Development of productivity started in 1981

Chapter 268 Aluminum

While the International Atomic Energy Agency was conducting nuclear inspections in Myanmar, the second and third Canglong I rockets were launched successively.

During the manufacturing process of the second and third rockets, Wang Jiankun used his superpowers to provide a lot of help.

Because the corresponding parts manufacturing plant had just been completed at that time, there were many problems encountered during the production of the first few batches of parts.

When there is no solution to a problem in a short period of time, Wang Jiankun will take action and use his superpowers to complete the manufacturing of certain parts, while also participating in the process research.

In addition, some parts are slightly different from the first one. After all, Sophon used simulation data when designing it. When the first rocket was successfully launched, the onboard computer simultaneously sent back some data.

After these data are received by the ground measurement and control station, they are transmitted back to the central computer.

Wang Jiankun imported the corresponding data into his mind through the brain-computer chip for Zhizi to review.

For the next two rockets, Sophon made corresponding modifications.

After the modification, the thrust of the Gangao rocket engine was reduced a bit, the length of the first stage of the Canglong I rocket was shortened a bit, and the amount of fuel carried was reduced accordingly.

The thrust-to-weight ratio of the second rocket was reduced to 1.45, and that of the third rocket was reduced to 1.4.

After the successful launch of three consecutive rockets, the final design of the Canglong I basic rocket was finalized.

It is still a 3-stage rocket.

The first stage has four Gangao engines, with a diameter of 4 meters and a height of 4.8 meters.

The second stage has three Gangao engines with a diameter of 3 meters and a height of 3.6 meters.

The third stage has a Minkin engine with a diameter of 1 meters and a height of 3.6 meters.

The total take-off mass is 730 tons and the thrust-to-weight ratio is 1.4.

By adjusting the thrust of the engine and reducing the thrust-to-weight ratio, the impact force on the rocket's payload was reduced significantly.

In this way, the first spacecraft carrying experiments can be launched using this basic model.

In order to send people into space, the acceleration of the rocket cannot be too great.

The rocket itself vibrates greatly when it is in the ascent phase, especially when it is flying within the Karman line. If the acceleration at this time is also very large, the astronauts inside are likely to faint.

In addition, if the thrust-to-weight ratio is too large, the load's ability to withstand impact must be improved, which will increase the difficulty of manufacturing the load.

This basic rocket will not only be used by Myanmar itself, but an international version will also be launched to provide commercial payload launch services to countries and regions around the world.

Therefore, for subsequent commercial launch missions, the thrust-to-weight ratio must also be reduced.

However, the high thrust-to-weight ratio version will continue to be developed on the Tyrannosaurus Rex.

The United States, the Soviet Union and other countries were very surprised to see that Myanmar launched another large rocket just one month later and sent the same "communication satellite" into a 1-kilometer orbit.

According to normal practice, after the launch of the first experimental rocket, a series of data analyses will be carried out, and then the design will be adjusted and production will be resumed.

But they were amazed that Myanmar launched the second missile in such a short period of time.

They were well prepared and this time they mobilized various means such as offshore tracking and control ships, ground tracking and control stations, spy satellites, etc. to observe Myanmar's second rocket.

It was found that the second one was somewhat different from the first one, especially in terms of size and acceleration.

This made them very confused.

Logically, with such a short interval, the backup rocket should be launched, so the second one should be the same as the first one.

The observable data again show significant differences.

In this regard, they asked the Myanmar side and tried to use espionage methods to find out why Myanmar did this.

And just in the short half month that they were looking for the answer, Myanmar's third rocket was launched.

The rocket model announced by Myanmar is still Canglong I, and the payload is the same communications satellite as before, with the same orbital altitude.

The United States and the Soviet Union then observed that there were still differences in the third rocket. They were surprised and couldn't understand why Myanmar launched three rockets with very different features in a row.

You should know that the unit price of manufacturing rockets is very high, mainly because the R&D costs and mold costs are particularly high.

Moreover, these two types of expenses cannot be amortized through large-scale production like mass-produced products such as airplanes and cars.

Each additional model of rocket will require additional R&D funds and mold manufacturing costs.

And if there is no subsequent production, the two expenses will be almost wasted.

Now Myanmar, a formerly poor country, has developed three different types of rockets at once, leaving them puzzled.

Myanmar’s explanation is also outrageous.

