Chapter 1024: First flight of super-large manned spacecraft and space tourism plan

On January 1st, Baihu Technology announced the experiment of a super-large manned spacecraft, which brought the first hot news to the new year.

According to the description of Baihu Technology Company, the ultra-large manned spacecraft in this experiment is an advanced version of the aerospace plane, which can carry 500 people at one time and can carry 30 tons of materials.

This ultra-large manned spacecraft absorbs the design experience of Huanyu Group's ultra-large passenger aircraft and combines their technical achievements in the field of space vehicles. It is a master in the field of conventional manned spaceflight technology.

As for the interstellar ships that are being carried out secretly, they naturally cannot be classified as conventional space vehicles. After all, too many super technologies are used in them, so they cannot be generalized.

There are two main purposes for the design of this ultra-large space vehicle. The first one is to facilitate the round-trip transportation between the space station and the ground.

Although the previous space shuttle can transport up to 10 astronauts, if you want to carry out a large-scale space station tourism project, such a transportation volume is simply not enough.

If you want to prosper the space tourism business, you must reduce the cost so that more people can afford it. Otherwise, only a few wealthy people can participate, and the market capacity will be greatly limited.

In the past, the capacity of the space station was limited, only 100 people. There was little urgency to reduce the price to prosper space tourism, and more professional cooperation was needed. ..

It's different now. Baihu Technology's space station will be able to complete the expansion project in 2002, and it will be able to accommodate tens of thousands of people for a long-term stay.

With such a high capacity, it is quite difficult to rely solely on professional cooperation to fill the vacancies, and it is very likely that there will be more capacity vacancies in the future.

In addition, this expansion cost Baihu Technology a lot of money. If they want to pay back quickly, they must carry out diversified operations. They naturally aimed at the space tourism business.

According to their calculations, if this new type of ultra-large space vehicle is used for round-trip transportation between heaven and earth, the transportation cost for each tourist can be reduced to 5 million yuan.

In addition to other costs such as the consumption of materials to enter the space station, each tourist only needs to pay at least 6 million yuan, which is completely different from the previous cost of hundreds of millions of yuan.

Although 6 million yuan is still quite expensive for ordinary people, there should be a lot of people in the world who can afford 6 million yuan relatively well, and the total number should exceed 10 million.

This means that the total market capacity has directly expanded from the original several billion yuan to tens of trillion yuan. Although the net profit has decreased, the total profit has increased.

Of course, this is only the most ideal state, but it is undeniable that if a full-staff trip is realized, it can bring 3 billion yuan in revenue to Baihu Technology, which is still higher than the previous revenue per trip.

The second purpose is to prepare for the space-to-earth shuttle vehicles of the future interstellar ships. The interstellar ships are too large to land on the planet unless necessary.

At this time, a suitable space vehicle is needed to realize the round-trip transportation of people and materials. The previous space shuttle is definitely not enough, and the transportation capacity is too low.

Of course, this space vehicle is not suitable as a space-to-earth transport vehicle for interstellar ships, but only as a pre-verification model. .... The interstellar ship vehicle given by Ye Zishu also uses anti-gravity technology, and its performance in other aspects is far superior to the super-large space vehicle currently being tested by Baihu Technology Company.

In addition to space shuttle vehicles for transportation purposes, Ye Zishu also designed spacecraft with attack capabilities, which can cooperate with interstellar ships to achieve space battles and intra-planet battles.

Some of the designs of this ultra-large space vehicle of Baihu Technology Company borrowed from the design drawings given by Ye Zishu, otherwise they would not be able to achieve leapfrog development in a short time.

This experimental flight is still carried out in the form of a public live broadcast. If you are not particularly confident,

Few companies will openly conduct their own product experiments, and it will be difficult to overturn.

Before conducting real-world experiments, Baihu Technology Company has conducted countless manned experiments in the virtual world, and will only take it to the real world for experiments when satisfactory results are obtained.

With the simulation fidelity of the current virtual world, the successful space experiment in it is basically a certainty in the real world, and the possibility of overturning is too low.

After such a long period of operation, as well as the continuous improvement of the virtual world by artificial intelligence, the simulation accuracy of the virtual world has reached about 70%.

Compared with when Ye Zishu was developed, the degree of realism has increased by a full 20%. Now entering the virtual world, I don't feel that this is an illusory world at all, and the similarity to the real world is extremely high.

According to the current speed of improvement, it is estimated that it will take three to five years to increase the reality of the virtual world to 80%, and it should be another world by then.

