Chapter 951
The Dawn of the Implementation of the Southern Heavenly Gate Plan
In the morning light, the main building of the National Frontier Technology Research Institute in Tangdu resembles a silver-gray spaceship that has landed in the heart of the city. The streamlined dome reflects the soft light of the sky, and the circular corridor connects the five laboratories like five fingers, or like interlocking gears on some kind of precision instrument.
The strategic seminar hall on the third floor of the main building was requisitioned today. There was no sign with the name of the meeting at the entrance, only a brief notice on the access control system: "Nantianmen Project - Third Technical Joint Meeting - Closed-door Meeting".
At 7:40, attendees began to enter the venue one after another.
Experts and professors from all over the country walked along the glass corridor. Among them were aerodynamic authorities who had spent most of their lives in wind tunnels, propulsion experts who had guarded plasma experiments in the Gobi Desert of Northwest China for more than a decade, and a leading figure in aerospace materials science whose hair had turned completely white but whose back remained straight.
Many of them knew each other and greeted each other quietly in the corridor, but no one spoke loudly. There was a serious yet excited atmosphere in the air.
The first to arrive was Qi Gang, the technical head of the Nantianmen Project and an academician of aerospace propulsion systems. When he received this assignment last year, he thought it was an impossible task.
Deploying an aerospace carrier in the vast Earth orbit sounds like something out of a science fiction novel, but when Wang Donglai presented the preliminary research reports on key technology nodes, as well as the preliminary verification data of the Hercules rocket engine, reusable rocket technology, plasma engine, and the laboratory phased results of the anti-gravity device, he knew that the last tough battle of his life had arrived.
He sat in the first seat on the left of the long table, and took out a thick stack of documents from his briefcase, all of which were research and development problems compiled in the past week.
The cover of the document has several large characters written in black marker: "Nantianmen Project: Dual Independent Technical Routes and Parallel Progress".
At 7:50, Wang Donglai pushed open the door and came in.
He came alone, without any attendants, wearing a white shirt and holding a steaming cup of tea.
When he walked in, everyone involuntarily quieted down. It wasn't because he was arrogant, but because he had something about him that made people quiet down involuntarily, like when a teacher walks into a classroom, no matter how noisy it was before, everyone would quiet down.
"Is everyone here? Let's begin!"
He sat down at the top of the long table, placed his teacup beside him, and his gaze swept over every face present before settling on Qi Gang.
Qi Gang stood up first: "Academician Wang, let me first report on the current situation of several project groups. On the plasma engine side, the problem of thrust vector control has been solved, and the deflection angle is now stable at a little over tenths of a degree. We are still far from the target, but we have found the direction and need time to refine it."
"Regarding the working fluid lifespan, the problem of electrode ablation is still being tackled. We have tried seven kinds of composite materials, and the best one has increased the lifespan by about 15%, but there is still a considerable gap from the target. As for the anti-gravity device, Professor Zhuge Fang is still doing theoretical verification. He has found some clues, but it is still a long way from engineering."
"The structural design team has completed the basic configuration of the mothership, but the weight reduction of the core section is a bottleneck. It is basically impossible to reduce the weight by 30% while maintaining the strength of the existing alloy materials. We need the support of the materials laboratory. As for the energy system, the miniaturization of the thorium-based molten salt reactor is still one step away. The heat exchange efficiency cannot be improved. The requirement is to compress the volume by about 25%."
He closed the report, looked up at Wang Donglai: "From an engineering perspective, these problems are scattered across materials, propulsion, energy, structure, and control. Individually, none of them are unsolvable, but when they need to be promoted simultaneously, the conflict between human resources, equipment, and computing power becomes very serious, especially the occupation of key equipment. The vacuum tanks for the plasma engine and the anti-gravity device are all in a queue, and the superconducting testing platform in the materials laboratory is fully booked 24 hours a day. If this problem is not solved, we will all be holding each other back if we push forward any further."
Wang Donglai picked up his teacup, took a sip, and didn't speak immediately.
The thrust vector control of the plasma engine, the boundary layer effect between the plasma and the nozzle wall, the pre-ionization ratio of the working gas, and the geometry of the nozzle were all circumvented on the Pioneer 1 with a more radical control logic, but they cannot be circumvented after the heavy-duty and large-scale development.
