145: Chapter 145 Anti-gravity levitation assembly, nanoscale blade resonance!
Deep in the night, the B2 level of the Pangu Laboratory was quiet.
The Yiren AI Core diverted twenty percent of its computing power, silently pointing toward the edge of the Solar System.
The monitoring module was locked, with no extra pop-ups.
Su Che hit Enter, cutting off the display interface of that incomplete scan file.
Lin Waner placed the portable milk tea machine on the corner of the desk.
"Get some sleep early. The materials will arrive tomorrow," she said, unplugging the power cord and pushing the cup over.
Su Che picked up the cup and finished the lukewarm black tea.
...
Nine in the morning.
Qin Lan walked over holding a tablet.
"Three thousand tons of special titanium-aluminum alloy have been unloaded at Workshop No. 3 of the Kaitian Base."
Su Che pulled the keyboard over and connected to the remote dedicated line.
The main screen split into two; on the left was the Candle Dragon at the Kaitian Base, and on the right was the test area of the Pangu Laboratory's B2 level.
Wen Bo stood behind Su Che with several researchers from the materials group.
"Chief Engineer Su, this titanium-aluminum alloy has extremely high hardness. Traditional cutting is prone to creating micro-cracks," Wen Bo said, pushing up his reading glasses. "The duct blades require nanoscale curvature. The processing loss rate will be at least forty percent."
Chief Engineer Su did not reply.
He entered the 3D parameters of the guide vanes into the terminal.
He pressed the Enter key.
On the Kaitian Base screen, a transparent quantum force field unfolded.
Tons of titanium-aluminum alloy ingots floated up, their surfaces rapidly liquefying.
Atomic-level stripping and reorganization began.
There were no sparks, no debris.
A six-meter-long, perfectly streamlined silver-gray guide vane "grew" out of thin air within the force field.
It took eleven minutes.
Wen Bo stared at the real-time detection data on the screen.
"Surface roughness... zero." Wen Bo took off his reading glasses, wiped the lenses with the corner of his clothing, and put them back on.
"Material utilization rate is one hundred percent. No waste," Chief Engineer Su said, bringing up the parameters for the next blade. "Qin Lan, have the transport aircraft wait outside the Kaitian Base. As soon as a batch is ready, transport it; air-drop it directly to the Pangu Quantum Computer."
Qin Lan turned to issue the instructions.
At two in the afternoon, the first batch of thirty guide vanes arrived at the B2 level.
Academician Li Zhengyang and the people from the power and structure groups gathered in the unloading area.
The six-meter-long blades weighed over two tons each.
Academician Li Zhengyang looked at the blueprints with a worried expression.
"Chief Engineer Su," Academician Li Zhengyang walked to the console, "the blade curvature is perfect, but assembly is impossible."
Su Che looked up from the blueprints.
"There are seventy-two duct holes, and each hole needs four guide vanes embedded," Academician Li Zhengyang pointed to the tolerance requirements on the blueprint. "The gap requirement is less than 0.01 millimeters. For these two-ton monsters, if we use a gantry crane to hoist them over, the slightest sway of the steel cables will cause scratches."
With nanoscale precision blades, a single bump would ruin them completely.
The fifty-six academicians were highly experienced in engineering, but faced with this dual torture of precision and weight, traditional hoisting methods were all ineffective.
Su Che stood up.
He walked to the edge of the test area, looking at the blades resting flat on the alloy racks.
"No gantry crane," Chief Engineer Su said.
He turned to look at Wen Bo.
"Academician Wen, can the previously installed Anti-gravity base support single-point fine-tuning of the field strength?"
Wen Bo was stunned for a moment, then quickly flipped open the notebook in his hand.
"Twelve tons of graphene were laid at the base, and there are three hundred and sixty coupling nodes. Single-point fine-tuning is possible, but it requires massive computing power to support real-time stress changes."
Chief Engineer Su walked back to the console.
"Core, take over the single-point control of the Anti-gravity base," Chief Engineer Su said, tapping the keyboard.
The standby interface of the Yiren AI instantly covered the main screen.
"Initiate micro-gravity suspension assembly mode."
Chief Engineer Su entered the command.
The Anti-gravity nodes on the floor of the test area lit up with a faint blue light.
The alloy rack fixing the first guide vane emitted a slight metallic friction sound.
The two-ton blade slowly rose into the air.
There were no steel cables, no crane arms; it just hovered three meters off the ground, as steady as if it had been welded into the air.
Academician Li Zhengyang walked over quickly and reached out to push the edge of the blade.
It didn't budge.
"The Anti-gravity field cancels out gravity, and the core calculated your thrust in real-time and provided reverse compensation," Chief Engineer Su said, looking at the screen. "Right now, it is physically in a state of weightlessness and locked."
Academician Li Zhengyang turned back and looked at Chief Engineer Su.
"Old Qian!" Academician Li Zhengyang shouted to the distance. "Bring the people from the precision group over! Start pushing!"
The entire B2 level turned into an unprecedented interstellar assembly line.
Chief Engineer Su sat in front of the main console, his hands typing continuously on the keyboard, deploying every node of the Anti-gravity field.
The Yiren AI Core processed massive amounts of spatial coordinate data.
One by one, the two-ton guide vanes were steadily supported by the Anti-gravity field and fed into the duct holes at the bottom of the hundred-thousand-ton frame.
Academician Li Zhengyang and Academician Qian Zhenhua, along with dozens of researchers, stood on the lifting platform wearing anti-static suits.
They didn't need to exert effort to move them.
They only needed to use their fingers to gently guide the floating blades and push them into the predetermined slots.
A 0.01-millimeter gap.
