Son of the Stars

Chapter 194 Great Change
Earth, a small blue planet.

There are many blue planets in the universe, and at first glance they are very similar to the Earth - in size, and in rotation or revolution speed.

But they are all very different from Earth.

Liquid water is an extremely rare surface feature on a planet, so rare that astronomers have basically given up looking for it.

At the current level of human science, water ice and water vapor are both completely acceptable and usable sources of liquid water. The extraction of structured water and combined water is difficult and expensive, making them difficult to use as the main source.

Such technological limitations have led to serious "limitations" in the Mars landing mission, especially in the choice of forward points, which are even more restricted.

Based on previous preliminary research and field exploration, the National Space Administration has selected four suitable landing sites for the Mars landing mission team. Each landing site has been confirmed by probes to contain a large amount of water ice underground in previous unmanned missions.

But there are some differences among the four landing sites themselves - mainly in the estimated proven reserves of water ice and the difficulty of mining. The proven reserves of water ice in the landing area currently selected by the mission team are about 35 tons. Although it is not certain whether there are more reserves available, the difficulty of mining is not too great.

The main consideration in water ice mining is the difficulty of extraction - the extraction here refers to extracting liquid water and water vapor, not a mixture of water ice and methane.

After all, if a drill is driven into the ground thirty meters and can only bring up a piece of ice with a diameter of more than ten centimeters, it would be too stupid and ridiculous.

Mars is rich in methane, which is a natural fuel. But these convenient fuels are also huge troubles and interesting little helpers. When the drill bit penetrates into the methane-water ice mixed layer, a large amount of water ice will naturally erupt under the impetus of methane - these water ices, which will inevitably be mixed with a lot of sand, rocks and debris, will become an important survival resource and energy source for the early landing base.

Although the landing module has its own fusion furnace, it never hurts to have more energy sources.

More importantly, water ice can provide oxygen for breathing and hydrogen for combustion. The carbon in methane and the carbon dioxide produced after methane combustion are important raw materials for synthetic food.

After the first spontaneous eruption, the pipeline will begin to put in heating pipes for heating and pressurization. A pressure pipeline filled with molten salt will go deep into the ground through the original hole, continuously heating and expanding methane and melting water ice to obtain more methane-water ice mixture.

The plan is perfect, but whether it can be implemented remains to be seen.

The previous unmanned probes were all "streamlined" machines for long-distance interstellar travel. Although they can drill down, they cannot detect the geological environment in a wider range. There may be many fault zones near the drilling port, and mining water ice-methane mixtures may cause geological instability and even induce Martian earthquakes.

These issues need to be considered and addressed by the astronauts who land on Mars. Their approach is simple - first conduct a detailed geological survey and then decide whether to mine for a long time.

Although it has not yet been decided who will land on Mars first, the corresponding work can be carried out in advance. After obtaining Field's consent, Stephen operated the robotic arm to complete a seismic wave survey.

The results of the exploration were not particularly ideal. Near the landing site of the lander, there were two huge oblique fracture zones close to the surface.

Seismic wave exploration is very good at detecting large-scale geological structures, but it is not suitable for exploring fine structures close to the surface. Relying solely on automated equipment, Stephen could not determine whether the two oblique fracturing zones were stable enough, whether they needed to be solidified before they could be left alone, or whether he should directly choose to abandon the current landing site and inspect the remaining three landing sites. This was not something that ordinary astronauts at the first scene could decide - adjusting the position of the landing capsule was a major project, and repairing the unknown fracturing zones at a depth of thirty or forty meters underground was an equally arduous task.

Considering the total amount of coagulant required to make the joints require the addition of a variety of materials—not to mention the cost of making a medium-sized cement plant from scratch—the amount of water ice that erupts spontaneously at the beginning may not be enough to mix the coagulant.

They came to Mars to build a frontier base for exploration, not to industrialize Mars from scratch.

After getting the data, Stephen quickly proposed to Field to "change the landing site". But Field himself could not make the decision on this suggestion - he sent Stephen's suggestion to the Dawn 7 orbital module, the Dawn 6 flight crew, and the Land Sinking "research team" far away on Earth, which still has control.

If nothing unexpected happens, the Earth research team will issue an order to allow them to move location after synthesizing the opinions of Dawn 7 and 6.

This might create a new liberal arts test point - the second day after landing on Mars was the first time humans set foot on Mars or something like that.

Dawn 6 had no objection to this request, and they even enthusiastically provided some suggestions - for example, they recommended the spiral valley near the Antarctic region.

It was normal that the research group on Earth had not responded yet. After all, there was a delay of nearly half an hour, and the corresponding information processing also took time.

But there has been no movement from Dawn-7, which is a bit strange.

"Hey... Sister Zheng, this is Yuzhe. Please reply if you hear me." Jin Yuzhe called for the eighth time, but still could not hear any response. "Can you receive the message we sent?"

I let go of the call button, and the radio was filled with electromagnetic background noise manipulated by the magnetic field of Mars. The noise was disordered and unpleasant, and what was even more annoying was that while I was waiting for a reply, every change in the noise was like a weak radio wave calling for help.

The air in the landing module was almost frozen, and everyone was nervous - especially Silva. His girlfriend Ruan Hongying was also in Dawn 7 and did not respond either.

"Dawn-7 entered the event horizon and successfully captured visible light..." Valentina reported her discovery to Field, but she fell silent before she finished her words.

"Captured, and then what?" Field waited for a long time without hearing the second half of the words. He frowned and looked at Valentina, and just in time he heard the platinum-haired payload expert shout out "Sukabulie" in a clear voice.

The monitor in front of Valentina showed a slightly blurred shadow. The shape and structure of the shadow were similar to those of Dawn 7, but there were also obvious differences - it was divided into three distinct parts, and these three parts were moving away from each other rapidly.

It was obvious that Dawn 7 was in great trouble, and this trouble was as obvious as the fire meteor streaking across the sky.

(End of this chapter)