Reborn in 2011, I am the chief designer of aerospace.

The handsome man sitting opposite me asked, "What did you just say?"

"Oh, it's nothing," she replied dismissively.

Mi Nan mentally re-examined the current predicament. In the space environment, the only way to dissipate heat is through thermal radiation. At room temperature, to dissipate one gigawatt of heat, a heat dissipation area of ​​about one square kilometer would be required.

She had to find a way to dissipate several gigawatts of heat, but conventional methods simply wouldn't work because the required radiator weight would be excessive, leaving the system to operate under overload at high temperatures—to hell with thermal efficiency.

She entered a few numbers on her tablet to check her mental calculation results. When the temperature reached 500 degrees Celsius, the heat dissipated by the radiator per square meter would increase by 40 times. If the temperature rose to 600 degrees Celsius, the heat dissipation effect could even reach more than 60 times.

In this way, the size of the heat sink can be kept within an acceptable range.

Assuming this method works, the question then becomes: how do we transfer the heat to the radiator?

She quickly browsed the thermodynamic properties of the materials on the screen.

If I were being roasted to death by the high temperature right now, the most effective way to cool down would probably be to melt some kind of metal. This would be hundreds of times more efficient than simply heating the coolant in the radiator pipes. Good heavens, phase change heat absorption is simply a genius principle.

Mi Nan closed her eyes and began to repeatedly rehearse the design plan in her mind. She was completely unaware of the passage of time. As she focused on the calculations, the image of the space station appeared on the spacecraft's display screen. It was three huge white tubular structures arranged side by side.

The central axis is longer and thinner than the living quarters on both sides, which the staff call "habitat cabins". One end of the central axis is connected to several short and thick modules, while the other end is densely packed with larger cabins. Solar panels extending from there bloom outward like daisy petals.

The space station’s habitat module rotates around the central axis tube at a constant rate of one revolution per minute. The two ends of the module are connected to the central axis through elevator shafts that are hundreds of meters long, making the entire space station appear to be slowly rotating in space.

The spacecraft initiated a sophisticated rendezvous and docking procedure, but Mi Nan was completely unaware. The initial excitement of entering space had completely faded from her mind. Now was her true domain. In that focused and ethereal silence, she was gradually overcoming and completely conquering a seemingly unsolvable engineering problem.

At this moment, she was overjoyed. In a sense, finding a solution to this thorny problem was as intoxicating as fine wine.

That's right, its melting point is just over 600 degrees Celsius, its heat of fusion is very high, and its emissivity is also quite excellent...

She suddenly opened her eyes, entered a new set of heat flow parameters, and stared intently at the generated graph curves.

That's great, absolutely perfect! My plan will definitely work... but the big shots up there will definitely go crazy if they see it.

She smiled smugly to herself. Let them be, let them rack their brains over these tough problems, and see if they can enjoy it as much as she does.

……

Three crew members were still dazed and slumped in their seats.

In contrast, Song Xingye, Mi Nan, and Ivan were in relatively good condition with their seatbelts secured. In the comfortable flight seats, the feeling of weightlessness was not strong, and it felt more like experiencing some kind of scientific experiment.

But standing up and walking on your own is a completely different story. The feeling is very strange. Your limbs are in a state of weightlessness, but your feet are stuck to the metal floor by the adhesion of the soles of your shoes. This contrast is very uncomfortable.

They dragged their heavy, strange steps as they slowly left the spacecraft, watched over by a group of friendly space station staff who guided them to their respective destinations.

"Don't worry," the secretary reassured the three. He had experienced similar situations before and was prepared for what was to come. "Once we enter the living quarters, you will regain some of your weight, and everything should be fine then."

"I need to find a place to work quickly," Minan said urgently. "And before I negotiate with Shenglong, I need to get a few minutes to visit 'Big J'."

Big J is the government's supercomputer system.

"We can arrange it for you. What technical problem do you urgently need to solve?" the staff member asked.

"I guess so," she replied casually. She felt that her movements were clumsy and strenuous, and she had to consciously remind herself to lift her foot and take each step.