Under the absolute stability of the Anti-gravity field, the blades slid into the inner wall of the duct seamlessly.
"Click."
The sound of the lock engaging was crisp and decisive.
"First group, hole number one, in position!" Academician Li Zhengyang shouted over the communication channel.
"Hole number two in position!"
Jiang Yingxue sat on an equipment box behind Chief Engineer Su.
She had a tablet on her lap, constantly checking the production progress transmitted from the Kaitian Base.
"The second batch of sixty blades has been loaded and taken off; they are expected to be air-dropped in forty minutes," Jiang Yingxue reported the data.
Chief Engineer Su nodded.
Lin Waner pushed a dining cart into the hall.
There were dozens of insulated lunch boxes on the cart.
"Take turns eating; don't starve your stomachs." She parked the cart in the break area and started taking them out one by one.
Several old academicians came down from the lifting platform and walked to the break area.
Academician Wen Bo picked up a lunch box and opened the lid; braised pork ribs, normal color, the aroma of meat was enticing.
"Chief Engineer Su's logistics support is even better than what we have at the academy," Academician Wen Bo said, taking a bite of rice.
Chief Engineer Su did not go to the break area.
Lin Waner walked to the console with a separate lunch box and placed it beside his hand.
Chief Engineer Su picked up a spoon and ate while looking at the data.
The ribs were stewed very tenderly, and the saltiness was just right.
He looked at Lin Waner.
"The chef made it," Lin Waner said, tidying up the loose wires on the table. "I watched him add the dark soy sauce."
...
The third day of the five-day deadline, three in the afternoon.
The guide vanes for the first eighteen force field duct holes were all assembled.
In the center of the test area, at the bottom of the hundred-thousand-ton frame, the eighteen huge duct openings presented a perfect metallic texture.
The guide vanes gleamed with a cold, hard luster under the lights.
Academician Li Zhengyang walked to the console, holding a paper report.
"Chief Engineer Su, the first batch of assembly is complete, and the dimensional tolerances all meet the standards."
Chief Engineer Su stopped typing code.
"Perform a local wind tunnel simulation," Chief Engineer Su ordered.
He brought up the testing module for the duct airflow control technology.
Below the test bench, the high-pressure air pump array started.
Simulating the strong convective gas during the takeoff and landing of the hundred-thousand-ton mothership, it violently poured into the number one duct hole at a speed of three hundred meters per second.
The airflow struck the guide vanes, emitting a sharp whistling sound.
On the main screen, the aerodynamic data refreshed rapidly.
The airflow was perfectly cut and redirected by the blades, and the turbulent red circles at the bottom dissipated rapidly in the simulation diagram, transforming into a stable blue lift field.
"The aerodynamic model is valid," Academician Li Zhengyang said, looking at the screen and clutching the report in his hand.
Chief Engineer Su's gaze was fixed on a set of secondary data in the bottom right corner of the screen.
That was the microscopic stress monitoring of the blade surface.
When the airflow had been continuously scouring for forty seconds, a set of green data suddenly jumped to yellow.
Along with the change in data, an extremely slight "click" sound came from inside the number one duct hole.
The sound was covered by the roaring airflow, and an ordinary person wouldn't be able to hear it at all.
But Chief Engineer Su heard it.
He slammed the master control lever down, and the high-pressure air pump stopped instantly.
Only the lingering sound of the dissipating airflow remained in the hall.
Academician Li Zhengyang paused, "Why did you stop?"
Chief Engineer Su stood up and picked up the high-intensity flashlight on the table.
He walked toward the number one duct hole, and Academician Li Zhengyang and several researchers followed quickly.
Chief Engineer Su stood under the huge duct opening, turned on the flashlight, and the light beam hit the internal guide vanes.
The surface of the six-meter-long blade was as clean as before.
But Chief Engineer Su's light beam followed the edge of the blade, moving up inch by inch, finally stopping at the connection point between the blade and the slot of the duct inner wall.
Academician Li Zhengyang leaned over to look.
A white crack less than two millimeters long appeared on the titanium-aluminum alloy at the edge of the slot.
The crack was extremely thin, like a strand of hair.
But in aerospace engineering, this meant it was scrapped.
"This... this is impossible." Academician Wen Bo squeezed over from behind, looking at the crack. "The material was generated at the atomic level by the Candle Dragon; there are absolutely no defects inside. The assembly was also micro-gravity suspension, with no stress concentration. How could it crack?"
Chief Engineer Su turned off the flashlight.
"It's not a material problem, and it's not an assembly problem."
Chief Engineer Su turned around and looked at the several academicians in front of him.
"It's resonance."
Chief Engineer Su walked toward the console.
"The Anti-gravity field frequency of the hundred-thousand-ton platform coupled and interfered with the natural frequency of this batch of titanium-aluminum alloy. Once the airflow hit it, the blades produced high-frequency oscillation at the nanoscale level."
He brought up the previous test data and pointed to the yellow curve.
"At this amplitude, the mothership wouldn't even be one hundred meters off the ground before all the guide vanes shattered."
The hall was silent.
Three days of the five-day deadline had already passed.
The materials were processed, the assembly was complete, but they were stuck on the most fundamental physical resonance.
"It's too late to change the materials," Academician Li Zhengyang said, his voice heavy. "Changing the Anti-gravity field frequency will affect the load-bearing capacity of the entire frame."
Chief Engineer Su pulled the swivel chair over and sat down. He looked at the two-millimeter crack data on the main screen and tapped his fingers on the desk twice.
"We won't change the material, and we won't change the frequency."
Chief Engineer Su said.
He brought up the auxiliary technology library of the system panel.
"We'll put a layer of clothes on the blades."