December 15th.

The Western world is still a mess, while the Eastern Tang Dynasty and the entire East Asian region are eating melons.

As for the planetary defense program, it is still in the stage of secrecy, and preparations are underway.

On the other hand, for the space mining test work of the WX asteroid, the East Island Space Agency is also preparing related work.

However, Dongtang was also very interested in space mining, so he sent a team of expeditions to discuss how to open this WX asteroid with the East Island Space Agency.

Since the name of the WX asteroid was named by NASA, the Space Development Committee used to use it directly due to an emergency, but now of course it has to change its own name.

Soon the Space Development Commission officially named the WX asteroid "Iron-Nickel Mineral Asteroid, No. 2019.12.3,001", referred to as Iron Star 1.

The ground control center of Kaohsiung Sky City, the East Island Space Bureau has readjusted the ground control center to: the first control room (Blue Star Satellite), the second control room (new Kaohsiung space station), the third control room (mass projector), the fourth control room (spacecraft), and the newly established fifth control room (space mining).

Inside the fifth control room at this time.

Zeng Baojiang and Li Minghao, the head of the control room, Huang Guohao, the head of the space mining project, and Zhang Wei, the leader of the Dongtang expedition, were discussing the development plan of Tiexing 1.

"At present, the orbit of Tiexing 1 is about 51,280~51,300 kilometers from the ground of the Blue Star, and the time to orbit the Blue Star is 33 hours." Li Minghao pointed to the holographic star map and said.

Huang Guohao clicked on the holographic simulation model of Tiexing 1: "When we changed the orbit of Tiexing 1 before, we caused it to lose about 800~9 million tons of mass, and its current mass is about 483.47 million tons. ”

"I don't think this asteroid is exactly an iron-nickel asteroid." Zhang Wei touched his chin and said his opinion.

Huang Guohao nodded: "What you see is slightly the same, after all, according to the density of the iron-nickel asteroid, in terms of the volume of this asteroid, it is about 4.2~440 million tons at most." ”

"You think this asteroid has heavy elements on it." Zeng Baojiang obviously had a long guess about this issue.

After all, at the same volume, heavy elements must be more massive than iron-nickel minerals.

"Just as the base commander said, we can preliminarily determine that Iron Star 1 contains heavy elements." Huang Guohao said.

A staff member of the remote control department of the fifth control room ran over and whispered next to Li Minghao: "Report that the Xuanwu-class 008 spacecraft has arrived at Tiexing 1. ”

"Swap 002 and 004 back." Li Minghao commanded.

"Okay."

In the lonely and distant outer space, 51,295 kilometers away from the blue star, the Asteroid Iron Star 1 is slowly flying in orbit.

Of the three Basalt-class ships that had been flying with the Iron Star 1 asteroid before, only the 002 and 004 spacecraft remained, and the 006 spacecraft had returned to Blue Star on December 14.

As for the Xuanwu-class 008 that flew over this time, it was a spaceship that had just gotten off the production line.

The 008 spacecraft slowly docked next to the Iron Star 1 asteroid, and then slowly landed on the surface of the Iron Star 1 asteroid.

Click! Spacecraft 008 opened the side hatches, and five space robots climbed out of it, then selected five locations and began to punch holes and sample.

Half an hour later, five space-based machines collected 15 samples from the Iron Star 1 asteroid.

The Xuanwu-class 002 and 004 were already on their way back to Blue Star, and at this time, next to the Iron Star 1 asteroid, there was only one spacecraft left in the Xuanwu-class 008 spacecraft.

The 15 samples collected by the space operation robot were sent to the Xuanwu-class 008 spacecraft, which carried a set of rapid elemental detection equipment.

The spacecraft's elemental rapid detection equipment is testing the composition of these samples, while the space robots continue their scheduled mission, installing an engine on the Iron Star 1 asteroid.

The main reason for the installation of the engine is to prevent the Iron Star 1 asteroid from suddenly changing its orbit during mining operations.

However, this time the spacecraft carried one engine, and on December 18, the Xuanwu-class 006 spacecraft will carry two more engines, and generally three engines can maintain the orbit of Tiexing 1 without serious changes.

Inside the fifth control room of the ground control center.

The test results of Xuanwu-level 008 were finally sent back to Blue Star.

After Li Minghao sorted out the test report, he immediately sent it to Zeng Baojiang, Huang Guohao and Zhang Wei, and they carefully browsed it for a while.

"As expected, in addition to iron and nickel, gold, platinum and lead are also very high." Huang Guohao said excitedly.

"It is estimated that this asteroid is a piece of planetary wreckage." Zhang Wei knows this asteroid very well.

"Judging from the test results of 15 samples, the lead reserves are about 3500~38 million tons, while the gold reserves are 800~9 million tons, and the platinum reserves are 600~7 million tons." Huang Guohao didn't know, he was shocked.

"With such terrifying gold and platinum reserves, if they are invested in the Blue Star market, I am afraid that the world's gold and platinum markets will collapse immediately." Zeng Baojiang smiled bitterly.

Huang Guohao also smiled bitterly: "Gold and platinum can only be used as industrial raw materials, but the tungsten and manganese content is also good, of which the tungsten reserves are about 160~1.8 million tons, and the manganese reserves are about 2 million tons." ”

"How do you do mining now?" Zhang Wei asked.

"We plan to rough refine it on site and transport it back to the Blue Star ground for further processing." Huang Guohao explained.

"Space smelting? This needs to be redesigned, after all, space smelting is not the same as ground smelting. Zhang Wei reminded.

In space smelting, it is generally vacuum smelting, cold smelting, using zero gravity to perfect modeling, 3D printing perfect metal products, and the key places do not need to be welded, and the interface is directly cut and pressed together (it can be used for high-precision metal products or jewelry inlays, and can also be used for industrial production of integrated metal shells).

In addition, solar power plants can be used to supply energy to electric smelting furnaces.

However, the reason why space smelting is different from ground smelting is mainly the problem of gravity and heat dissipation, and perhaps the problem of gravity is generally understood by everyone.

However, the problem of heat dissipation in space smelting is definitely another huge problem, because vacuum heat dissipation is very difficult, and it is very difficult to dissipate heat in a vacuum environment without medium, and it can only rely on radiation to dissipate heat.

For example, the thermos flask we generally use uses the principle of vacuum non-heat conductivity to achieve the effect of heat insulation by making a layer of vacuum in the bottle body of the thermos flask.

In other words, smelting in outer space naturally faces the problem of vacuum thermal insulation, and if this problem is not solved, the smelting furnace may have problems due to excessive heat accumulation.

There are other issues that have to be considered.

"We also have relevant research on these problems, and now that the technology is relatively mature, we can improve the problematic areas while testing on Iron Star 1." Huang Guohao said.

"Everything is difficult at the beginning, anyway, this is experimental in nature, and you can improve while experimenting." Zeng Baojiang also nodded and said.

The four of them discussed for a morning and discussed and refined the effects of space mining and space smelting.

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