Humanity is missing, luckily I have billions of clones.

Chapter 17 Nutrient
Now that the number of clones has further increased and the industrial base has further strengthened, Li Qingsong's steel production has reached about 5000 tons per year through those primitive, small-scale steelmaking equipment.

Over the past two years, Li Qingsong has tried to save as much steel as possible and has now stockpiled enough steel to equal the current annual output.

At this moment, Li Qingsong took out all the steel that he had saved with great difficulty without any regret.

More than a dozen metal processing machines began to work busily, and through various processes, the saved steel was processed into steel pipes, long steel bars, connectors, bearings, fastening screws, nuts, etc.

About one kilometer away from the main base, Li Qingsong had already selected the address of the first large-scale formal steel plant in the history of the base since he built it.

The uneven ground here has been completely leveled by Li Qingsong, and reinforced with special cement suitable for the environment of Luoshen Star.

However, although it is called special cement, it is actually just the waste slag from steelmaking, as well as impurities such as tolin and oxygen ore from the generator set, which are ground into powder and then mixed with a little adhesive with a certain viscosity.

This thing has limited strength and load-bearing capacity. If used to build a building on Earth, it would probably collapse before the third floor. However, it is perfectly usable here on Luoshen, at least to meet existing needs.

On this leveled ground, various parts were transported here, and the clones were busy assembling, fastening and welding them together, so the first fully enclosed factory building appeared on Luoshen.

It is ten meters high and covers an area of about 1000 square meters.

In the future, all work requiring an atmospheric environment in this steel plant will be completed in this factory building.

It is also equipped with slings, electric cranes and other machinery to facilitate the storage and movement of raw materials.

At this stage, manufacturing equipment such as slings and cranes is not difficult for Li Qingsong. This is because the core equipment of these things is nothing more than an electric motor. If you can make a generator, making an electric motor is not a problem.

The problems were simply low performance and easy breakage. But for now, they were just fine. Li Qingsong didn't expect them to work at full capacity for years in harsh environments like they did on Earth.

While the factory building was being built, the rest of the workshops in the regular steel plant were also being constructed simultaneously.

Among the 1100 clones, as many as 350 were involved in the construction of this steel plant.

In order to facilitate construction, Li Qingsong even built a temporary kitchen directly at the construction site.

Every day, food from various planting, livestock, and aquaculture bases is rumbled here by tractors and cooked right on the spot. The clones can enjoy a hearty meal here without having to return to the main base.

At the same time, a day and night shift system is adopted here. The clones work in two shifts. When one group goes to rest, another group comes to work. No matter what time, the construction will never stop.

Every time a shift was changed, more than a hundred clones would come together, wearing space suits and trotting from the dormitories of the main base. After eating, they would begin to prepare for work.

After completing the shift change, the clones who have been busy all day will withdraw, eat first, then put on their spacesuits and trot back to the main base dormitory, take a quick nap, and then trot back the next day.

People periodically came and went in this canyon on Luoshen Star. For a time, even the hard water ice and rocks on the surface showed signs of wear and tear.

Under these circumstances, the steel mill built seven dedicated workshops in succession: the ore processing workshop, blast furnace workshop, hot metal pre-treatment workshop, refining workshop, casting workshop, rolling workshop, and post-processing workshop. This was unprecedented in steel mills.

Iron ore was delivered and thrown directly into the blast furnace, and then the molten iron was poured into the mold to form it, and that was it.

This is exactly the problem with the previous blast furnaces, which had low output, low efficiency and poor product quality.

The more detailed and process-oriented the process is, the higher the output and efficiency will be, and the more stable the product quality will be.

Not only that, between different workshops, Li Qingsong also unprecedentedly used automated equipment as much as possible.

For example, various crawlers, conveyor belts, automatic feeding and the like, as long as it is preliminary automation equipment that does not require chips and only requires mechanical structure, Li Qingsong will install it if he can, saving manpower as much as possible and improving efficiency.

Hundreds of clones were busy like this for more than a year.

In the end, not only were the 5,000 tons of steel saved in the early stage used up, but even the approximately 5,000 tons of new steel produced in the past year or so were all used up, leaving nothing behind.

During this period of time, Li Qingsong did not work on any other projects except this steel plant.

It’s not that he doesn’t want to do it, but even if he wants to, there is no steel available.

But it's all worth it.

At this moment, this steel plant with a total area of more than 10,000 square meters, each process as perfect as possible and the process as automated as possible has finally been built.

It is specially used to produce low-temperature steel, which is the most widely used material on Rosen and can be regarded as a basic construction material.

Looking at the steel plant in front of him filled with numerous tall machines, each connected by various pipes, conveyor belts, and cables, Li Qingsong felt very relieved.

It can produce 270 tons a day, which is tons of steel a year.

He seemed to see steel flowing out of the steel plant continuously, and after subsequent casting and processing, it became parts and components, becoming the nutrients for his entire base, allowing his Luoshen Star base to thrive rapidly.

With this steel plant, we can start building any subsequent dedicated chemical plant, planting base, metal processing plant, space suit factory, bedding factory, or clone breeding center...

However, at this stage, although this steel plant has been built, it cannot be put into production at full capacity for the time being. It can only operate at low power and temporarily take over the production capacity of the previous simple steel plants.

It also needs some supporting facilities to truly unleash its power.

Under Li Qingsong's organization, including the more than 400 new clones cultivated in the past year, a total of 800 clones formed a huge team. They drove various machines, held various tools, and left the main base in a heroic and high-spirited manner.

Now, Li Qingsong wants to build a railway connecting the No. 1 iron mine and the No. 1 steel plant!
(End of this chapter)