I started with a ship full of max-level veterans, and I'm just a complete noob.

By the time the car returned to the Institute of Physics, it was already getting dark.

Wang Shouwu carried his briefcase upstairs. As soon as he reached the end of the corridor, he saw Huang Kun waiting there with a bound summary record in his arms.

The original data returned by the third factory has been reorganized according to the test order, and the edges of the paper still have the creases from the pressing.

"From the initial unloaded verification of Furnace No. 3, to the six rounds of regional purification, and then to the three single crystal pulling processes, it all happens here."

Wang Shouwu took the summary and leaned against the window in the corridor to open the cover.

The first few pages record the remeasurement of the thermal boundary of Furnace No. 3, the tuning of control parameters, and the results of temperature control for two consecutive hours; then, the resistivity curves of six rounds of regional purification, the tail end cut-off position, and the protective gas disturbance records are displayed in sequence, with the time, furnace temperature and the signature of the person in charge listed next to each set of data.

The last few pages contain a comparison between the second and third batches of single crystals. Twelve revolutions correspond to a 30% difference between the beginning and end of the process, while twenty-eight revolutions correspond to a 16% difference. The theoretical prediction value falls around 14%.

His finger hovered over the page comparing effective segregation coefficients, moved along the theoretical and measured lines, and then flipped back to the previous page to check the diffusion coefficient, kinematic viscosity, and effective interface radius.

The sound of cleaning staff emptying buckets came from the other end of the corridor. Huang Kun waited until he finished reviewing the two sets of calculations before asking, "What do you think?"

"The temperature control solution itself is highly engineered."

After Wang Shouwu finished speaking, he continued to turn the pages, the papers passing under his fingertips one by one, until the transcribed copy of the derivation on the blackboard was revealed, at which point he looked up again.

"I've seen the framework for the derivation of the segregation coefficient in papers, but no one has ever directly calculated the boundary layer thickness of the rotating disk model into the germanium melt parameters."

He turned the table around and pointed to the angular velocity term in the concentration boundary layer relationship.

Where did he get the conversion method from?

Huang Kun had seen the black lecture notes brought by Jiang Ming and had also heard the explanation that deduced from the rotating fluid inlet downwards, so he could only answer truthfully at this moment.

"He said he deduced it himself by following the entry point of mechanics in Qian Xuesen's lecture notes, first dismantling the velocity boundary layer from the von Kármán rotating disk, and then using the Schmidt number to connect to impurity diffusion."

Wang Shouwu looked down at the formulas, his fingers pressing down on the page before releasing them after a while.

He didn't inquire further about the source, but simply compiled the entire book, put it into his briefcase, and kept it along with the four purification reports brought by his assistant.

Huang Kun escorted him to the building entrance. After Wang Shouwu crossed the threshold, he turned back, his hand still resting on the briefcase strap.

"If we switch to using a quartz crucible for crystal pulling next time, I have a batch of optical-grade quartz tubes that I can share."

"That batch of material was originally reserved for optical testing. Whether its purity is sufficient depends on the test report."

"Send the inspection report and the coefficient of thermal expansion together, and machine two crucibles first, enough for them to use as a reference."

Huang Kun nodded and noted it down. Only then did Wang Shouwu descend the steps and walk along the stone path in the courtyard towards the waiting car.

Jiang Ming did not hear the conversation in the corridor. When he and Wu Hanzhang returned to 502, it was already late at night. The 24 GHz pre-research plan on the worktable was still as it had been in the morning.

Wu Hanzhang took off his reading glasses and wiped them, then pushed the first draft in front of Jiang Ming, and sat down on the other side of the worktable, still chewing on his empty cigarette.

"We've made some progress on the single crystal side, and it's time to work on this too. If we keep delaying, the fragmentary data sent back by Aksai will just gather dust."

The homepage of the solution describes it as a high-frequency early warning receiver pre-stage, followed by a list of several components: a 24 GHz local oscillator, a mixer, a low-noise amplifier, and a detector.

Jiang Ming turned to the device route page, where the 24 GHz mark in the Aksai K-band fragment summary was circled in red, next to which was the process record of the Yuanlei-2 germanium diode.

Lei Zhenbang's ideas about semiconductor devices in his posthumous manuscripts were copied separately on an appendix, and the several clues had not yet been combined into an feasible technical route.

