Chapter 182: Everyone's a Mastermind

Upon hearing this suggestion, Lu Yuan immediately began to dream.

Building a new capital? Don't even mention it, for any ruler, such a thing holds immense appeal!

And it's also rational!

As the saying goes, everyone has their own specialty, and Lu Yuan, after all, wasn't a professional urban planner.

Initially, his regional development plan was to retain the Red Iron Town residential area and expand and upgrade the town's existing heavy industrial zone.

Then, centered around the industrial ship, radiate outwards to create a space base and a light industrial base.

Now it seems, might this spur-of-the-moment plan be a bit too small-minded?

The future space base's area is very likely to exceed estimates.

Using reality as a reference, the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center covers an area of 11 square kilometers, and the high-tech development zones in various large and medium-sized cities are even larger.

If Red Iron Town is elevated to a specialized industrial-mining complex city in the future, and Devil Mountain is positioned as a livable capital city, then the straight-line distance of 200 kilometers between them is actually not far, even somewhat close.

It's shorter than the distance between Chengdu and Chongqing.

Enough development space must be reserved for the city itself.

Again, using reality as a reference, the developed area of Modu, from south to north, is already approaching 50 kilometers.

The four cities of Guangzhou, Foshan, Dongguan, and Shenzhen have even merged into a super city cluster with a population of sixty million.

This is even with many high-rise residences in the cities.

If it were replaced by low-rise North American cities that like to sprawl, the urban area of Greater Los Angeles already spans nearly 150 kilometers from east to west.

Who can say that the future Cangyuan capital won't develop into a super city with tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of people?

Lu Yuan had a strong premonition that in the near future, not only would the original inhabitants of Red Iron Town and Oasis City yearn for Cangyuan, but even scientists, Engineers, and businessmen from the distant Star Alliance, and even human survivors from more distant, unknown star systems, would come in an endless stream, drawn by its reputation!

Perhaps one day in the future, the new capital city and Oasis City, 500 kilometers away, will also merge into one large area.

By then, this place will become incredibly prosperous!

"That's good, I think we can build this city," he nodded. "But we need to have the development conditions first."

"It should be fine."

At this moment, the butler, wearing a full set of formal attire that was very unfavorable for body heat dissipation, walked over from the side.

"Welcome back, Executive Officer! Currently, we have already pulled high-voltage transmission lines from the industrial ship, and the camp here has been connected to the nuclear power grid.

"In addition, according to my calculations, with our current production capacity increase speed, it will be very easy to connect the camp, Red Iron Town, and Oasis City with magnetic levitation tracks in the future."

Hmm, that's good.

As long as there is electricity and high-speed rail trains, the issues of energy and transportation will be resolved.

The new residences built in Red Iron Town, due to their prefabricated assembly method, are also very convenient to disassemble and move.

It's just that the sewers dug before were a bit of a waste, but it doesn't matter; repeated construction is normal during a period of rapid development, and besides, the pipe materials can be recycled.

Lu Yuan looked at the two designers.

"Then you two go and refine the plan, draw it in the direction of an ideal city that everyone yearns for."

"Okay!"

After the two ran off excitedly, the butler took a step forward.

"Executive Officer, in the two weeks you were away, Cangyuan has made significant progress in all aspects. Would you like to see the electronic report I prepared?"

"Yes. Don't stand outside late at night, let's talk inside."

He called Jubian and Black Smoke and followed the butler to the original office.

Although simple, it had a warm and secure feeling of the early days of entrepreneurship, making Lu Yuan feel very comfortable.

From the report, after the industrial ship landed, it immediately “devoured” a large amount of raw materials, truly like an industrial monster.

Cangyuan's industrial strength tripled in just two weeks, and the system's special rating rose from 1k to 8.3k, yet the industrial ship's production capacity saturation was only 21%—

It was truly terrifying.

In terms of agriculture, it has successfully passed the subsistence stage.

Now, agricultural production units exceed 100 mu, so Red Iron Town naturally has no problem with food, and can also support other villages and towns in the Desert.

Many Desert dwellers in remote areas experienced not going hungry for the first time.

After a surplus in grain production, players began to focus on improving their diet, starting to cultivate various fruits, vegetables, and tea, and also began to farm the Desert tuna they had long been eyeing.

"However, it is estimated that in one or two months, there will be an electricity crisis here."

The butler said at last.

Ah?

"Not enough electricity again?" Lu Yuan thought he had misheard. "That's impossible—"

"It's possible! Executive Officer, all of Cangyuan's current electricity basically comes from the two Tokamak nuclear fusion reactors built after the industrial ship landed. The models are exactly the same as those dismantled by rioters 300 years ago, with a total installed capacity of 32GW, as you know."

Lu Yuan nodded slightly.

This is equivalent to 1.5 Three Gorges Dams, or 8 Chernobyl nuclear power plants.

