After half past eleven o'clock in the evening, the number of flights taking off and landing at Shanghai International Airport also dropped significantly, and Lu Yi's special plane finally did not need to cut the queue, and directly had a free runway to arrange takeoff.

"Here, have a supper and find a place to sleep by yourself, and you won't be in Yangcheng until more than two o'clock in the morning."

After the roar and turbulence of the plane during the take-off stage passed, Lu Yi took out the airline lunch box that the airline had replaced and prepared in advance and handed it to Wei Hong, and then took a portion for Zhang Qing and Lin Meng respectively, and made 3 cups of strong coffee.

The urgent question he sent to the nuclear fusion demonstration reactor project that Beihang said before was not a joke, but it really happened, but it was not a big problem, and it should be dealt with during the trip from Beijing to Yangcheng.

Wei Hong, the young man who was in Beihang just now, smelled the smell of strong coffee in the air, saw Lu Yi and the others opening their notebooks to quickly divide labor, and dealing with problems while eating, and looked down at the airline bento in his hand, which did not taste very good, and asked in a daze: "Chief Engineer Lu, are you going to stay up all night?" ”

"There are urgent problems to deal with first, and if you can't sleep, you can do the project planning of the space engine first, and a group of researchers will be assigned to you in a few days.

You are in charge of the research of the project, and you need to control the direction and progress of the entire project, and assign tasks to your researchers.

There will be a special team to help you deal with administrative and life matters, and if you have any problems, you can bring them up when you have them. ”

Lu Yi ignored Wei Hong's stunned and simply said what he was going to do next.

After this period of development, the laboratory has formed a relatively complete operation system, simply put, the core of the laboratory is scientific research, this group of researchers only need to do research with peace of mind, and the team led by Xu Ying will help deal with other things.

"Is there a professional materials research in the laboratory?"

After all, it is a demon with 96.8 potential, Wei Hong also quickly entered the state when he heard Lu Yi's words, and asked: "This space engine does not need fuel propellant, but it has requirements for the thermal expansion coefficient of the propulsion working fluid, and the nozzle material also has relatively high requirements. ”

"There is a top-level material laboratory, tomorrow I will introduce Hu Feng to you, and you can discuss the issues related to materials yourself."

Lu Yi smiled, in the positioning of the laboratory, the material laboratory is a brick, and it will be moved wherever it is needed.

The material itself is for the industry and science and technology, and Lu Yi is not worried about the medium with a high coefficient of thermal expansion required by this engine.

The expansion of the gas is directly proportional to the temperature, taking the relatively easy to obtain hydrogen as an example, the volume expansion coefficient of hydrogen is 3.66×10^-3, that is, when the temperature changes by 1 degree Celsius, its volume will change by 3.66 thousandths.

As long as the power and energy density of the nuclear fusion reactor are high enough, and the amount of exhaust gas emitted per unit time with a temperature of up to 100 million degrees Celsius is relatively large, the temperature of liquid hydrogen will be raised to a very high level in an instantaneous time, and the volume will expand dramatically in an instant, resulting in a terrifying expansion pressure.

When this part of the expansion pressure acts on the cone or bell-shaped inner wall of the engine nozzle, the pressure is converted into thrust, and the temperature will drop, which is the whole work process.

Lacking the accurate simulation of supercomputing, on the way to the airport, Lu Yi and Lin Meng roughly analyzed it on paper and pen.

A small fusion reactor with one-tenth of the power of a demonstration reactor under construction, combined with liquid hydrogen as an expanded propulsion working fluid, the consumption of the propulsion working fluid is between 64 and 69 times lower than the fuel consumption of a rocket engine.

The original Fat Five needed to consume more than 500 tons of propulsion fuel to send 10 tons of material into geosynchronous orbit, and it didn't take 8 tons to replace it with this engine.

Of course, the lower propulsion fluid consumption also means that the power output of the single propulsion fluid is higher, which will also put more pressure on the material, which is the focus of the next project.

"Chief Engineer Lu, I would like to ask a question......

At one o'clock in the morning, Wei Hong hadn't slept all the time, and seeing that Lu Yi didn't mean to sleep directly after dealing with the problem, he walked up and asked with some hesitation.

"What's the problem?" Lu Yi glanced at Wei Hong a little strangely.

Wei Hong struggled, and finally asked: "You know a lot of things, I want to ask if our country has hydrogen bomb miniaturization technology, that is, ultra-small hydrogen bombs with a yield of hundreds of tons or less." ”

"Why are you asking about this?"

Lu Yi's eyes narrowed slightly, and his hand quietly turned around on the watch, and there was a button on it.

"I don't mean anything else, if we have the technology to miniaturize the hydrogen bomb and can make a hydrogen bomb with a yield of less than 500 tons, my idea of having a space engine seems feasible."

Wei Hong sensed that something was wrong with the atmosphere, and hurriedly defended with a somewhat pale face.

"What thoughts?"

Lu Yi still did not let his guard down, as long as he pressed the button on his watch, the security personnel who were in another cabin could come over as soon as possible.

"Sumi's Cold War Orion Project!"

Wei Hong gritted his teeth and said: "The previous engine can greatly reduce the cost of getting rid of the shackles of the planet and entering space, but due to the expansion rate and energy density of the propulsion working fluid, its acceleration is not very good.

But if there is an ultra-small hydrogen bomb, referring to the engine of the Orion project back then, the thrust and acceleration of the final engine can reach an amazing level, so that interstellar travel is no longer a dream.

It can accelerate the spacecraft to an extremely high speed in a very short time, and can directly carry out interstellar voyages without experiencing the gravitational acceleration of the planet, so that it is not a problem to reach Mars within 3 days, and even the material protection ability is improved, this speed can continue to be accelerated! ”

"Project Orion? The engine that threw a nuclear bomb on the butt of the spaceship and used the impact of the nuclear bomb explosion as thrust? ”

Lu Yi was a little dumbfounded, he suddenly wanted to pry Wei Hong's head open to see if the brain structure of a scientist with a potential of 96.8 would be different from everyone's, but the head of a madman.

"How to solve the problem of nuclear radiation contamination? In addition, the hydrogen bomb needs to explode in the nozzle to generate thrust like the engine we are studying now, so how to solve the high damage to the material caused by the neutron irradiation released by the hydrogen bomb explosion?

How to solve the instantaneous energy impact generated by the explosion of the hydrogen bomb beyond the upper limit of the material? How to solve the ultra-high temperature caused by the explosion of the hydrogen bomb? ”

Out of respect for a scientist who was rated as high as 96.8 by the system, Lu Yi rubbed his head with a bit of a headache and asked a few questions.

This is a high-potential scientist, who is clearly a madman.