Anti-gravity devices are even more troublesome. Although we have obtained the complete theoretical derivation he provided, there are still tens of thousands of steps to go before the theoretical derivation is put into engineering. The winding precision of the superconducting coil, the response speed of the magnetic field compensation system, and the magnetic flux pinning stability of the superconductor under high-frequency alternating magnetic field—if any of these parameters are not up to standard, then it is not anti-gravity, but an expensive magnetic levitation toy.
"Let's address these questions one by one."
He put down his teacup, looked at Qi Gang, and said in a low voice that could be heard clearly throughout the conference room: "Engineer Qi, could you first explain where the thrust vector control of the plasma engine is stuck?"
Qi Gang explained the problem, and Wang Donglai listened but did not answer immediately.
He stood up, walked to the whiteboard on the side of the conference room, picked up a marker, and began to draw.
Instead of drawing complex magnetohydrodynamic equations or partial differential derivations, he drew an extremely simple schematic diagram, outlining the internal structure of the plasma engine's combustion chamber with just a few strokes, and then drew a small protrusion on the central axis of the nozzle.
"The deflection of the thrust vector is essentially due to the asymmetry of plasma density distribution inside the nozzle. Your current approach is to use an external magnetic field to correct it, but the response speed of the external magnetic field can never keep up with the flow speed of the plasma inside the nozzle, so a delay is inevitable."
He drew a circle on the small protrusion and said, "Let's think differently. Set up a physical protrusion at the front end of the nozzle's central axis to actively create a controllable density disturbance. Let this disturbance propagate downstream along the axis, compensating for the asymmetry before the boundary layer forms. It's not about correcting the deflection, but about eliminating the cause of the deflection."
Qi Gang looked at the simplified diagram, and his eyes gradually lit up.
The air in the conference room seemed to freeze at that moment.
A moment later, Professor Zheng, a senior expert from the propulsion team, took off his reading glasses, slowly wiped the lenses with his cuff, then leaned close to the whiteboard, looked at it for a while, and said, "Physical protrusions, fluid control instead of magnetic control, this idea has indeed been tried before, but at that time it was impossible to precisely control the size and position of the protrusions. Now with the soil coating, the combustion chamber wall can withstand higher temperatures, and the geometric parameters of the protrusions can be more aggressive."
"Precise calculations are required, so let the Tiangong platform run them. It can complete all parameter combinations within a few hours."
Wang Donglai put down his marker, turned to Qi Gang, and said, "Engineer Zhou, make the arrangements. Today's meeting will proceed as scheduled, but the data must not be interrupted. If there are any problems, just call me!" This kind of guidance gave everyone present an indescribable sense of impact: they had been working on the thrust vector control of the plasma engine for several months, trying more than a dozen solutions without finding the optimal solution, while Wang Donglai had done it in less than two minutes, and that was after he had just understood the problem.
This is not a difference in the amount of knowledge, but a difference in the dimension of thinking.
To be precise, Wang Donglai was the pioneer and the master, while they were the followers and apprentices.
However, what relieved them was that Wang Donglai didn't give them all the answers at once, which was both a pressure and a motivation for them.
The people present here are all experts and scholars in their respective fields. What they need is an opportunity for Wang Donglai to point out the direction, not to provide hands-on guidance.
The next question is about anti-gravity devices.
Zhuge Fang, a 36-year-old senior researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, stood up and briefly explained the theoretical bottlenecks of antigravity devices.
The problem lies in the winding precision of the superconducting coil. Theoretical calculations require the geometric precision of the coil to be around a few tenths of a millimeter. Only with this precision can the induced current distribution in the superconductor be uniform enough to counteract gravity. Even the most precise CNC winding machine cannot achieve this precision.
Wang Donglai listened without interrupting, and only said after Zhuge Fang finished his report: "This problem cannot be solved from the perspective of mechanical processing alone. Professor Zhuge, have you tried letting the superconducting current 'correct' the winding error itself?"
Zhuge Fang remained calm throughout her report, but upon hearing this, her expression subtly changed.