Song Xingye sighed inwardly. The internal structure of this main shaft was just like a futuristic tunnel in a science fiction movie. The wide, snow-white rectangular tunnel was densely covered with pipes of various sizes, ranging from five or six centimeters to thirty centimeters in diameter. Each pipe was clearly labeled and distinguished by different colors.

Song Xingye estimated that when they arrived at the so-called "parking cabin" mentioned by Han Jing, they had probably moved down the main axis for more than a hundred meters.

A dozen or so engineering work pods were suspended on the robotic arm above, each pod parked in its own compartment, resembling a row of neat garages at first glance.

Each compartment is itself an airlock, with a space about the size of an elevator car between the two inner doors, while the outer door leads directly into the vast space.

"As long as any of the inner doors is open, the safety interlock will lock the outer door," Han Jing explained. "The reason we have two inner doors is purely as a precaution. In fact, all the designs here have this kind of absolutely safe redundancy mechanism built in."

He pointed to one of the work pods and said, "That one is yours."

They passed through the airlock, and Han Jing demonstrated to Song Xingye how to climb into the cockpit and fasten the seatbelt.

"You can drive it directly in civilian clothes. But if you encounter a violent impact that can crush this metal lump, even if you wear a space pressure suit, it won't help. You can think of the work capsule itself as a pressure suit, only it's bigger, heavier, and more robust."

“I’ve played something similar before,” Song Xingye told him, “on the simulator at Disneyland.”

"That's right, the principle is similar," Han Jing smiled. "But the rides in amusement parks aren't as exciting, since you can't escape Earth's gravity there. But with these little guys, you can really fly in space."

Han Jing spent a full hour showing him the control system of this pod-shaped aircraft. The basic operation was actually very intuitive. The joystick and several buttons were used to control the low-power attitude thrusters, while the handles on both sides were used to operate the robotic arms.

"This control panel looks just like an old-fashioned arcade game console," Song Xingye joked.

"You play old-fashioned arcade games too?" Han Jing asked with an excited smile.

"When I was a kid, I was obsessed with those gadgets. I would tinker with them all day, take them apart, and then put them back together. If I was lucky, they would still turn on normally after I put them back together," Song Xingye recalled.

"So, what's your best retro game?" Han Jing asked curiously.

"If someone held a gun to my head and forced me to choose, I would definitely choose 'Explosive Comet'!"

Han Jing exclaimed in surprise, "No way! You actually have an arcade game machine at home?"

"There's a minor problem with a certain part, and the left joystick does indeed have a fundamental malfunction," Song Xingye said, shrugging.

"Dude, you should really take it into space and play with it."

After Song Xingye had basically mastered all the main control functions, Han Jing asked over the communication channel, "Would you like to go for a drive?"

"Can we leave now?"

"Otherwise, why would we come all this way here?" Han Jing said with a smile.

Han Jing bridged Song Xingye's work cabin control system with his own cabin's system so that he could take over control at any time in an emergency.

"Unless you are completely unable to distinguish east from west, I shouldn't need this permission. This machine is full of various safety protection devices, so you can't turn it too fast or hit any obstacles."

Collision avoidance sensors, acceleration sensors, and over-limit control systems will comprehensively limit your dangerous maneuvers. It's simply impossible for you to suicidally fly off the track, and even if you rack your brains to come up with other ways to cause damage... the system won't let you succeed.

"There's an equipment rack to your left," Han Jing continued. "I'll pilot us away from the parking module first. Once we're completely away from the main space station, I'll have you perform a thrustless drift before handing control back to you. That'll be the time you'll truly experience the joy of piloting in space."

After Song Xingye secured himself in the driver's seat, Han Jing moved to the adjacent airlock, climbed into another work cabin, and secured himself. Through the tempered glass window separating the two compartments, Song Xingye could clearly see his every move.

A few seconds later, Han Jing's voice came through the speaker on the back of Song Xingye's head: "Ready?"

"Ready."

"Open the airlock."

The outer hatch slid open slowly, and the robotic arm above smoothly pushed the two work pods out of the parking area, then automatically retracted, leaving the two work pods suspended in the deep space.

As they slowly drove away from the space station, Song Xingye finally got to examine this magnificent man-made celestial body from the outside for the first time in his life.