The improvement of the virtual world's realism is not the most important thing, at least the virtual world can still meet the needs of reality, and the improvement will not bring benefits beyond imagination.

But in the process of perfecting the virtual world, it is actually the process of artificial intelligence constructing cognition of the real world, which is very helpful to improve the ability of artificial intelligence.

The improvement of artificial intelligence capabilities will have a very large effect on the national economy, not to mention the industrial field. The number of general-purpose robots under Baihu Technology Company has as many as 500,000 employees.

Although the number of human employees under the banner is also increasing, the proportion is gradually shrinking, because the human training time is too long, and there are not so many talents in the country for them to use.

Relying on their own intelligence, these general-purpose robots are qualified to undertake ordinary experimental work, but they are still unable to possess the capabilities of scientists.

Behind these general-purpose robots is the support of super artificial intelligence. The higher the ability of artificial intelligence, the more obvious the scientific research strength of Baihu Technology Company will be enhanced.

In the field of industrial scientific research, not only Baihu Technology Company, but almost all of its companies have more or less employed general-purpose robots, and even the catering group employs a lot of people.

They need to hire general-purpose robots to maintain the normal operation of their huge store system, and they need general-purpose robots to develop new dishes, which play an equally important role.

Now, with the expansion of robot production capacity and more comprehensive involvement in the domestic economic system, the impact on the domestic primary and tertiary industries is also expanding. ….So the stronger the ability of artificial intelligence, the stronger our country's economic system will be. Especially in the current environment, where the economy is huge and the number of talents is expensive and scarce, artificial intelligence is even more indispensable.

If there is no artificial intelligence, even if Ye Zishu plays its role in the early stage and increases the economic volume, it will become more and more difficult to control as the economic volume increases.

It will definitely not be like it is now. With a huge economic volume, it will still be able to steer this huge economic ship stably, and a large part of the credit must be attributed to artificial intelligence.

The role of the virtual world is still in the field of internal secret scientific research and military aerospace. As long as it is not used for civilian purposes, its total value is still relatively limited.

But the value of its existence cannot be ignored. Once it is civilianized in the future, it will be equivalent to recreating a world and possibly recreating a huge economic system.

It's just that when it will be used by civilians, he is still not sure, at least under the current economic situation, there is no need for the virtual world to help, unless there is a serious economic crisis.

Moreover, the virtual world of Phoenix Technology Company is also advancing steadily. Although the technology is relatively backward, it is still the current top technology. More importantly, this project has a process of continuous evolution.

In the process of using the virtual world of Phoenix Technology, people will gradually adapt to the existence of the virtual world, and it will not appear so obtrusive, and the effect may be better.

Ye Zishu did not watch the live broadcast of the super-large manned spacecraft of Baihu Science and Technology Company. Now its industry is still booming. If every important experiment is required, it will waste too much of his time.

However, he did not know the news afterwards. According to news reports, the live broadcast of the flight experiment was viewed by as many as 1 billion people worldwide.

There are only 6 billion people in the world, which is equivalent to one-sixth of the people in the world watched this live broadcast together. It is also the live broadcast with the largest number of viewers in a single live broadcast so far.

It is said that the advertising revenue collected by Phoenix Technology from this live broadcast alone has reached 1 billion yuan, which is also the most profitable single live broadcast so far, and the total amount of rewards has reached tens of millions of yuan.

You must know that the live broadcast platform of Phoenix Technology has a limited amount of rewards. Each account can only reward up to 1,000 yuan per day.

The reason is that their live broadcast platform does not need to rely on rewards to make money, but mainly relies on advertising revenue, which is very different from other live broadcast platform business models.

The reason why so many people watch it at the same time is because this experimental flight is extremely high and it is currently the largest space vehicle, which will affect the current space situation.

Moreover, Baihu Technology Company has a precedent for live broadcasting before, and the process is very exciting. This time, everyone also believes that they can enjoy the wonderful process, and the process will not be boring.

On the other hand, the global Internet coverage rate is extremely high. According to the statistics of Qinglong Technology Company, the current population covered by the Internet is as high as 5.5 billion, and the coverage rate is very high.

Such a high Internet coverage rate is higher than that of the past decades of Internet development. There are many reasons for this. The first is that the products of Qinglong Technology Company have undergone a large-scale price cut. ….In the past, Internet equipment sales accounted for a relatively high proportion of their main source of income, but now the importance is much lower, so price cuts have little impact on their total revenue.

On the contrary, because of the large-scale price reduction, it directly killed other competitors, making them more unprofitable, and they gave up competing with the two major communication subsidiaries of Qinglong Technology Company in this field.

