Chapter 592: Disassemble Debris No.3

Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations

Lu Zhou didn’t care how the media overseas reacted to China’s moon landing project. He was standing in his underground laboratory and completely shocked by Xiao Ai.

It was not exactly Bumblebee.

Accurately speaking, the thing in front of him was a model of Bumblebee. The smooth and flat aluminum casing gave off a metallic shine under the incandescent lamp on the laboratory ceiling. The mechanical components beneath the streamlined casing gave it a complex aesthetic.

Even though it hadn’t been painted, it was still very similar looking to a transformer, Lu Zhou recognized the resemblance at first sight.

It would still take a while for this robot to finish construction. However, there were still leftover materials piled up in the corner of the laboratory, and the industrial robot arms against the wall were working non-stop.

Lu Zhou saw the eight robot arms, which looked like an octopus, flexibly manipulating the aluminum alloy plates in their hands.

Through Xiao Ai’s neural network learning algorithm, once it learned how to operate a tool, Xiao Ai could quickly apply it to the extreme. This skill wasn’t only limited to plasma control, it was obvious that machining and automatic assembly were also within its capabilities.

But…

Lu Zhou: “What are you doing?”

The robotic arms stopped working.

The drone hovering beside him swayed back and forth, as if it were tilting its head.

Soon, Lu Zhou’s phone received Xiao Ai’s message.

[Master asked what kind of body Xiao Ai wants. Xiao Ai doesn’t want to give Master any trouble, so Xiao Ai is building one. (*°▽°*)]

Lu Zhou: “…”

[What do you think, Xiao Ai’s new body is very cool right! (๑•̀ᄇ•́)و✧]

[Praise me, please, please compliment me! ヾ(≧▽≦*)]

Okay, Lu Zhou admitted that this was pretty good.

However…

What’s the point of this thing?

Lu Zhou didn’t want to discourage Xiao Ai, but he couldn’t help but ask, “How do you plan on putting yourself into the robot?”

The eight mechanical arms paused for a second.

After a while, a message popped up on his phone.

[I can’t go in? °△°]

Lu Zhou: “I don’t think so.”

This robot model is built pretty well…

But in any case, I can’t just put Xiao Ai into this robot.

Not only is there no motor or servo motor, but there isn’t even a control chip or signal receiver. Did Xiao Ai not think about how to integrate itself into the robot body?

Lu Zhou didn’t know how Xiao Ai didn’t even understand common sense.

After a while, the mechanical arms holding the alloy plates sagged down.

[I’m sad.]

Lu Zhou saw the message and sighed.

Is this thing…

Actually retarded.

Even kids can distinguish between movies and reality.

“Stop playing around, help me work.”

He didn’t know how to comfort people, much less comforting an artificial intelligence program.

Lu Zhou didn’t care about Xiao Ai’s emotions. He walked next to Debris No.3 and reached out, taking off the black cover sheet. He then walked to the industrial robot control terminal.

With Lu Zhou’s new industrial robots, he didn’t have to hold the pliers himself and clumsily climb in.

With the help of Xiao Ai and the eight industrial robots, he could easily disassemble Debris No.3

Actually, disassembling this thing wouldn’t take a lot of work.

Even though the outer case material was very strong, due to its need for regular maintenance, the designer didn’t weld this thruster.

Relatively speaking, the engine of the spacecraft should be located in a rather safe part.

Of course, this was all relative.

This debris was neatly split into three sections. When Lu Zhou looked at the messy situation inside, his eyebrows twitched.

The situation was even worse than he had imagined. Not only did the impact completely destroy the internal parts, but it even destroyed the internal structure.

For example, the inner wall metal pipes were completely flattened. Lu Zhou could only use his knowledge to guess that this thing was probably similar to a heat exchanger or a plasma pipe, something along those lines.

Connected to the flattened tubes was a special looking cylindrical hollow structure.

“Electrode… Heat exchanger… Is this an ionization chamber? Is this a Hall-effect thruster?”

Lu Zhou stared at the pictures he took with his camera and rubbed his chin as he fell into a deep thinking mode.

Behind this cylindrical thing was various exhaust pipes, which were shaped like conical flasks.

This was at the very back of the debris.

Lu Zhou analyzed the internal structure and made a bold guess.

The engineer who created this device probably used an unorthodox design… Or maybe it was common practice for high-civilization engineers.

Which was, the ionization chamber was taken out separately, and the plasma-emitting nozzle was designed as a single Hall propulsion unit. This entire thing was placed behind the ionization chamber.

The ionization chamber ionized the propellant by heating and applying a voltage, forming a high-temperature plasma that expanded in volume. This plasma was simultaneously sent to the “Hall propulsion unit” that was connected to the rear end of the ionization chamber, which was the exhaust pipes that looked like conical flasks.

Due to this special design, the Hall propulsion unit was able to process high-temperature plasma in the ionization chamber more efficiently as well as to excrete them out of the engine.

At the same time, the middle “Xing” device on the tail ring was used to neutralize the ejected plasma, preventing the injected plasma from being sucked back into the ionization chamber…

In theory, as long as the power output was large enough and the plasma was shot out fast enough, and before the critical current of the superconducting magnet was reached as well as before the ionization chamber pressure and the temperature threshold were reached, the engine power output could be infinitely increased.

Looking at the direction of the cracks of those pipes, Lu Zhou speculated that before being destroyed, the pilots of the spacecraft probably carried out some kind of procedure so that the power of the engine was overloaded and maintained for a certain period of time.

Lu Zhou looked at the flattened tubes and went into deep thought.

He felt like there were more and more secrets behind the system…

After he determined the external components of the engine, the rest of the work was easy. Through the photos taken by Xiao Ai, Lu Zhou quickly found the “fuel tank” of the engine, which was the storage location of the fuel liquid.

But then again, the question was, where did the electricity come from?

Regardless of how the Hall thruster was designed, the power provided per kilowatt was just not enough. Even if this high-civilization engineer greatly increased the jet velocity of the plasma, making its thrust power break through μN, mN, and even reach the magnitude of N, the energy required to accelerate a 100-ton spacecraft to 1G was a scary number.

The output of the energy had to be on the order of MW.

Such a huge power consumption was obviously not possible with ordinary batteries.

At least it wasn’t possible for lithium-sulfur batteries.

Lu Zhou speculated that the energy storage unit should not be far from the fuel tank, and this was because of the circular double-layer structure that connected the fuel tank and the heat exchanger. Lu Zhou felt that this thing was somewhat similar to something that he had seen before, but he couldn’t remember exactly what it was.

Suddenly, a crazy thought emerged in his mind.

Could this be powered by…

Nuclear fusion?

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