Chapter 104 103: Two and a Half Years
Without a doubt, the properties of this material were exceptional.
Moreover, this material wasn't just for the space elevator; it could also serve extremely important functions in other areas.
Take Warship armor, for example.
'If I add some of this material to the armor plating of a Warship, like rebar in concrete, how high would the armor's strength be? By how much would its survivability increase?'
'If it were used to manufacture various types of industrial equipment, how much would their stability and reliability improve?'
'No matter how I look at it, this material has the potential for massive-scale application.'
But there was just one problem.
Its production rate was too low.
Even the large-scale mass-production lines in Li Qingsong's plans had their limits. These lines were enormous and their processes incredibly complex. A single line would likely occupy over 100,000 square meters—the size of a large factory—and could only produce an average of 2,000 cubic meters of the material per day. That meant an annual output of about 730,000 cubic meters.
The material was very light, only about one-thousandth the density of water. Thus, the annual output was a mere 730 tons.
This output might seem high, but building a space elevator on Ganymede required a cable with a 10-meter diameter and a length of about 45,000 kilometers.
The total volume of the space elevator cable would therefore be approximately 3.534 billion cubic meters. Even running at full capacity, a single production line would need nearly 5,000 years to produce enough material to build it.
This was clearly unacceptable.
However, given the current level of technology, the output of a single production line simply could not be increased any further.
Faced with this situation, humans would have probably tried to improve the manufacturing process or enhance the material's properties, hoping to build the space elevator with less of it. At the same time, they would have looked for ways to increase production capacity.
But Li Qingsong was different.
'A single production line takes 5,000 years to produce enough material?'
'Doesn't that mean if I have 1,000 production lines, it would only take five years?'
'And if I build 2,500 production lines, then it'll only take two and a half years?'
'In that case, what's there to discuss? Build them!'
After all, the basic industrial infrastructure was already in place. Steel production was plentiful, power was plentiful, and all resources were plentiful.
And so, according to Li Qingsong's plan, preliminary leveling work immediately began on a vast, 300-square-kilometer plain on Ganymede.
Compared to Li Qingsong's current population of only 15 million, undertaking a construction project covering 300 square kilometers seemed somewhat unrealistic.
But Li Qingsong's industrial AI had been in training for many years. All the training data came directly from the front lines of real factories, making it extremely high-quality and vast in quantity.
Furthermore, through actual large-scale application, it was constantly iterating and improving itself.
Although his most advanced chips were only 20-nanometer—far behind the 2-nanometer silicon chips and even more advanced quantum computers of the Human World—Li Qingsong was confident that his industrial and construction AI suite would far outperform even the most advanced and intelligent AIs humanity had to offer.
Now, tens of thousands of vehicles manufactured on Ganymede—excavators, bulldozers, heavy-duty trucks, and cement mixers all capable of operating on its surface—were dispatched by the Jade Emperor AI. The transportation AI temporarily took control, guiding them to the construction site in autonomous driving mode.
Once the transport was complete, the construction AI took over, controlling the autonomous vehicles as they began their work on the desolate surface of Ganymede.
Hundreds of thousands of Clones also joined the effort. Some of them handled complex tasks that the AI couldn't perform, while others took on roles in system maintenance, remote operation, and decision-making.
The initial leveling and reinforcement of the 300 square kilometers was completed in just over two months.
At the same time, a flood of materials arrived from other factories. Huge convoys and railway lines, all controlled by the transportation AI, delivered everything needed: special concrete to insulate the factory floors from the ground, steel to erect the structures, pipes to transport liquids, and cables to transmit power. They even brought repair parts for the machinery, as well as food, water, and Space Suits for the Clones.
A veritable mountain of supplies poured into the site. Along with the physical materials came a torrent of electrical power and the near-infinite computing power provided by the Supercomputing Base.
With an almost unimaginable level of efficiency, buildings of all kinds began to sprout from the once desolate, silent ground like mushrooms after a rain.
Rows of factories, networks of roads, clusters of laboratories and processing rooms...
Finally, after two and a half years, Li Qingsong completed the construction of the production base for this material, which was named Zero Fiber.
A total of 2,500 production lines and all their supporting facilities—power plants, Supercomputing Bases, maintenance and logistics hubs, and more—were now complete.
Under the surging power supply from the nuclear fission power plants, the 2,500 production lines began operating simultaneously.
Each production line contained six million drawing units. Every second, each unit could pull 20 meters of a fine filament, just 50 micrometers in diameter and barely visible to the naked eye.
A single drawing unit could produce about 1.72 million meters of this filament in a day.
The six million filaments produced by the drawing units working in concert were then woven together, forming a thick cable with a diameter of about 7 centimeters.
In one day, the 2,500 production lines could produce 4.3 million kilometers of this 7-centimeter diameter cable!
At this moment, nine standard-spec cables, each 5,000 kilometers long, were welded together using a special technique.
Its total length reached 45,000 kilometers, but its total mass was only just over 170 tons.
As mass production of Zero Fiber began, construction of the space elevator commenced in parallel.
Li Qingsong selected a site for the space elevator's ground anchor. He chose a location on Ganymede's equator, where the orbital velocity is highest and the required cable length is shortest. The decision was also based on geological stability and proximity to mineral deposits and industrial centers.
Massive construction began once again.
Here, Li Qingsong dug a huge pit 20 meters in diameter and 10,000 meters deep.
At the bottom of this great pit, Li Qingsong then began horizontal excavation, ultimately carving out an underground anchoring layer with an area of 300,000 square meters beneath Ganymede's thick layers of rock and ice.
One end of the space elevator cable extended down to here.
Here, Li Qingsong initiated another phase of construction. He used a massive fixture to anchor the end of the cable, then began pouring vast quantities of reinforced concrete to secure the fixture itself.
This way, the space elevator would be anchored by Ganymede's ten-kilometer-thick crust of rock and ice, eliminating any risk of it being ripped from the surface.