The second is the emergence of the mobile Internet, which makes it more convenient for people around the world to access the Internet. The number of mobile Internet users is also increasing rapidly. At present, the number of mobile Internet users in the world is nearly 3 billion.

Although there is some overlap with the fiber-optic Internet users above, there are also many people who directly use the mobile Internet without using fiber-optic Internet.

Finally, there is the global satellite communication system of Baihu Technology Company. Although the price is relatively expensive, it has brought the Internet to many people in remote areas, allowing them to enjoy modern communication services even without Internet access.

In general, Baihu Technology's first live broadcast of the first flight of a super-large space vehicle was very successful. The experimental process was very successful and fully achieved the expected results and goals.

At the same time, the atmosphere of public opinion created was also very successful. Such a large number of people watching the live broadcast, as well as the subsequent media reports and analysis, has become a hot topic among the whole people.

These will play a positive role in the development of their next space tourism business, which is equivalent to a very successful space tourism advertisement.

Of course, this may also set off a more intense space race. Seeing that the development of space here is getting faster and faster, but their progress is like a snail, inner anxiety is inevitable.

If you want to speed up, you have to invest more money, so many countries may face a choice, whether to continue to increase investment, or maintain the original plan, or even cut it off directly.

Continuing to increase investment does not mean that they will be able to catch up with the development speed here, but that they will be able to keep up with the rhythm a little bit, so that the distance will not be too large.

However, more financial support is needed. In the case of limited funds, it will inevitably affect other investment. It is hard to say whether it is worthwhile.

According to the original rhythm of investment, the only advantage is that there will be no economic chaos, and it will not squeeze investment in people's livelihood, which is conducive to political stability, but the speed of catching up is not fast enough, and the distance will be further and further apart.

It is possible to face such a predicament, so some countries that are not very powerful may give up directly. It is better to invest more funds in other fields than to invest in such an endless investment.

As long as space research cannot catch up, hitchhiking is the best choice for many countries because the cost is much lower than investing in research and development by yourself, and you don’t have to bear high risks.

Of course, there is another possibility, that is to join forces to conduct research. For traditional Western countries, this is their ancestral craft, and group competition is a good choice. ...But it is hard to say whether such a loose alliance can be united in the face of powerful competitors. After all, the interests of each country are not completely consistent.

It may be possible to unite with the enemy at the beginning, but as things develop, each out of self-interest considerations, it will become more and more unsustainable. The most typical example is the international controllable nuclear fusion research project.

It is said that we are doing research together and concentrating our efforts on big things. In fact, it is more symbolic. No one will come up with their own top-notch controllable nuclear fusion technology, and each has its own small calculations.

At present, Baihu Technology has not announced its commercial operation plan, and naturally it has not announced that future space travel will only cost a few million yuan.

However, Ye Zishu is very optimistic about the future development of space tourism business. Even if 500,000 people participate in space tourism every year, the annual revenue will reach 2.5 trillion yuan.

This is a huge income for Baihu Technology, which is currently relatively tight in funds. Even if the net profit is only 40%, the annual profit is still 1 trillion yuan.

Such a huge amount of funds can allow Baihu Technology Company to carry out more space programs, instead of splitting out a lot of business as it is now.

In fact, space and airborne services can also be carried out. It was once shown in the live broadcast of the first flight of the aerospace plane, which left a deep impression on the global audience.

For those who like excitement, airborne from space to the ground is definitely the pinnacle experience. The excitement is definitely no less than sky travel, and it is a very worthwhile project.

There is no need to charge too much, and 5 million yuan per person should not be too high for the rich. At the same time, the original technology and equipment can be reused to create more economic value.

For those who are timid, they can choose to vacation in the space station, and only need to pay an extra 500,000 yuan per day. Not only can they experience the magnificence of the space landscape, but they can also enjoy top-level services.

These life businesses, if done well, are not weaker than simply collecting the round-trip transportation business from heaven to earth, and they are very worth trying businesses.

Of course, he allowed these originally classified equipment and technologies to be used in civilian services. The reason is that the existence of the interstellar ship project makes these technologies relatively less important.

If the interstellar ship project does not appear, these technologies are still top-notch technologies, and it is still very difficult to use them for civilian use. Not only will he have higher confidentiality requirements, but the country will also require the same.

Moreover, simply providing services is not selling these products and technologies. If you want to observe and experience them on the spot, you can crack them, so it seems that these technologies are not so powerful.