The living modules, as independent living units, are rotating around the main axis at a constant low speed of one revolution per minute. The two ends of the modules are connected to the center through elevator shafts that are hundreds of meters long, for the use of personnel and supplies for commuting.

The elevator shaft is equipped with a counterweight device that is precisely controlled by a computer. No matter how the personnel and equipment inside move, the counterweight blocks, weighing several tons, will slide in real time to maintain the gravitational balance of the entire space station.

The rotation of the living pods generated enough centrifugal force to provide the interior with a gravity equivalent to one-tenth of that of Earth. Since the living pods were a hundred meters away from the central axis, from Song Xingye's perspective outside the pods at this moment, the speed of their tangential edges was actually quite astonishing.

If a work cabin that is stationary relative to its central axis is accidentally struck by a high-speed rotating living quarters, it will be sent flying far away like a tennis ball.

Of course, the collision avoidance warning system in the work cabin would never allow such a thing to happen, and there has never been a similar accident in history. However, if this were a "dead cabin" that had lost power, then theoretically, such a catastrophic collision could be entirely possible.

These living quarters are huge square tubular structures with a cross-sectional side length of ten meters and a total length of one hundred meters. The walls are one meter thick and are made of a self-healing foam board with a density even lower than that of air.

Interspersed between the foam layers are ceramic composite materials and carbon fiber bulletproof fabric, specifically designed to withstand impacts from tiny meteorites. Any space debris smaller than one millimeter in diameter will be pulverized upon penetrating the fabric layer of the wall.

Even a rock only a few centimeters in size is enough to penetrate the entire structure and emerge from the other side, but as long as it doesn't happen to hit a person on its path of penetration, it's not considered a fatal disaster.

Because this self-healing foam material can expand rapidly within seconds to seal a hole several centimeters in diameter, such a close call has only occurred once in the entire history of the space station's operation.

When they were still a few hundred meters from the target, Han Jing said, "I'm handing control over to you. Try not to mess it up, but if you do, I'll cover for you."

"Understood." Song Xingye sat there quietly for a moment, looked around, and tightened the seat belt on the control chair. He felt just as comfortable as he did on the spaceship. He didn't even need to subconsciously figure out how to coordinate his limbs to adapt to zero gravity.

This is similar to his past surfing experience. Sometimes when he was overturned by a giant wave, he had to relax his body and go with the flow, but he always had to be clear about where "above" was, which was the direction of the air.

Through this private porthole leading to the universe, the view before him far surpassed anything he had ever seen on the Pacific Ocean.

They practiced for an hour, and Han Jing's instructions became increasingly tricky, constantly urging Song Xingye to speed up his reactions. Although he was occasionally flustered, Song Xingye was able to execute them accurately most of the time.

During the practice sessions, the staff at the observatory would occasionally stop outside the nearby viewing windows to watch them operate the equipment.

At first, Song Xingye didn't understand why the walls of the observation station at the back of the spaceport were painted pure black. Later, he discovered that this dark paint could effectively reduce internal reflections, allowing people to truly see the dazzling appearance of the Milky Way when gazing at it.

However, from his perspective, which included his studies in art history, the staff members' figures, when they stood beside those wide, flat rectangular window frames, resembled vivid paintings.

Song Xingye opened his camera bag, took out a red camera, and attached it to the porthole of the work cabin, securing it with the electromagnetic suction handle at the front.

He then gently pushed the control stick, causing the work cabin to slowly rotate and perform a 15-second panoramic scan of the No. 1 living module, the Earth, and the surrounding dark starry sky.

He controlled the cabin to rotate, slowly aligning the porthole with the observation window of the observation station, continuously closing the distance until the cabin hovered outside the window, at which point the proximity alarm suddenly sounded.

"You're standing too close," Han Jing reminded him.

"I know," Song Xingye replied, "Wait a moment."

He took down the red camera, adjusted the lens to 100mm focal length, and a staff member happened to walk by the window, stopped to look at the floating hull outside the window, and then walked away.

But this was enough for Song Xingye to read the basic data he needed by observing the light reflected from the other person's face.