Wang Donglai drew a cross-sectional diagram of a superconducting coil on the whiteboard, then drew several dashed lines to represent the distribution of induced current. He marked several sets of vector arrows between the dashed lines and the coil. He did not write any formulas, but the position of each arrow was extremely precise.
“When the winding error of a superconducting coil causes uneven local current density, an additional Lorentz force will be generated in the magnetic field. This force will cause the coil to deform at the microscale. The deformation, in turn, changes the current distribution. You can use this feedback mechanism to make the coil ‘adaptively’ correct the winding error after being energized, not by winding it more precisely, but by letting the current find the optimal distribution on its own.”
After he finished speaking, he put down his pen and did not continue to provide details. Instead, he gave Zhuge Fang a direction to figure out for himself.
"Professor Shen, go back and re-run the parameters of the superconducting coil design drawings, relax the target value of winding accuracy by an order of magnitude, and then use a magnetic field compensation system to make up for the remaining error. In this way, the winding process can follow the conventional route, and the mass production cost can be reduced by at least half."
Zhuge Fang stood there for a long while before nodding slightly. In the process of doing so, he found a way out of a problem that had been bothering him for a long time.
Her talent is evident in the fact that she became a full researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences at the age of thirty-six and participated in this project.
And it was precisely because of this that she understood even more how powerful Wang Donglai was.
Several other issues were also addressed one by one.
Weight reduction in the structural assembly has always been a major challenge, as existing nickel-based alloys simply cannot reduce the weight required by the design when used in the core section.
After Chief Engineer Li reported the problem, Wang Donglai turned directly to the representative from the materials laboratory sitting in the corner and said, "Adjust the second-generation formula of Xirang, push the critical temperature from minus ten degrees to minus a few degrees, and the mechanical strength in this temperature range can be increased. Go ahead and develop a replacement solution and run the data. Give me a comparison report within a week."
The miniaturization of the thorium-based molten salt reactor in the energy group was stuck on the heat exchange efficiency. Academician Zhao, who was in charge of this aspect, frowned whenever he mentioned it. As a result, Wang Donglai drew a completely new heat exchanger configuration on the whiteboard, changing the original serial heat exchange of several stages into a ring-shaped multi-stage parallel structure, which directly increased the heat exchange area within the same volume.
After the research and development challenges were compiled and submitted to Wang Donglai, progress accelerated rapidly, as if an accelerator had been pressed. However, everyone tacitly understood one thing.
With Wang Donglai's abilities, he could have solved all these problems by himself in his office. He wouldn't need to hold meetings, ask them to report, or draw diagrams on a whiteboard. He could have completed the core technical aspects of the entire Nantianmen Project all by himself.
He did indeed do that in the past. He single-handedly studied all the design blueprints for the propulsion system of Galaxy Technologies' first Hercules rocket. Now, the core technology solutions for the lithography factory were also developed by him in just a few days.
But now he has changed his approach. He uses the simplest words to point out the direction of a difficult problem, and then lets them run, struggle, and accumulate experience to climb again in the most subtle practical operations.
He is now more like Qian Xuesen back then, understanding everything but not trying to control everything himself. He has transformed from a genius who single-handedly propelled breakthroughs in countless disciplines into an architect who knows how to integrate various parties.
When Wang Dong finally had a solution to the last question, he checked the time. It was past noon; the meeting had lasted for more than four hours. Although everyone was tired, their faces were filled with excitement, even exhilaration.
After glancing at everyone, Wang Donglai did not continue speaking. Instead, he told everyone to go eat and rest for half an hour, and then continue to tackle the remaining problems in the afternoon.
The afternoon meeting did not slow down. In addition to continuing to push forward the few detailed issues that were not resolved in the morning and the new coordination plan, everyone also reviewed the last batch of issues that had been put on the table last week.
Qi Gang focused on the life verification of the plasma engine after thrust vector control, and several young researchers were assigned to optimize the experimental scheme of the new structure; Academician Zhao led the energy group to rearrange the schedule of additive manufacturing to print a new heat exchanger; Zhuge Fang sat quietly in front of his workstation in the corner, redrawing the new superconducting coil cross-section diagram grid by grid on the whiteboard.
The atmosphere in the meeting room remained quiet and serious, but the anxiety of the morning had given way to a focused, purposeful concentration. (End of Chapter)