Not to mention the observation experience, even if you give them samples, it is not easy to copy them. These equipments are the crystallization of top technology, and it is extremely difficult to decipher them.

In fact, after the permanent experimental base on the moon is completed, the moon travel business can also be carried out. He believes that there is no need to over-secretize this aspect.

In fact, the moon base of Baihu Technology Company will have two bases, one bright and one dark. The bright base is on the surface of the moon, which is relatively open.

In addition to scientific research, the main function is also used as a command center for mining rare minerals on the moon, which controls and assigns work tasks to the intelligent mining machines on the moon. ….At the same time, it is also used as a central storage point for mineral resources to facilitate the centralized transportation of these mined and simply refined minerals to the earth. These are the main functions.

Another permanent base on the moon will be located in the center of the moon, and the technological content will be much higher, which cannot be achieved by ordinary technological means.

He plans to turn this lunar base into a lunar control center, turning the moon into an interstellar fortress, or a super-large interstellar ship, which can play a huge role at critical times.

Of course, the current effect is not great, so he hasn't talked to Baihu Technology about this matter, let them build a permanent base on the surface of the moon first.

At present, the construction progress of their permanent base on the moon is not too fast, but it is not too slow. At present, a permanent base that can accommodate 10 people for long-term work has been built.

At the same time, the real manned moon landing work was realized. It was not a general-purpose robot that was sent up like the first moon landing, but the staff who are currently waiting in the moon base for a long time are still general-purpose robots.

Because the current permanent base is not considered the final form, and not too many tasks have been carried out. The main thing is to test and improve the new permanent base on the moon.

Although the earth can simulate the environment of the moon, it is still a little bit short after all. During the process of research and development, various simulation tests were carried out in the virtual world.

It's just that the moon is too far away from the earth after all, and if something goes wrong, it will be too late to rescue. Therefore, Baihu Technology has taken an unprecedented cautious attitude towards the construction of a permanent base.

It must be foolproof. At present, these general-purpose robots are on the moon to carry out relevant testing work, and at the same time cooperate with the scientific research personnel of the lunar permanent base project team to improve the details.

The secondary task is to help build the lunar electromagnetic orbital launcher, send equipment and other materials from the earth side, and these general-purpose robots can assemble it.

As for the energy problem, the previous solution was to lay solar panels on the moon. After all, his technology in this field was very deep at that time, so it was not difficult to do it.

At that time, the plan has changed now. It is planned to build a small controllable nuclear fusion reactor on it, and the energy problem can be completely solved by using the helium 3 that is already abundant on the moon.

The real cost of the lunar development plan is not the permanent base of the moon, nor the electromagnetic launch orbit, nor the controllable nuclear fusion reactor, but the mineral mining equipment that really costs money.

Helium 3 reserves in the lunar soil are abundant, but they are widely distributed in the surface soil, rather than gathered together like mines.

If you want to extract these helium 3, it means that you need to dig three feet from the soil on the surface of the moon to extract the helium 3 hidden in it.

This workload can be imagined, even if the machine efficiency is high, the quantity required is huge, and they have to speed up the mining progress, the reason is that it is slow, and others may have to land on the moon to mine.

Of course, there are not only helium 3 in the lunar soil, but also other minerals, such as titanium. Although it is not a particularly expensive technology, it is still very important in the fields of aerospace and special materials.

Anyway, the lunar soil has to be refined again, so other mineral resources are also extracted by the way, so the cost of mining equipment cannot be very low.

In addition to the huge investment in mining equipment, another investment is transportation. Under normal conditions, helium 3 is a gas, and its weight is heavier than hydrogen.

This brings great difficulties to transportation. The cost of going back and forth between the earth and the moon is very high. Naturally, we want to reduce the transportation cost per unit weight and volume as much as possible.

To solve the transportation and storage problems of helium 3, it is necessary to develop related equipment, which also requires a lot of cost and a large investment.

Of course, if an interstellar ship is used for transportation, the cost will be much lower, and there will be much more methods that can be used. After all, the space of an interstellar ship is much larger.

Ye Zishu does not plan to use black technology in these areas, because this is the stage that human beings must go through to get out of the earth, and there must be no technological gaps in the middle, otherwise they will have to go back and walk in the future.

If black technology is used, the difficulty is not too great. It is only a matter of minutes to separate the elements in the lunar soil by directly using space material separation technology.

As for the relevant legal issues, they naturally don't care much. The laws on the earth can't control space, not to mention that in the face of absolute strength, some regulations are used to break. .

Milky pudding reminds you: remember to collect after reading