Chapter 592 Submarine
Bai Yulou and others are familiar with scientific research.
At this time, in the industrial area of the Yungong base, a "submarine" was carrying out the final finishing work.
This is a specially built submarine, mainly to cope with the terrifying high temperature, high pressure, strong winds and corrosive gases on the surface of Venus.
You should know that the air pressure on the surface of Venus can reach nearly one hundred times the standard Earth's atmospheric pressure, the temperature is maintained at 400-500 degrees Celsius all year round, the wind speed is about 200 meters per second, and it is densely covered with various corrosive gases.
What is Purgatory?
This is purgatory.
No small probe previously sent to the surface of Venus had survived more than six months.
This time, the Yungong base planned to build a big one and constructed a large submarine with a length of 500 meters and a diameter of 60 meters. A lot of vacuum carbon balls were installed inside the submarine.
In order to withstand the extremely harsh environment on the surface of Venus, the submarine's hull is made of a composite ceramic layer and a high-temperature resistant alloy layer. The shell can withstand temperatures of 5,500 degrees Celsius without melting. It can also withstand 500 standard atmospheric pressures and is also very corrosion-resistant.
Another thing is to add a layer of gold-based thermoelectric material to the composite layer of the outer shell, which can continuously absorb the surrounding heat energy and convert it into electrical energy.
Obviously, this plan is adapted to local conditions and makes full use of the high temperature on the surface of Venus.
If we don't utilize the temperature of 400 to 500 degrees Celsius and the high-pressure air, we would be wasting natural resources.
After completing the final finishing touches, five synchronized robots entered the cockpit and completely sealed the hatch.
"Open the gates!"
"receive."
Inside the shipyard in the industrial zone, all the internal hatches were closed tightly, and then the door leading to the outside world slowly opened.
A large amount of carbon dioxide and other gases rushed into the shipyard's dock, but since all the synchronized robots had been evacuated to a safe area, there was no need to worry about the remaining submarines.
Although synchronized robots do not need to breathe, the corrosive gases in the Venus atmosphere can easily damage the robot's parts and sensors. These synchronized robots are not cheap, so unnecessary losses must be avoided as much as possible.
Inside the submarine cockpit.
Foucault, the operator behind the synchronized robot, as well as Fujita Takashi, Huang Wei and others, immediately controlled the submarine to take off.
In fact, this is the same principle as the airship. At this time, the vacuum carbon ball of the submarine is still filled with carbon dioxide. As the vacuum pump starts, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the vacuum carbon ball gradually decreases, and the submarine floats up little by little.
The propeller pushed the submarine out of the dock.
When the submarine flew out of the dock gate and into the sky.
"Start inflating." Foucault ordered.
"Yes." Huang Wei nodded. He activated the carbon dioxide collector on the submarine's hull and re-absorbed the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere into the vacuum carbon ball.
As the vacuum carbon balls are filled with carbon dioxide, the buoyancy of the submarine also decreases synchronously, and the decrease in buoyancy will naturally cause the submarine to descend.
In less than fifty minutes, the submarine descended from an altitude of about 52 kilometers to an area less than 500 meters from the ground.
At this time, the strong winds on the surface of Venus and the terrifying atmospheric pressure made the submarine feel tremendous pressure. If it were not for the high-strength shell, such terrible pressure would be enough to crush an ordinary probe.
Red Purgatory.
Corrosive acid mist.
Extremely high pressure.
Hundred-meter gale.
A huge ship is trying to cross the river here.
If there were intelligent creatures here, this scene would become a myth.
Unknowingly, the Sapiens company has become very powerful, and various technologies are constantly expanding the living space of mankind.
Through a special observation periscope and a high-power searchlight, we can see the conditions on the surface of Venus.
There are weathered landforms formed by igneous rocks everywhere, which look a bit like Yadan landforms. The strong wind is mixed with tiny stones and sand, which constantly hit the hull of the ship.
But this is not the goal.
Because this place has been explored once before, there is nothing worth studying.
Foucault looked at the holographic map, then adjusted his flight direction and flew towards the South Pole of Venus.
The surface terrain of Venus is mainly flat land, with some basins and a large mountain range, on top of which is the highest peak in the solar system.
At the South Pole, several probes that had been launched previously malfunctioned and did not successfully reach the South Pole.
During the flight, the terrifying strong winds disturbed the submarine, forcing it to divert part of its power to correct its flight direction to avoid being deviated by the strong winds.
Fortunately, the surface of Venus is like a big furnace, and submarines can obtain a steady supply of electricity through gold-based thermoelectric materials.
Looking at the flat surface, Foucault knew very well that it was not that the surface of Venus was a natural airport, but that it had been ground into a needle by the strong wind.
The igneous rock mountains formed by volcanic eruptions are difficult to resist weathering and erosion by strong winds and acid mist.
Suddenly the alarm system sounded.
[Alert! There is a large-scale thermal reaction ahead of the monitoring, and a moderate volcanic eruption has occurred. Please avoid it in time...].
Foucault quickly adjusted the flight direction to bypass the core area of the volcanic eruption.
Venus has very frequent magma activity, and among the terrestrial planets in the solar system, Venus's surface rock layers are the youngest.
This shows how frequent volcanic activity is on Venus.
Of course, volcanic activity has both advantages and disadvantages.
On the one hand, volcanic activity will erupt large amounts of toxic and harmful gases and volcanic ash, and cause volcanic earthquakes.
On the other hand, volcanic eruptions will bring rare and heavy metals from the mantle to the surface, forming rich mineral resources while also releasing large amounts of geothermal energy into the atmosphere.
Now the Yungong base is preparing to mine minerals on the surface of Venus to reduce its dependence on the Earth headquarters.
According to data from the Venus Mineral Analysis Institute, there are currently 700 billion tons of pure iron, 5.3 billion tons of elemental copper, and a large amount of gold, silver, rare earths, platinum, tungsten and the like stored in the strata above 500 meters below the surface of Venus.
Because the atmosphere is full of carbon dioxide, many volcanic eruptions produce magmatic rocks that contain many metals in elemental form, which is similar to the environment on early Earth.
It’s just that Venus did not encounter the great oxidation event caused by cyanobacteria, and coupled with hundreds of millions of years of continuous volcanic eruptions, the metals here have remained in a unitary state for a long time.
This mineral oxidizes much better than the metals on Earth and can be easily extracted.
Some of the precious metals and heavy metal materials used in the previous submarine construction process were transported from the Earth bit by bit, which is very unfavorable for the development of Venus.
Therefore, the Yungong Base is very covetous of the large amount of minerals on the surface of Venus.
Of course, there is nothing you can do about being jealous.
After all, the surface of Venus is too harsh. It is obviously too difficult to build a metallurgical base on its surface. It is not that the technology does not allow it, but that the cost is very high and the cost-effectiveness is too low.
The Yungong Base is organizing personnel to study how to mine at low cost so that the Yungong Base can get rid of its dependence on materials from the earth.
The submarine twisted and turned for two days and two nights amidst strong winds and sandstorms, and finally arrived near the South Pole of Venus.
This is a relatively large basin. The submarine descended a bit and found that the wind speed here had also dropped a lot.
Their purpose in coming here was to look for ancient geological relics, to see if they could find evidence of Venus being bombarded by an asteroid or some other accident.
