Homo sapiens

Inside Li Qingye's villa.

Sanchi Badalayar had prepared black tea and refreshments.

"I have seen what the company has achieved, and it has been done well."

Liu Zhifan replied respectfully: "It is only the company's technical advantages that can bring such huge gains."

Picking up the teacup, Li Qingye smiled at the two of them and said, "How do you plan to arrange those islands?"

Liu Zhifan quickly replied: "Mr. Chairman, this is my plan. Considering the location of the Karnak Islands, it can be divided into the operation area of ​​the West Pacific Branch."

After taking a look at the holographic earth, Li Qingye nodded.

"The Gilbert Islands, Ellice Islands, and Union Islands can set up a Central Pacific branch to manage these assets."

"Association Islands, Tua Islands, etc., can establish a South Pacific branch to manage company assets in these waters."

"The Mascarene Islands and other South Ceylon Ocean islands established a South Ceylon branch in Saint-Denis to manage the company's local assets."

Li Qingye thought for a moment, then nodded: "Okay."

Carmen added: "Recently, we have successfully established a full-fledged branch in the equatorial countries of South America. Coupled with our layout in Africa, the entire equatorial region is currently the company's full-fledged operating area."

"Very good." Li Qingye was very satisfied with the work of the company's management.

Liu Zhifan pulled out a document, projected it in the air, and then explained: "Mr. Chairman, this is a big project we formulated last year. We previously considered that some areas in the equatorial region did not have full-fledged branches, so we put it on hold. , now I think the time has come.”

Li Qingye looked at the projected content.

The plan is called: Circum-Equatorial Railway.

At first glance, it may seem surprising.

Around the equator? railway?

These two terms do not match at all. After all, there are not only three pieces of land in the equatorial region, but also the Pacific Ocean, Ceylon Ocean and Atlantic Ocean.

There is no problem in building railways on land. It is impossible to build railways that can cross the Pacific Ocean, Ceylon Ocean and Atlantic Ocean.

Even if the tunneling technology of Homo sapiens Company is the best in the world, it cannot withstand the trenches along the way and the seabed with an average depth of three to four thousand meters.

So the plan seemed a bit fanciful.

However, the reason why the engineering division of Homo sapiens Company proposed this plan was because of its special technical background.

The technology of the Equator Railway is not tunnel technology or bridge building technology, but airship technology.

That's right, it's airship technology.

The Engineering Division plans to use a vacuum airship to build a high-altitude railway around the equator at an altitude of 20 kilometers above the equator.

Since this railway relies on the buoyancy of the vacuum airship, there is no need to build bridge piers, and there is no need to worry about bad typhoon weather.

After all, the 20,000-meter-high altitude area belongs to the stratosphere, where the air is thin. Weather such as storms, typhoons, and thunderstorms are unique to the troposphere and do not exist in the stratosphere.

At high altitudes where the air is thin, vacuum tracks are not even needed. The resistance of the air itself is very small, and trains can run at nearly the speed of sound.

The length of the earth's equator is 40,075 kilometers. At this time, it is not difficult for the Homo sapiens company to produce vacuum airships with a length of several kilometers. As long as the airships are connected, railways can be laid on the airships.

Some people may think that this kind of railway is of little value.

After all, airplanes can transport things quickly, and there is no need to build tracks.

The problem lies in cost performance.

Among the various vehicles currently owned by Homo sapiens companies.

Aircraft: The economic speed is 700 to 900 kilometers per hour, and the maximum transportation volume is 200 tons.

Ground effect aircraft: The economic speed is 200 to 300 kilometers per hour, and the maximum transportation volume is 1,500 tons.

Nuclear-powered transport ship: Economic speed is 40 kilometers per hour, maximum transport capacity is 500,000 tons.

Transport airship: The economic speed is 300 kilometers per hour, and the maximum transportation volume is 15,000 tons.

Sub-vacuum high-speed rail: The economic speed is 240 to 360 kilometers per hour, and the maximum transportation volume is 15,000 tons.

Aircraft and ground-effect flights obviously do not have an advantage in terms of transportation volume, and their energy consumption is relatively high.

The most cost-effective mode of transportation is nuclear-powered transport ships.

Transport airships have obvious advantages in land transportation and can be compared with sub-vacuum high-speed rail. There is not much difference between the two in terms of transportation volume, speed, or energy consumption.

When the Circum-Equator Railway was originally envisioned, it was considered that airships could not compete with airplanes in terms of transportation speed, and could not compete with large nuclear-powered transport ships in terms of transportation volume, so they could only compete with sub-vacuum high-speed rail.

The Homo sapiens company needs a transportation method that is very fast, has a relatively large transportation volume, and has a relatively low transportation cost.

Among the large number of plans collected internally, the circum-equator high-altitude railway plan stood out as a very suitable plan.

On the one hand, the cost of building a vacuum airship is relatively low.

The current ex-factory price of airships from Motor Island Branch is 0.0022 to 0.0024 gold yuan per cubic meter.

A vacuum airship with a length of about 3 kilometers has a vacuum chamber of about 4 billion cubic meters, and the total cost is about 8.8 million to 9.6 million gold dollars.

A high-altitude railway platform around the equator would require approximately 13,360 3-kilometer-long vacuum airships, with a cost of about 110 to 120 billion gold dollars.

What's more, once mass production is launched, production costs will further drop.

Including other supporting facilities, the total cost of the circum-equator high-altitude railway platform is approximately 240 to 260 billion gold dollars.

This cost is not stressful for Homo sapiens companies.

Li Qingye looked through the back part of the plan and found that the Engineering Division had further ideas.

That is to use the high-altitude railway as the basis and gradually increase the scale of the vacuum airship until the airship reaches the Karmen Line directly and reaches an altitude of 100 kilometers above sea level.

According to the principle of a vacuum airship, its maximum flight altitude is about 85 kilometers, and the airship's vacuum buoyancy is not enough at any higher altitude.

Engineers from the Engineering Division plan to use an arch bridge solution to extend the structure upwards.

This is also the reason why they want to build at the equator, because the angular velocity of the equator is parallel to the equator.

The Equator Railway can also adopt an arch bridge structure to enhance the structural strength and its own support, ensuring that the entire structure can be extended by the Karman Line.

As long as the Equatorial Railway is extended to the Karman Line, astronauts can take the elevator directly from the ground to the Karman Line, and then take a spacecraft to outer space at the spaceport of the Karman Line.

Going to outer space in this way is safer than taking a launch vehicle, and the comfort level is also very high.

Similarly, it is very convenient to transport materials in and out of the atmosphere. There is no need to consider issues such as atmospheric resistance and friction, let alone worry about the pull of gravity causing the spacecraft to lose control.

This idea was very good, but Li Qingye did not blindly approve the later ideas.

"Can the material strength and weight reach this level?"

Liu Zhifan shook his head: "There is no problem with the Stratospheric Railway, but the current materials for the Karman Line platform cannot be used. Materials that meet the strength standards are too heavy; materials that are ultra-lightweight do not have the strength to meet the standards."

"Is this so?" Li Qingye pondered for a moment.

Although there are no suitable materials at this stage, he still approves of the first stage of the Stratospheric Railway: "In this case, let's build the Stratospheric Railway first! Later upgrades and transformations will be considered after the materials meet the standards. "

"Yes." Liu Zhifan replied excitedly.

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