence, leading A’dai toward the other side of the base.
“Sorry, Mr. Fan, please follow me. Ahead is our base’s life support system.”
A trace of imperceptible dejection flashed across Neto’s face, then he led Fan Ren and Dan Wu behind him toward a separately isolated building.
This Mars Base, except for the initial batch of building materials which used Spitz’s self-developed aviation-grade aluminum alloy, used Xinghai’s tri-titanium alloy as building materials for the rest of the expansion areas.
Thus fully meeting Mars’ extreme climate conditions in terms of safety assurance.
But its life support equipment used a system jointly developed by Nasa and Spitz Company.
Under Neto’s guidance, Fan Ren carefully observed this life support system.
Unlike the vacuum environments of the Lunar Base and space station, which required producing oxygen via water electrolysis.
Since Mars had abundant carbon dioxide, they innovatively developed a device called ‘Moxie’.
The device cleverly utilized carbon dioxide from Mars’ atmosphere, filtered out other impurities, then electrolyzed it to produce oxygen and carbon monoxide.
Initially, one Moxie could produce 12 grams of oxygen per hour, enough for an adult to breathe calmly for 30 minutes.
After long-term testing and optimization, Spitz Company transported a 100-kilogram Moxie device to the Mars Base via Xinghai’s spaceship, preliminarily solving the base’s oxygen supply demand.
Fan Ren had strong curiosity about this device.
Although oxygen could also be produced via water electrolysis, the process also produced hydrogen, a flammable and explosive gas that’s very hard to store.
Using this method for small-scale oxygen production was fine, but once it involved city-scale for millions of people, the side effects would be too great.
This Moxie device was very good now.
The subsystems of other life support equipment were mostly similar. After touring this narrow Mars Base, Fan Ren gradually had an idea.
The base location was well chosen, but due to uncontrollable factors early on causing crowding and chaos among systems, it no longer had conditions for large-scale expansion.
Currently, if wanting large-scale Mars Base construction, this place could only serve as a temporary command center, and might even be demolished after completion due to its outdated facilities.
While Fan Ren was pondering, A’dai and Lia returned from over there with excited faces.
“Boss, the test results are out. It’s very pure water with no impurities.”
Fan Ren nodded. In Mars’ environment, no impurities could withstand such extreme conditions.
Solar wind constantly swept through, cleaning everything spotless.
As for the long-speculated question of whether there were microorganisms in the water, the answer was also no.
Microorganisms’ environmental requirements were even more stringent than humanity’s under certain conditions.
Neto and the others’ reaction to this news was also quite muted. After all, such a white area visible to the naked eye from space couldn’t possibly be granite.
What they cared more about was the nano-coat that Fan Ren had mentioned earlier.
The scene of the three of them descending from the spaceship earlier had truly shocked these team members greatly.
Seeing this, Fan Ren reacted and nodded to Dan Wu behind him.
Dan Wu stepped forward and directly opened the box in his hand.
“This is the nano-coat. Captain Neto, you can select two team members.”
Before Fan Ren finished speaking, a tall man from the crowd grabbed a cube from the box first. This was an unlocked nano-coat.
“Damn it, Land, put it down quickly!”
Neto was truly angry this time. His gloomy eyes stared at Land, his tone no longer explosively furious as before, but extremely cold.
Fan Ren looked at this man called Land and finally realized that this was probably the male protagonist who had committed a grave sin, losing control of his lower body with that female astronaut in space, resulting in a ‘space baby’.
No wonder he had no rules.
