The prototype is still spewing terrible plasma.

During this period, Carl's team successively tested the extreme operation of the power generation system, low-power operation, engine power regulation, power regulation of the power generation system and other projects.

When Carl's team first designed it, the initial design was a Levi's ring, a spiral magnetic field device.

However, during the simulation test, they found that a Levi's ring is not only large and heavy, but if it fails, it means that the spacecraft loses power.

In order to solve these problems, they discussed more than 100 solutions, after hundreds of trillions of supercomputing simulations.

Finally, this system was designed.

The six Levi rings are not only easy to repair, even if five of them break, as long as one of them works, the ship will not lose power.

In addition, the parts of the Levi ring device are universal, in case of emergency, you can also find out some parts that can be used in the faulty Levi ring, maybe two damaged Levi rings, and you can also piece together a good one.

The test of the power generation system composed of Levi's rings was very smooth.

In the open spiral magnetic field device, the nitrogen-rich plasma project tested had some problems.

The reason is that nitrogen is not well ionized.

"Looks like the plasma engine needs to be tuned." Carl thought as he bit his capacitive pen.

Mikoyan reminded: "I heard that there is a laboratory on Venus that has developed an efficient ionization electric field, you can contact them." ”

】

"Oh? That's a good way to go. ”

In fact, the engine studied by Carl's team is for the generation of spacecraft, so the working fluid of this engine must not be fixed on one or two elements.

For example, many Hall engines, for the sake of efficiency, can only choose xenon as the working fluid, and in the universe, the content of xenon is not high, and enrichment and refining are very troublesome.

Karl wanted to integrate a plasma engine whose working fluid could use elements 1~26 including iron.

In this way, the working fluid required by the engine does not need to be specifically searched, and when encountering asteroids and planets, it can be quickly used on the spot.

Generation spaceships must not be too picky, otherwise they will not be able to stick to the long flight that started for decades.

With this prototype as the power standard, it only takes about 150 years to fly from the Earth to the six-clawed giant.

It only takes about 200 years to get to the neighboring system.

At present, the life limit of new humans is about 150~170 years, and the use of absolute zero freezing technology can extend the life span of hundreds of years.

In this way, Homo sapiens can colonize neighbors.

However, the company's management has no plans to do so.

Instead of building a generation of spaceships to cross the planetary system, it is better to continue farming in the solar system and try to break through the speed of light technology.

In Li Qingye's view, it is difficult for a first-level civilization without light-speed travel technology to colonize other planetary systems, unless the distance between the two sides is within one light year.

But the solar system is in the spiral arm of Orion, not in the inner part of the Milky Way, and the distance between the planetary systems here starts at a distance of a few light-years, and there are very few planetary systems within a light-year distance.

With a distance of several light years and no light-speed travel technology, sending a generation of spacecraft to engage in interstellar colonization is too cost-effective, and there is also a risk of loss of control and separation.

After all, there is nothing left for one or two generations, and once it exceeds five generations, the human power between the two planetary systems will inevitably be separated.

Instead of sending a generation ship, it is better to launch the flame of civilization.

Of course, Generation Spaceship Technology will definitely continue to invest in research, after all, this is one of the back roads of mankind.

In case something goes wrong with the solar system one day, or encounters a powerful first-level civilization, at least the company can escape.

When it comes to planning ahead, Homo sapiens never relaxes.

Of course, the engine researched by Carl's team has also greatly improved the transportation within the solar system.

Seeing that there were no major problems with the tests, Mikoyan asked Karl's team to continue the work while he went on another project.

After 17 hours of trial run.

Suddenly, an alert pops up in the test system.

[Localized deterioration of the neutron absorbing layer detected...... ］

Karl frowned: "Continue testing." ”

He then took a few colleagues with him to look at the deterioration of the neutron absorbing layer.

A researcher said helplessly: "The deterioration rate is much faster than the predicted model, if this deterioration rate is followed, it is estimated that the entire neutron absorption layer can only last for 30~40 days, and it must be replaced with a new one." ”

"What do you think?" Karl turned to the others and asked.

Huang Xiaoyu, a researcher in plasma fluid mechanics, looked at the data carefully, and he saw that the deterioration was not comprehensive, but small local dots, which showed that the neutron flow was extremely irregular.

He re-entered some of the data, substituted it into the plasma operating model, and soon analyzed an unexpected cause.

Huang Xiaoyu's face was full of incredulity: "Lunar gravity? It turned out to be the gravitational pull of the moon? ”

"Gravity?" Carl was also very surprised.

In the simulation analysis of the model, it can be clearly seen that the nuclear fusion defense process in the constraints of the magnetic field, the high-energy neutrons ejected by it, under the interference of the moon's gravity, appear chaotic.

This kind of chaos is very troublesome because it causes the local distribution of high-energy neutrons to be uneven, which can cause a part of the neutron absorbing layer to deteriorate rapidly.

"What are I going to do?"

"We don't have the current highly efficient gravitational modulation technology, unless we go to outer space to test it."

"There's no way to completely avoid gravitational interference in outer space."

The researchers were in deep thought.

There are actually only two roads in front of them.

One is the use of thicker lithium-carbon nanolayers.

The other is to adjust the magnetic field to make the nuclear reaction more uniform, so that the neutrons ejected are more even.

Increasing the thickness of the lithium-carbon nanolayer may seem like nothing, but it is actually very troublesome.

Because when designing this scheme, Carr's team took into account the amount of lithium carbon produced during the nuclear fusion reaction, combined with the lifetime of the lithium-carbon nanolayer.

About 70 days is an optimal value, just enough for the new lithium-carbon elements to make up for the elements in the lithium-carbon nanolayer during the nuclear fusion reaction.

It is not that the lithium carbon elements in the lithium-carbon nanolayer have disappeared, but that a large part of these elements have been converted into radioactive isotopes.

Lithium-carbon, a radioisotope, cannot be used as a neutron absorbing layer material.

Therefore, the best solution now is actually to adjust the binding magnetic field and accelerate the tail field, so that it can make the nuclear fusion reaction more uniform, which is the solution to the root cause.

Otherwise, when it comes to interstellar voyages across planetary systems, this problem will be rapidly magnified due to the environment where resources are scarce.

Just adjusting the magnetic field binding model and the tail field acceleration model needs to be adapted to local conditions, because in the universe, there are subtle differences in the gravitational force at each point.