They said that when they were designing, they had no experience and didn't know whether a certain model would be successful, so they designed three models simultaneously at the beginning and started trial production and assembly one after another.

Major powers such as the United States and the Soviet Union did not believe this and thought that Myanmar must be hiding something important and not disclosing it to the outside world.

Unfortunately, how each country develops civilian rockets is its freedom, and they do not have the power to interfere.

During the inspection, the Chinese side was informed of certain "truths" by the Myanmar side.

Although I am a little dissatisfied with Myanmar's wasteful behavior despite its huge wealth.

However, they did not say much, and sometimes they even secretly envied their counterparts in Myanmar, because their organizations could provide them with so much manpower and resources to allow them to trial and error, allowing them to put the creative ideas in their minds into practice.

Although the domestic economic situation has improved significantly at this time, there are still many demands for money from all aspects. Even if the country attaches great importance to it, the funds that can be allocated are still very limited.

However, after the two countries signed a memorandum of cooperation in the field of aerospace, domestic investment has increased a lot.

For example, the launch of the space program was advanced by nearly 10 years.

The original plan was to officially launch the space project around 1997, but with the participation of Myanmar and certain technical support, the time was brought forward to 1987.

After Myanmar completed the design of Canglong I, the entire aerospace equipment manufacturing industry entered a rapid development mode.

At the rocket engine manufacturing plant in Magao, a total of three assembly lines began operating at full speed, producing one Gangao engine every day and one Minjin engine every three days.

With this production capacity, the rocket assembly plant can be provided with engines for four rockets every month.

The production capacity of the aluminum alloy rocket body manufacturing plant has also been fully utilized, and it can also provide the rocket body shells of four rockets to the rocket assembly plant in Yangon every month.

At that time, Myanmar had not yet discovered large-scale bauxite mines, and the source of aluminum still mainly relied on imports from the Soviet Union.

In addition, after launching comprehensive cooperation with China, they have promised to provide 1.2 tons of aluminum ingots to Myanmar every month. This amount is the current limit for China, and for this reason they have to reduce the production of civilian aluminum products.

Because the production of aluminum requires a lot of electricity.

Aluminum is the most abundant metallic element in the earth's crust, but it was not extracted by scientists until the 17th century.

Because aluminum exists in the form of oxides in nature, extremely high temperatures (more than 2000 degrees Celsius) are required to refine aluminum into a single substance without the use of cryolite to lower its melting point.

Therefore, in 18th century France, when Napoleon entertained guests in the palace, he used aluminum tableware himself, while the guests used gold and silver tableware. This shows how rare aluminum was at that time.

However, in the 19th century, American scientist Hall-Eroute discovered that cryolite (NaAlF) could significantly lower the melting point of alumina. Since then, the difficulty of aluminum production has been greatly reduced, and the cost has gradually become acceptable to ordinary people.

However, for general industrial countries, the electrolytic aluminum industry is still an industry with very high energy consumption. Generally, only the smallest-scale factories are maintained to meet basic domestic needs, and the rest is imported from industrial powers such as the Soviet Union and the United States.

The production of aluminum is a complex industrial process that consists of two main stages: the extraction of alumina (AlO) and electrolysis (preparation of metallic aluminum).

The refining of alumina is mainly based on the Bayer process.

The first step is to crush bauxite (mainly AlO) into fine particles.

The second step is to dissolve the aluminum oxide in the bauxite with concentrated NaOH solution to produce sodium aluminate solution.

The next step is sedimentation separation to remove insoluble impurities (red mud, containing FeO, SiO, etc.).

After removing impurities, the solution is cooled and seed crystals are added to precipitate aluminum hydroxide (Al(OH)).

Finally, aluminum hydroxide is calcined at high temperature to obtain aluminum oxide (AlO).

The alumina purified through the above steps can be used to produce elemental aluminum through electrolysis.

Alumina is dissolved in molten cryolite (NaAlF) to form a conductive electrolyte.

Direct current is then passed through the electrolytic cell, with liquid aluminum precipitating at the cathode and CO released at the anode.

Near the cathode, the molten aluminum is regularly pumped out, cooled by a mold, and then cast into aluminum ingots.

Among the above steps, the electrolysis step consumes a lot of electricity. It takes about 1 to 1.3 kWh of electricity to produce 1.5 ton of aluminum ingots.

To put it in perspective, the electrolysis step consumes 1 to 13 kilowatt-hours of electricity to produce 15 kilogram of aluminum.

