Humanity is missing, luckily I have billions of clones.

Chapter 105 From Hundreds of Millions to Hundreds (Subscribe!!)

After completing the work of fixing the ground end of the first cable of the space elevator, a spacecraft roared into flight, pulling the other end of the cable and began to rise into the air, climbing to an altitude of 4.5 kilometers above the surface of Ganymede.

The other end of the 4.5-kilometer-long cable extends to this height, almost fully stretched.

The cable has a diameter of about 7 centimeters and a length of 4.5 kilometers. It seems to be extremely heavy and cannot be pulled by a medium-sized spacecraft.

But the fact is that such a long and thick cable has a total mass of only more than 170 tons, and can be stretched into space by the current spacecraft.

After completing the stretching work, a heavy spacecraft loaded with heavy ballast flew over at a speed exceeding the escape velocity of Ganymede.

At this speed, it should have escaped Ganymede's gravity and entered space. However, due to the extra thrust of the engine, it did not fly away, but was "pressed" here.

But soon, it will no longer have to consume extra fuel to maintain orbit.

The reason was simple. Some clones in space suits floated over and fixed one end of the cable connected to the underground of Ganymede to the heavy cargo ship which was fully loaded with ballast and had a total mass of 1.5 tons.

A load-bearing structure has long been installed on the cargo ship, which can evenly distribute the tension of the cable to every part of the hull to prevent it from being damaged.

The connection was completed, and the next moment, the heavy cargo ship's engines shut down, losing the thrust that kept it so high and still staying next to Ganymede.

Under the action of inertia, it began to fly away from Ganymede.

The slightly bent cable gradually straightened.

When it completely turned into a straight line, the huge pulling force from the 4.5-meter stratum of Ganymede passed through this cable, directly spanning the long distance of kilometers and extending to the heavy cargo ship.

Its movement suddenly stopped.

A mass of 1.5 tons is firmly held by this cable with a diameter of only 7 cm.

The cable was stretched straight.

Looking at the data coming from various sensors, Li Qingsong nodded with satisfaction.

Everything is as expected.

Once the first cable was built, subsequent work became much easier.

More cables were continuously produced on the 2500 production lines. One end of these cables was also fixed under the rock layer ten thousand meters deep. They were entangled with the previous cables along the way and finally connected to the heavy cargo ship.

The space elevator's cable began to rapidly grow thicker. Similarly, at the end of the space, with the heavy cargo ship as its base point, a larger amount of ballast was attached.

As long as it is within the force limit of the cable, the heavier the ballast at the space end, the greater the centrifugal force, and the more cargo the cable can transport.

In addition to the terminal, a space base located in synchronous orbit needs to be built.

In a synchronous orbit, the angular velocity of an artificial object is the same as the rotational velocity of Ganymede, so it can remain stationary relative to a certain point on Ganymede's surface while orbiting Ganymede.

From the ground, it looks like the object is always suspended somewhere in the air without moving.

The space terminal base is like a dock in space, where all cargo entering or leaving the surface of Ganymede will be transferred.

Large-scale construction also began on the ground side. Docks, lifting equipment, transshipment, power supply, railway lines, and more all appeared one by one over the course of two and a half years.

When the last cable was wound up and the cable diameter reached the predetermined 10 meters, Li Qingsong used a special lightweight steel plate to directly wrap the entire 4.5-kilometer cable to block external influences.

The ground base has been completed, and the "cable car" used to undertake the ascent and descent tasks of the space elevator has also been developed.

The cable car is semi-circular in shape, with an inner diameter of 10 meters, where the space elevator cable fits, and an outer diameter of 20 meters, providing a cargo area of approximately 110 square meters.

A cable car is five meters high, with a total internal volume of 550 cubic meters, and can carry approximately 300 tons of cargo. If it is carrying people, it can accommodate approximately 300 clones if comfort is not a priority.

When building the main cable, Li Qingsong had already pre-buried the power supply lines and electromagnetic coils. These cable cars can then use electromagnetic force to stick to the cable and perform ascent or descent operations.

Its maximum operating speed can reach three times the speed of sound, which is about one kilometer per second. At this speed, it only takes about 12 hours to rise from the surface to the synchronous orbit of Ganymede, about 4.3 kilometers away.

At the space base, it will unload its own cargo and then transport it to other planets or bases via spacecraft. Then it will turn down and transport the cargo from other planets or bases from the synchronous orbit to the surface of Ganymede.

This completes an exchange of goods.

Under Li Qingsong's control, this cable car can make one trip every two minutes and can send or receive 700 trips to space a day. Based on an average cargo load of 200 tons per trip, this space elevator can send about 14 tons of cargo to space a day and receive about 14 tons at the same time, for a total of 28 tons!

That’s over 100 million tons a year!
In the past, to send and receive 100 million tons of cargo, Li Qingsong needed to specially prepare thousands of dual-use aerospace spacecraft to travel back and forth between space and the surface, and he was busy all day long without stopping for a moment.

Hundreds of millions of tons of fuel are consumed every year.

Not only is it extremely consuming, but it is also extremely troublesome.

But now, with the completion of this space elevator, everything is different.

The cable car uses electricity, and a full-power trip consumes approximately 400 million kilowatt-hours of electricity.

There are a total of 1400 up and down trips in a day, which is approximately 60 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity.

To generate 60 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity, with the power generation efficiency of the nuclear fission power station that Li Qingsong currently controls, only less than one ton of uranium 235 is needed to produce enough electricity.

Although uranium mining is relatively complicated, the change from consuming hundreds of millions of tons of fuel each year to consuming only more than 300 tons each year is a change from underground to the sky.

At this moment, the space elevator has been put into use, and it has been running at full power since the beginning.

On this side of the space elevator, one ascending cable car after another sped along the cable like cannonballs, disappearing into space in an instant.

At the same time, from the endless sky, one cable car after another was speeding down to the base on the ground.

Railway lines extend from the ground base, and countless heavy-loaded trains roar in with cargo, unload and reload, and then leave again fully loaded.

On the other side of space, one heavy cargo ship after another also came and went fully loaded.

This space elevator truly opens up the transportation channel between space and the earth's surface.

(End of this chapter)