Chapter 469: Abandoned
Li Qingye did not stay in the Chad branch for too long.
September 20th, the first year of Xinghe.
Under the escort of the aerospace fleet, he arrived at the operating area of the Meroe branch. In order to avoid being too abrupt, he did not go directly to the Darfur Plateau, but went to South Meroe first.
The aerospace carrier slowly passed over Juba, the capital of South Meroe, and then landed at an airship airport on the east side.
Mapel, the manager of the Meroe branch, had been waiting at the airport for a long time.
As soon as Li Qingye stepped off the airship, he felt a wave of heat: "This place is really hot!"
Sanjibada Layal quickly took a small electric fan to blow air on him.
"Chairman, welcome to the Meroe branch. My name is Mapel, and I am responsible for the company's regional operations and management." Mapel is not a pure black person, but a mixed black and yellow race from Mada Island, and his skin color is more Javanese.
Li Qingye commented with a smile: "This city is well built!"
"It is our honor to be in the Chairman's sight. Chairman, here is the industrial catalog of Juba City. Please have a look. "
Mapel handed over a beautiful booklet with both hands.
Li Qingye took it and flipped through the booklet, which listed all the projects and industries that the company had invested in and constructed locally.
For example, the Juba Dam is under construction. As the core city in the upper reaches of the White Nile, Juba has a very large river drop, which is very suitable for dam construction.
He closed the booklet and said, "Let's go to the Skytrain Company and have a look!"
"Yes, Mr. Chairman."
The convoy drove slowly on the road.
Juba is a highland city, about 500 meters above sea level, with a relatively comfortable temperature, at least compared to other low-altitude cities in the region. It is not too hot to enjoy outdoor activities.
After the power of the Homo Sapiens company entered here, it invested a lot of infrastructure.
Due to the latecomer advantage, many new technologies developed by Sapiens Company in the later period are reflected in the infrastructure construction .
For example, the green carpet created by genetic recombination technology almost covers the entire surface of the city’s buildings, making the city of Juba look almost emerald green.
This green carpet can absorb water molecules in the air through photosynthesis. Its fleshy stems and leaves are similar to those of succulents and have extremely strong water storage capacity.
The green carpet can regulate air humidity, oxygen and carbon dioxide concentrations, absorb harmful gases, and maintain the indoor temperature between 26 and 28 degrees Celsius.
Because the entire city is covered with a green carpet, the outdoor temperature in Juba is maintained between 20 and 35 degrees Celsius.
Li Qingye felt the heat wave at the airport just now because there was no large-scale green carpet in the area to regulate the humidity and temperature.
Li Qingye could see the situation in the streets and alleys along the way through the car window.
In addition to the locals, there are also many East Asians with obvious skin colors, or brown people in Southeast Asia, and white North Africans.
The minibus traveled around the neighborhood and then arrived at the outskirts of the XC area.
"Chairman, we're here," Mapel said as he opened the car door.
After Li Qingye came down, he saw a huge factory with a large station on one side of the factory.
However, the station is not on the ground, but in mid-air, and the tracks are also in mid-air.
This is the product of Meroe Skytrain Group - a composite overhead railway.
Li Qingye entered the production base.
After receiving the notice, the factory manager Fan Haibo came over sweating profusely: "Hoohoo... Chairman, welcome to our factory for inspection. I am the factory manager Fan Haibo."
"Don't be nervous, I'm just taking a look. I heard you are building the Southern Meroitic Plateau Railway. How is it going?"
Fan Haibo, who secretly breathed a sigh of relief, quickly replied: "Chairman, we have already built an 86-kilometer experimental line, and the operation is currently going well."
Then Fan Haibo gave a detailed introduction to the technology of their factory.
The construction and operation of this overhead railway are somewhat different from those of traditional railways.
Specifically speaking, this kind of overhead railway can only be built if the material performance is strong and has sufficient support.
The construction process is very interesting. First, a biosynthetic aluminum-silicon material is used to synthesize a hollow pipe with a diameter of 10 meters. The strength of this material is 3.27 times that of ordinary steel.
After the pipeline was synthesized in one go, a construction airship converted from a transport airship was used to pull the pipeline weighing 8,400 tons and 300 meters long into the air.
According to the conditions of the soil and rock formations below, the flight altitude is randomly adjusted, aiming at the target area, and then the pipe is dropped directly from a high altitude.
Under the influence of the earth's gravity, this huge pipe will instantly be inserted into the ground at a depth of 240 to 280 meters.
In the wall of the pipeline, there is a tiny pipe system called "capillaries". Construction workers can inject special genetically recombinant bacteria to integrate the pipes with the underground rock soil and enhance the comprehensive load-bearing capacity of the column.
Usually 4 to 6 hollow pipes are driven into one node.
Next, based on the height of the overhead track, the factory will customize a batch of hollow pipes that are smaller in diameter than the ground pile pipes but can just fit into the inner diameter of the ground pile pipes. However, both ends of this type of hollow pipe are sealed.
Also using an airship, a smaller hollow pipe is inserted into the ground pile pipe.
Due to gravity, the small pipe will squeeze the soil and rocks in the pile pipe, causing the soil and rocks in it to become increasingly compact.
Of course, the small pipe has a limit ring to prevent the pipe from dropping too much.
After completing the construction of the columns, the next step is the modular node devices, which can connect the four columns.
Typically, the distance between each node is about 10 kilometers, and the part connecting the nodes is the distance between each node.
It is a special nano-alloy that was previously used in the Dandelion project. The cables made of this alloy connect two nodes in a group of 4.
The cable is only 3.4 cm in diameter and has a very strong load-bearing capacity.
Construction workers will then lay lightweight alloy plates and rails on the cables.
The rails can be used to run high-speed heavy-duty railways, and suspended trains can be used under the rails, forming a dual-purpose rail that can transport freight above and passengers below.
In addition, since the material performance is good enough, arranging four horizontal parallel rails between two nodes is only the minimum utilization rate.
If the routes in the area are busy, you can also consider adding a three-dimensional line, with the maximum layout being 4 layers, 4 horizontal rails on each layer, for a total of 16 rails.
Moreover, each rail can be used for both up and down operations, which is actually equivalent to being able to run 32 tracks.
The reason why the Meroe Skytrain Group built this kind of railway.
On the one hand, there are too many nature reserves in Africa, and building railways on the ground must pass through nature reserves and wildlife habitats.
On the other hand, because Africa’s infrastructure is so poor, building ground roads and railways is not only costly but also very troublesome.
For example, there are vast deserts, tropical rainforests that are frequently flooded, and a large number of uninhabited mountains and hills.
As for the underground railway, the company is of course also working on it, but it is wary of the super-large mantle plume and the Numea aquifer under Africa, so it is proceeding with the underground railway project with caution.
After much deliberation, the Meroe branch decided to build a lower-cost overhead railway.
Of course, this cost is for the Homo Sapiens company. If it were other forces, the cost of overhead railways would be higher than that of ground railways.