This is a huge number. At present, an average household in China may only use 10 kWh of electricity per month, which is not enough to produce 1 kilogram of aluminum.

In addition to the high power consumption of the manufacturing process, the uneven distribution of aluminum ore resources is also a limiting factor.

Aluminum ore, especially rich ore (containing 40%-60% AlO), is distributed very concentratedly around the world, with the main producing areas being Australia, Guinea, China, and the Soviet Union.

Therefore, due to the lack of rich ores, the production costs of aluminum in other countries are much higher than those of the major industrial powers.

Although China has rich mines, its power generation capacity is very poor.

By 1985, total electricity generation was only 4200 billion kWh, 9% of that of the United States (the United States generated approximately 4.6 trillion kWh of electricity in the same year).

Therefore, with such a small amount of electricity generated, the scale of the electrolytic aluminum industry is very small.

After learning about this situation, Wang Jiankun continued to promote cooperation with domestic countries to build large-scale nuclear power plants.

On the one hand, the trade deficit can be alleviated by exporting this high-tech equipment.

On the other hand, it also provides support for domestic power development.

Indirectly provides security for Myanmar's aluminum supply.

Although the Soviet Union's aluminum exports were still proceeding normally at this time, Wang Jiankun knew from intelligence from all over the world that the Soviet Union could not hold out for much longer.

Since President Ge came to power, pro-Western forces have begun to dominate.

Of course, this is also because the Soviet Union’s own economy was on the brink of collapse, and it had to begin to ease relations with Europe and the United States in the hope of buying some breathing time.

However, NATO, led by the United States, began to exert continuous pressure, using food as a weapon to force the Soviet Union to make continuous concessions.

According to secret channels, the Soviet Union has decided to carry out comprehensive reforms of the Soviet economy in accordance with the methods of American financial experts.

But any discerning person would know that this is a poison when they see these methods. If you don't drink it, you can live longer, but if you drink it, you will die of the poison soon.

However, the Soviet high-level officials headed by General Gorbachev turned a blind eye and struck hard at their opponents.

Therefore, Wang Jiankun judged that the Soviet Union could maintain its domestic industrial production for two years at most. By 1989, their domestic industrial chains would collapse due to the new economic and financial policies.

Therefore, while Myanmar continued to increase the scale of imports of aluminum ingots from the Soviet Union, it also began construction of a large-scale electrolytic aluminum production base in Sittwe Port.

The corresponding bauxite is imported from China, Australia and Guinea.

Importing from three places is also to share the risk.

China's production capacity is constrained by its backward mining industry and insufficient transportation capacity, so even though there are many rich mines in the country, it is difficult to export them on a large scale.

Australia's rich mines are under the dual influence of the United States and the United Kingdom. Myanmar's current situation is likely to receive special attention from the United Kingdom and the United States, creating obstacles for Australia's bauxite exports.

Guinea is located in western Africa, with unstable political situation and France as its arch-enemy, so it is difficult to maintain a stable supply.

Therefore, purchases must be made from all three locations, and imports must continue even if they exceed the production capacity of the electrolytic aluminum plants.

The storage of bauxite only requires an ordinary storage yard, and the quality will not change over time.

Wang Jiankun had previously thought about using his superpowers to continuously refine some aluminum in the mountainous areas of northern Myanmar.

But later I calculated that even if I took time out every day, it would not be enough to keep up with Myanmar's future aluminum consumption.

Because in addition to rocket manufacturing, which requires several thousand tons of aluminum every month, the manufacture of high-speed railway trains, various electrical products, motorcycles, off-road vehicles, etc., all consume aluminum.

In addition, conventional high-voltage transmission networks are also being laid on Myanmar’s central plains, requiring a huge amount of aluminum.

After much consideration, it was decided to establish an aluminum production industry while accelerating the development of the domestic electrolytic aluminum industry through technology exports.

Fortunately, at that time the United States and the Soviet Union had not yet realized that aluminum was a metal that Myanmar was highly dependent on.

If it were known, aluminum, a common element, would likely be used by the United States, the Soviet Union and other countries as a weapon to curb Myanmar's development.

While the United States, the Soviet Union and other countries were mobilizing their forces to strengthen their intelligence capabilities against Myanmar, Myanmar's large military solid-fuel rockets had also completed manufacturing and were about to begin launch tests.

(End of this chapter)