Humanity is missing, luckily I have billions of clones.

Chapter 45 Aircraft

To this day, Li Qingsong still only has the two landing spacecraft capable of traveling back and forth between Luoshen and the Deep Space Spacecraft.

Originally there was only one, but in the later stages of development, the parts of the dismantled first landing spacecraft were no longer used, so it was assembled again, and there were two.

In order to ensure that he does not lose these only two space vehicles, Li Qingsong has reduced their flight times as much as possible, and will not use them if possible, so as to extend their lifespan as much as possible.

But even so, today they are already very old and can only fly with difficulty.

Li Qingsong had long planned to develop his own aerospace capabilities, but due to insufficient basic technology and industrial strength, he had never been able to make it. Now, the base's scale and technological foundation had greatly expanded, and he could finally begin to work on it.

A large number of clones were put into an open space selected in advance, and soon an aerospace technology research base was built.

The first propulsion test then began.

Because the environment of Luoshen is completely different from that of the Earth, the aerospace technology developed on Luoshen is destined to be different from that on Earth.

On Earth, rockets are indispensable for sending spacecraft or satellites into space.

Because rockets cannot be made too large, spacecraft or satellites cannot be made too large either.

But here, Li Qingsong can skip the rocket step and directly build a flying vehicle that can take off directly from the surface of the planet into space, and then return directly from space.

At the same time, on Earth, airplanes and spaceships are two completely different things. One can only fly in the atmosphere, and the other can only fly in space.

But on Roselle, the distinction between airplanes and spaceships cannot be so clear.

These two things can probably be considered the same thing - in any case, they both rely on the combustion of fuel to generate high-pressure gas and then spray it out, thereby gaining forward momentum.

A spacecraft with a higher power, which can escape the gravitational field of Luoshen, is a spacecraft. A plane with a lower power, which cannot escape, is an airplane.

Essentially they are the same.

Therefore, in a huge factory building at the aerospace base, a large amount of methane and liquid oxygen were transported into the engine. After ignition, hot gas was ejected from the tail, and the huge kinetic energy immediately acted on the test bench.

The engine's technology stems from the internal combustion engine technology that Li Qingsong already mastered. There's only one difference: whereas internal combustion engines burn methane and liquid oxygen to propel pistons, here, the high-pressure gas generated by these combustions is directly ejected.

Although the way work is done is different, the combustion process is the same.

The powerful spray lasted for several minutes. Looking at the readings on the screen, Li Qingsong frowned.

The power is too low, not enough to propel a spacecraft out of the planet's gravitational field, or even to propel an airplane into flight.

"We must improve combustion efficiency and scale."

Li Qingsong thought to himself, "But if I do that, the temperature will be too high. I'm afraid my current heat-resistant material won't be able to withstand it."

This is a rather tricky issue.

Of course, the human world has formulas for advanced heat-resistant materials, but they are not in the knowledge base of the Deep Space spacecraft.

There are high-performance heat-resistant materials on the Deep Space spacecraft, but Li Qingsong has seen that the technical content is too high and he cannot make it himself.

"We still need to find a material with lower technical content that I can make now but can meet current needs." Li Qingsong's mind moved, and one thousand clones were immediately added to the materials building of the scientific research base.

Without any prior training or learning, the 1,000 newly added clones immediately adapted to the work rhythm of the scientific research base and integrated into the existing research and development work without any obstacles.

In addition to these 3000 clones who were able to get hands-on experience, Li Qingsong also mobilized the "brainpower" equivalent to approximately people to analyze existing test data and think about future attempts.

There are many jobs that require people but don’t actually require much brainpower.

It's like a clone driving an excavator. How much brainpower does it take to operate an excavator?

So a lot of brain power is freed up.

Since I have free time anyway, I might as well use it to think about materials science problems.

So there was this strange sight in Li Qingsong's base:

Even though a clone is operating an excavator, he is also thinking about the most cutting-edge and advanced materials science issues;

Although a clone is feeding pigs, he is also thinking about materials science issues;
Even a clone who is driving a train seems to be concentrating on operating the train, but in fact he is also thinking about materials science problems.

Moreover, if he encounters an emergency that requires full response, he can immediately stop thinking about materials science problems, and the corresponding share of thinking may be instantly transferred to the head of another construction worker clone who is tying steel bars a thousand kilometers away.

By adopting this model, Li Qingsong achieved full utilization of the brain power of all controllable clones without any waste.

Li Qingsong was already very proficient in this model. However, this was the first time he had suddenly mobilized a thousand clones to participate in the actual operation, and an additional 3000 brains to participate in the thinking.

This issue is indeed very important and must be resolved as quickly as possible.

Thousands of brains, equipped with knowledge from almost all disciplines, think about a problem at the same time, and breakthroughs soon appear.

After adding a certain proportion of nickel and tungsten metals and adopting a special metal treatment process, the heat-resistant metal that met Li Qingsong's requirements was finally manufactured and then quickly installed on the test equipment.

The advancement experiment began again.

This time, the flames ejected from the tail of the engine were brighter and more violent, and it was obvious that their temperature and pressure were higher.

Looking at the data on the screen, Li Qingsong nodded with satisfaction.

This time, the power finally reached the target.

The biggest problem in manufacturing aircraft is the engine. With breakthroughs in engine technology, manufacturing the iron shell is no longer difficult.

Soon, a strange aircraft with a hemispherical shape and two jet nozzles on the lower plane and the rear appeared in front of Li Qingsong.

"ignition!"

Following Li Qingsong's command, the clone responsible for controlling the aircraft immediately pressed the corresponding button.

The next moment, blazing flames spurted out from the bottom of the aircraft, pushing the hemispherical aircraft, which was eight meters in diameter, to a height of four meters. It slowly rose into the air and finally reached a height of more than ten meters from the ground.

(End of this chapter)