"In the future, if the industrial ship's production capacity reaches 100%, it will require at least 30GW of installed power generation capacity.

In addition, electricity also needs to be allocated to the city, the mines, and the supercomputer that was recovered with me."

The butler explained patiently.

"Then just build more reactors," Lu Yuan said. "We have a Helium-3 mine on the Moon, so the fuel should be enough, right?"

At this moment, Jubian, who was beside him, spoke.

"Executive Officer, there might indeed be a slight problem. To be honest, I didn't expect our production capacity to surge at such a rapid pace, and the speed of Helium-3 extraction on the Moon has its limits.

"When I was there, I carefully read the mining logs left by Lao Yu and his team, and found that the mining vehicles can extract Helium-3 from the top 3 meters of lunar regolith, with a total reserve of about 5 million tons, averaging 0.14 tons per square kilometer. Accounting for processing loss, 0.12 tons of refined fuel can be obtained, which ultimately converts into 1.35 million GJ of energy in the reactor."

"At the mine, at most three square kilometers of lunar regolith are extracted per day now."

So that's how it is...

When the other party said this, Lu Yuan, with his 24 points of intelligence, quickly calculated in his mind and understood.

At the mine, for every square kilometer of "tilled land," the fuel obtained is only enough for the industrial ship to operate at full power for 12 hours.

This fuel production speed can keep up with Cangyuan's consumption for now, but in the future, if more power plants and more spacecraft are built, the mine must be expanded synchronously.

Moreover, the Helium-3 reserves in the entire Moon mine are limited and certainly cannot support a future large fleet.

We need to plan ahead...

"Can we extract Deuterium as fuel from the Oasis City reservoir?" Lu Yuan asked.

The butler shook his head.

"A total of about two hundred thousand tons of Deuterium can be extracted from the reservoir. The total amount is not particularly large, and the extraction speed is not fast enough."

"Are there any other solutions?"

"In the long run, the best way is to obtain Deuterium from the atmosphere of gas giant planets, and at the same time, build large artificial Xenon production piles to mix with Deuterium fuel.

"According to our previous astronomical observations, there are a total of 7 planets in the Li Star System, 3 of which are gas giants. The closest one is an average of 800 million kilometers from Li Star.

"The Deuterium reserves there can be considered infinite, and separating Deuterium isotopes from elemental hydrogen gas (H2) is relatively simpler and consumes less energy than extracting heavy water (D2O) from water."

"But that requires a very large initial investment. We need to first build large orbital gas extraction ships and refining factories, and the cargo ships responsible for transporting fuel back must be equipped with Zero Element Furnaces, otherwise it would take several months to travel to Li Star and back," Jubian reminded.

Butler: "That's true."

Lu Yuan could feel that the butler AI was much "smarter" than when it was first discovered in the secret vault, especially in natural science and engineering, where it could now offer advice.

This guy has been learning rapidly, and, no one knows what its upper limit is.

Black Smoke: "Can we go to the closest planet to the sun to mine fuel, the one that is very similar to Mercury in the solar system? The solar wind is stronger there, and the soil must have been blown in with more Helium-3."

The butler said: "Your estimate is very accurate, Engineer. In the star system, Planet 1's Helium-3 reserves are about 15 times that of the Moon mine; however, the surface temperature there during the day approaches 1000 degrees Celsius, which would be a huge challenge for our construction."

"Ah, this—"

Both the carbon-based and silicon-based employees were stumped and stopped talking. Lu Yuan sat in the boss chair, deep in thought for a few minutes.

"Perhaps, the photovoltaic power generation solution is more cost-effective," he finally said.

"Photovoltaic? Do you mean solar power plants?"

Jubian and Black Smoke exchanged glances, their thoughts aligned.

Is the Executive Officer confused? How large would a solar power plant comparable to a nuclear power plant need to be? How much sand would need to be converted into monocrystalline silicon?

How can it be cost-effective...

Lu Yuan smiled and waved his hand.

"Not the kind of solar power plant you're thinking of."

Since he didn't inherit the original owner's memories after transmigrating, he wasn't actually clear about the specific structure of the colonial ship "Cangyuan 1" he had traveled on.

However, if Cangyuan 1 was of the "kind of structure" he hoped for, and if its bow section was still drifting in the Li Star System, then as long as it could be successfully recovered, it could definitely be quickly transformed into a giant solar power plant.

One whose power generation would not be inferior to nuclear power, or even far surpass it!

"I'll figure out a way for this matter first, you don't need to spend too much effort for now. Is there anything else?"

Lu Yuan had about 50% confidence in this matter and it was not yet appropriate to speak fully.

"Alright, sir—" The butler nodded. "Then the most important remaining task is definitely the design finalization of the space battleship."

"Has the plan been drawn up?"

"Yes, it was just finished two hours ago, and the relevant technical personnel should still be on the industrial ship now."

"Let's go! Let's take a look!"