Humanity is missing, luckily I have billions of clones.

Chapter 9 Blast Furnace
Agriculture is the foundation of all industries. After all, people need to be able to eat and have enough food before they can think about other things.

At this stage, Li Qingsong has initially solved the agricultural problem and produced enough food to supply some clones with enough food to eat without engaging in agricultural production.

Then the development of industry becomes inevitable.

Without industry, the scale of agriculture will be limited and will always be confined to manual labor and low efficiency. Expanding the population size will be a luxury.

After a brief inventory of his current population and agricultural scale, and combined with subsequent development plans, Li Qingsong quickly developed a plan.

“Steel is the foundation for all subsequent developments.

Steel is essential if we want to continue expanding our population and developing industry.

Even if we do not develop industry and only develop agriculture, we cannot do without steel.

At this stage, the planting racks, pipelines, and detachable parts in the Deep Space Spacecraft have all been used up.

Without sufficient steel supply, I can’t even build a new planting base now.

The current output of the No. 37 planting base can barely supply clones. How can this be enough?
Then... I'll build a steelmaking blast furnace! After all, preliminary surveys have revealed iron ore on Luoshen. While the reserves aren't huge, they're more than enough for me."

There is no technical knowledge base for building a blast furnace, but the basic principles are there, so Li Qingsong can design it himself, which is not a difficult problem.

In addition to technical data, there are two devices in the Deep Space spacecraft that can support the steel demand for manufacturing the blast furnace itself.

One of these two devices is a multifunctional intelligent smelting equipment, which can smelt and purify a variety of minerals according to the parameters set by Li Qingsong.

Of course, since it's multifunctional, it's necessarily small, and its efficiency is much lower than that of dedicated equipment. However, it's sufficient as an initial startup device.

Another piece of equipment is a multifunctional metal processing equipment.

It can process various types of metals into different shapes according to set parameters.

These two machines were specially prepared for Li Qingsong by the Earth team. This way, if he encountered some extreme situations, Li Qingsong could process some parts himself.

Although the performance of self-processing is certainly not as good as that of professional equipment, it can still be used as a makeshift.

Now, Li Qingsong plans to use these two devices to produce steel bit by bit, process parts bit by bit, and finally "assemble" a steel-making blast furnace.

The construction technology of steel-making blast furnaces is not in the knowledge base of the Deep Space Spacecraft.

After all, it was impossible for Li Qingsong, who was an astronaut before, to apply this technology.

But fortunately, there are corresponding basic scientific principles in the knowledge base.

So the two clones in the Deep Space spacecraft began to study day and night again, and at the same time waited for the birth of the newest five clones.

After a period of time, five new clones were finally born, and the total number of people under Li Qingsong's command reached 22. The drawings of the steel blast furnace he designed were finally completed.

Afterwards, he carefully transported the two vital devices from the Deep Space Spacecraft to Roselle, assembled them carefully, and connected the power of the No. 2 generator.

When manufacturing the No. 2 generator, Li Qingsong took into account the power requirements of the two subsequent devices and deliberately left a margin, so the extra power demand at this moment will not affect crop growth.

After the self-inspection was completed and the working parameters were set, some iron ores brought back from collecting oxygen ore and torin ore were broken into small pieces and placed in the smelting furnace.

Electricity was converted into heat, melting the ore. Then, through a series of processes, the iron was purified, and a certain proportion of carbon, chromium, nickel, and other elements were added, ultimately creating a cryogenic steel capable of maintaining its performance in the cold temperatures of Luoshen. Li Qingsong placed this 30kg piece of cryogenic steel into the metal processing equipment.

According to the previously set parameters, these low-temperature steels are processed into components of various shapes.

These parts are big and small, light and heavy.

According to the drawings they had designed previously, the clones slowly pieced together and welded these parts together, eventually turning them into something resembling a large jar.

This large tank is three meters high and one and a half meters in diameter. It uses electricity as its energy source, and all other aspects are manually controlled.

Whether it's temperature control, feeding, discharging, monitoring, etc., all needs to be done manually by the clones. After all, Li Qingsong currently has no automation technology.

According to the design standards, when this blast furnace operates at full power, it can produce an average of about 200 kilograms of steel per day, and the annual output can reach 73 tons.

If this output were to happen on Earth—if there were still humans on Earth at this moment—even the smallest steel workshop in a village wouldn't even look down on it. But for Li Qingsong at this moment, it was a divine weapon.

An artifact that is enough to start industrialization for itself.

Looking at this crude blast furnace with rough marks, Li Qingsong's heart was filled with joy.

He seemed to see molten steel flowing out of the blast furnace continuously, turning into planting racks, parts, and huge machines...

But... unfortunately, this blast furnace cannot be put into use for the time being.

The reason is simple: it consumes too much power.

Its power reaches 80 kilowatts. At present, the total power of the two generators he owns is only more than 40 kilowatts, which is not enough to power it.

Besides, steelmaking also requires sufficient supply of ore.

Given the quality of iron ore on Luoshen, if 200 kilograms of iron are to be refined every day, at least 600 kilograms of iron ore will need to be supplied every day.

At present, the entire mining team of five miners only brings back an average of 400 kilograms of torin ore and oxygen ore every day, which is not enough to bring back all the iron ore.

There was no way. Although the blast furnace was built, Li Qingsong had to put it aside temporarily and make something else.

Steam generator with sufficient installed capacity.

The principle of the generator is also simple, it is nothing more than making the rotor rotate continuously around the stator.

Li Qingsong did not want to build another steam turbine and a generator at this moment.

He planned to combine the two machines into one and directly build a steam generator.

In this way, the workload will be less and the efficiency will be higher.

The multifunctional smelting equipment once again began to produce standard steel plates, and the processing equipment processed them into parts.

Then, a total of eight clones worked together to assemble and secure these parts.

After more than a month of hard work, the steam generator with an installed capacity of 150 kilowatts was finally completed.

(End of this chapter)