#615 - Chapter 615 Ladder Charging

Now that the miniature space transport spacecraft was in production, the transportation link between the space station and near-solar orbit was considered established.

The next issue was to accelerate the production speed of the light crystal panels at the ground base.

At the same time, a large ground-to-space spacecraft needed to be manufactured to transport these light crystal panels to the space station.

"Xiaolin, build an independent area at the Wulan Gumu base to construct a ground-to-space spacecraft production bay."

"Okay."

"Give me an estimate, if we fully commit to building the production bay, how quickly can we produce a ground-to-space spacecraft?"

"Commander, what kind of power engine will the ground-to-space spacecraft use?"

"Crystal core."

"Okay. What kind of thruster will be used?" Xiaolin continued to ask.

The various transport ships and warships on the ground all used anti-gravity engines.

This type of engine cannot be driven in space.

"Let's combine the anti-gravity engine with a particle thruster," Dongfang Chen said.

On the ground, the anti-gravity engine was still powerful, but in space, the particle thruster needed to provide additional support. Since the ground-to-space spacecraft wouldn't leave Blue Star's orbit, there was no need to use a warp drive.

"Okay, evaluating."

"Commander, if we fully commit to building it, it will take 10 days at the fastest," Xiaolin quickly reported the result.

"Does this 10 days include the production time of the ground-to-space spacecraft?" Dongfang Chen asked.

"It includes the production time of one ground-to-space spacecraft," Xiaolin explained.

"Okay, start as soon as possible."

"Okay, Commander."

"Also, calculate how many light crystal panels are needed to build a charging station in near-solar orbit that can simultaneously charge 10,000 vibration crystals?"

"Okay, Commander, calculating."

"A total of 300 trillion pieces are needed," Xiaolin quickly gave the result.

The light crystal panels have a hexagonal structure, and every 30 billion pieces can be assembled into a hexagonal light-absorbing unit with a side length of 1 kilometer. Each unit can charge one vibration crystal, so to simultaneously charge 10,000 vibration crystals, 300 trillion pieces are needed.

This was just a small light-absorbing unit, and it would take 275 years to fully charge one vibration crystal!

This was just an average value, assuming that these 10,000 light-absorbing units were charging independently.

But in actual operation, it certainly couldn't be done this way, otherwise, by the time one vibration crystal was fully charged, everything would be cold. And we don't need to wait for all the vibration crystals to be fully charged before using them.

Therefore, these 10,000 light-absorbing units are used in combination, using stepped charging.

What is stepped charging?

Simply put, these vibration crystals are not charged in parallel, but are divided into several levels. After charging starts, the energy absorbed by the vibration crystals will be sent to the core, prioritizing the charging of the first stage vibration crystals. After the first stage vibration crystals are fully charged, the second stage of charging will be started.

For example, after these 10,000 vibration crystals form a charging array, you can set the number of vibration crystals charged in the first stage to 1, the second stage to 6, the third stage to 12, and so on. Then, after the charging station is started, all the light-absorbing units will transmit the absorbed light energy to the vibration crystals. And these vibration crystals will transmit the energy to the first stage vibration crystal that is prioritized for charging. After this vibration crystal is fully charged, it will start charging the 6 vibration crystals in the second stage.

The advantage of doing this is that it can gather the energy of all the light-absorbing units to complete the charging of the vibration crystals as soon as possible, thereby improving charging efficiency.

If these 10,000 light-absorbing units charge one vibration crystal at the same time, it would only take 10 days to fully charge it, which is acceptable.

Of course, another factor to consider here is the distance between Blue Star and the sun. It also takes time for the spacecraft to travel back and forth to replace a vibration crystal, and the length of this time depends on the speed of the spacecraft.

"At the current production speed, how long will it take to produce 300 trillion pieces?" Dongfang Chen asked.

The most ideal result would be that the light crystal panels could be produced at the same time as the ground-to-space spacecraft is completed, so that they could depart immediately and transport these light crystal panels to the space station.

Each light crystal panel is not large in area, and they are all hexagons with a side length of 10 centimeters.

So the production cycle of a single light crystal panel is very short.

"It will take 3 years," Xiaolin replied.

"No, that's too long. Continue to expand the production line and compress the production cycle to within 10 days," Dongfang Chen shook his head.

Previously, he hadn't paid attention to the production efficiency of the light crystal panels because he wasn't sure when they would be needed, so slow production was fine.

Now that they were needed urgently, production had to be expanded.

The production lines were all fully automated, with no manual participation. Therefore, in the absence of a shortage of raw materials, production efficiency could theoretically be increased indefinitely.

Currently, only one production bay is in production, and it will take 3 years to complete. If it is to be shortened to 10 days, the production scale must be expanded 110 times.

That is to say, 109 more production bays need to be added.