Chapter 165: Liquid Metallic Hydrogen
The development of the Jupiter-Mars Hub has not fallen behind the Blue Star Hub.
On the contrary, as Great Xia’s current concentration of heavy industries such as materials, energy, metal processing, etc., the space volume occupied by its construction is even more expansive.
At the vast port, thousands of Giant Elephant Class ships appear densely packed, but under A’dai’s management, they orderly load and unload cargo, entering and exiting the port.
The current scale here even surpasses Utopia City, which Xinghai took 3 years to construct.
The Peregrine Falcon did not stay here long, dragging a long plasma tail flame from its tail as it continued sailing toward the more distant Jupiter Ring.
Three days later, at the Jupiter Ring, densely packed unmanned mining flying boats had already appeared in the Peregrine Falcon’s line of sight.
Fan Ren gazed at the scene before him that could be called ants moving house, and couldn’t help but suck in a breath of cold air.
“A’dai, how many Chargers are under your control here now?”
“Boss, currently just over 120,000. According to the plan, Charger production will increase only under the premise of the Giant Elephant Class transportation limit.
However, the tri-titanium alloy we are currently producing is temporarily sufficient for the needs of various factories. I have been continuously adjusting resource balancing in this regard to ensure there is no overcapacity situation wasting resources.”
Fan Ren nodded, no longer concerned with the scene here. In A’dai’s words, currently supervising all of Great Xia’s industry, scientific research, transportation planning, resource balancing, and these projects only occupies 1% of the photonic computer computing power on the Conqueror.
This also indirectly proves that the gap between today’s Blue Star human civilization and the former Mars human civilization is vast.
The Peregrine Falcon gradually slowed down, ultimately approaching a certain space above the Jupiter Ring at a nearly exquisite low inertia speed.
“Turn off the advanced cloaking device.”
As A’dai’s voice sounded, ahead of the Peregrine Falcon, the Conqueror’s figure, as if blotting out the sky, began to appear.
Soon, the massive docking bay below the Conqueror unfolded, and after the Peregrine Falcon slowly slid in, it closed again.
Fan Ren gazed at the huge docking space inside the dock, momentarily stunned.
On the entire Conqueror, there is no information explaining why this spaceship is an empty ship.
According to the understanding in the manual, a full-status Conqueror is a super spaceship for long-duration navigation and interstellar combat.
Previously, when the Young Dragon attacked it, the Conqueror did not show effective counterattack capability. Fan Ren had guessed this at the time, and it was later confirmed by A’dai.
Although the Conqueror’s armor is invincible, its huge body results in very sluggish action and posture.
At the same time, the flexibility of those eight super electromagnetic railguns also lacks capability against high-speed moving small boats.
Therefore, the hangar on this spaceship must have a large number of small spaceships capable of high-speed space movement combat.
Unfortunately, there is nothing.
Exiting the Peregrine Falcon, Fan Ren and Dan Wu directly entered the rapid passage, taking the internal high-speed elevator straight to the main entrance of the command room.
After the command room door opened, several top scientists in Great Xia’s energy science field had already been waiting here for a long time.
“General Manager Fan, you’re here. We are all prepared.”
Fan Ren smiled and greeted these elderly people with half-white hair, then without further delay, took the lead in stepping into the cockpit.
The group of scientists and Dan Wu followed suit.
Today, Fan Ren is going to perform fuel replenishment operations on this Conqueror.
Unlike the nuclear fusion reactors that humanity is currently using on a large scale, this spaceship uses liquid metallic hydrogen as the base energy source.
The embarrassing point is that with current scientific methods, scientists cannot effectively test the unit energy of this metal ‘fuel’.
They don’t even know how to use it.
The generation environment for liquid metallic hydrogen is extremely harsh; it requires external pressure reaching millions or possibly tens of millions of atmospheres to form.
The super high pressure causes hydrogen molecules to dissociate into hydrogen atoms, and these hydrogen atoms continue to approach each other in this process.
But when these hydrogen atoms approach a certain extent, their peripheral electron clouds begin to overlap, allowing electrons that were originally only active in the current atom to move freely between all atoms.
This situation enables liquid hydrogen to exhibit metallic properties, forming as liquid metallic hydrogen.
Obviously, humanity currently has no way to generate pressure exceeding 4 million atmospheres.
Preparing this extremely highly compressed fuel is naturally out of the question.
However, although liquid metallic hydrogen has an extremely harsh generation environment, it also has an advantage.
That is, hydrogen element exists basically on all gas giant planets.
Gas giant planets have a characteristic: their size is extremely huge. Take Jupiter, the largest gas giant planet in the solar system by volume and mass, right in front of the Conqueror, as an example.
Its volume exceeds the total mass of all planets in the solar system combined, and its mass is 318 times that of Blue Star.
Therefore, the atmospheric pressure on Jupiter is extremely terrifying.
Similarly, precisely because of this, most gas giant planets have liquid metallic hydrogen substance present.
Wait!
Fan Ren suddenly thought of something.
The Conqueror’s combat method requires long interstellar navigation, so upon arrival, it cannot have conditions to refine and prepare helium-3 or other nuclear fusion fuel.
Then, liquid metallic hydrogen on gas giant planets, which has difficult generation conditions but is widely present in the universe, isn’t that a very suitable fuel source?
Fan Ren immediately put forward this idea.
A’dai and the group of scientists, upon hearing it, although they couldn’t confirm by guessing, Fan Ren’s theory was currently the closest to the facts.
Otherwise, it couldn’t be explained why helium-3, which has lower preparation conditions, wasn’t used as the main fuel, but liquid metallic hydrogen was chosen instead.
Moreover, Fan Ren had another bold guess, but bringing it up now was too advanced; even if true, it had no practical significance.
The cockpit door lowered, and the familiar nano buffer surged out again.
“A’dai, begin.”
With Fan Ren’s order, the Conqueror’s massive body began to slowly ‘fall’ downward.
In the command room, the surrounding scenery also changed with the spaceship’s movement.
Each scientist’s heart immediately jumped to their throats.
“Entering the outer atmosphere, pressure extremely low.”
A’dai’s voice sounded in everyone’s ears, as if comforting them, it continued: “Rest assured, this spaceship’s building materials have undergone molecular rearrangement, forming a new metal material with strong interaction forces and extremely stable structure.
This gas giant planet alone should not be able to destroy it.
Moreover, this method of acquiring fuel is also one of the relatively safe operational procedures recorded in the operation manual.”
As his words fell, a sky full of colorful crystal-like objects suddenly appeared before everyone’s eyes.