Wu Hanzhang tapped the local oscillator and mixer block diagram with his cigarette holder.

"The waveguide dimensions can be deduced from the fragments, and the receiver preamp can be temporarily made up of vacuum tubes, but when it comes to the local oscillator and mixer, the device noise will eat up all the previous work."

Jiang Ming picked up a red and blue pencil and filled in the device requirements between the local oscillator and the mixer, writing the point-contact germanium transistor and the mixer diode side by side into the candidate column.

"Under the 24 GHz condition, the junction capacitance, carrier transit time and contact region consistency will all affect the performance. The purity of germanium material is only a threshold. The change in resistivity along the crystal length must also be suppressed."

He wrote the measured results of 16 percent for the third batch in the margin and marked the target for the next batch.

"If the parameters of devices cut from the same crystal are too widely dispersed, it is difficult to control the local oscillator frequency and mixing loss, and batch screening will consume most of the material."

Wu Hanzhang chewed on his cigarette, watching him connect the single crystal growth, point contact device, and 24 GHz receiver preamplifier into an arrow.

"Is that your reason for tinkering with the single crystal furnace first?"

"The material requirements for the device must be determined first. Only after the materials are approved can the point contact process be repeated. Only then can we talk about the overall performance of the local oscillator and mixer."

"Your schedule is in reverse."

Wu Hanzhang snorted, but crossed out the original date for the device development project and rewrote it after the quartz crucible control experiment.

The two continued their investigation until the night shift bell rang. Jiang Ming locked the K-band scheme in the iron cabinet and then took the old hard-cover memo into the secure compartment.

The desk lamp illuminated Theodore von Kármán's second letter, in which he had broken down the issues of hypersonic thermal protection and nonlinear heat transfer into three parts: material boundaries, variable cross-section flow channels, and unsteady temperature fields.

Jiang Ming flipped to the new paragraph he had drafted, rewrote the area function of the variable cross-section pipe into the energy equation, and then introduced a temperature potential transformation, incorporating the thermal conductivity coefficient that changes with temperature into the new potential function.

After transformation, the heat transfer equation, which originally contained nonlinear coefficients, is converted into a tractable linear form, while the cross-sectional change is retained as a position function.

He listed three judgment points on the old hardcover memo, corresponding to changes in inlet heat flow, rearrangement of temperature gradients caused by cross-sectional contraction, and the influence of wall radiation conditions on the linearized boundary.

Each section begins with a known equation, the derivation process is written out in detail, the methods brought by the European academic lineage are disassembled and applied to his own calculations and judgments.

As he finished writing the last page, he could already hear the sound of the early shift staff pushing their carts past outside the window. Jiang Ming put the draft into a file bag and returned to his workbench, leaning against it for a while.

The next morning, a courier from the Institute of Physics brought a cardboard box. The outer layer of kraft paper was tied tightly with cotton rope, and the recipient was listed as Research Lab 502 of the Third Electronics Factory.

Old Sun untied the cotton rope, revealing two neatly arranged sections of milky-white quartz tubing inside. The tubing was thick-walled and long enough to machine two small crucibles.

The note inside the box contained only two lines of text.

"The quartz purity is 99.99%. The coefficient of thermal expansion is shown in the attached table inside the package."

The signature is Wang Shouwu.

Wu Hanzhang took the note, read it, and placed it on Jiang Ming's craft card.

"Yesterday they were putting on airs, and today they're delivering materials."

Jiang Ming put the note and inspection form into the cardboard box, and then asked Lao Sun to measure the inner and outer diameters of the pipe material first. For the time being, they would only make the processing fixtures, and the crucible size would be determined after the interface radius was measured in the third furnace.

Quartz crucibles can remove carbon impurities from graphite from the variable table, allowing the next single crystal to directly verify the theoretical margin of the rotating boundary layer model.

But when he opened his work schedule, the pencil fell on the Monday column.

The first comprehensive guidance system demonstration meeting of the Fifth Academy has been scheduled, but the summary of the Soviet R-2 guidance parameters sent by Qian Xuesen last week is still buried at the bottom of the canvas bag.

Jiang Ming took out the summary, and the three parts—gyroscope drift correction, range equation, and atmospheric density model—immediately filled the worktable. On the first page of the atmospheric model, the number eleven kilometers fell right next to the horizontal line of the standard tropopause.