At the Pan-Asian Ministry of Science and Technology, the conference room on the first floor was crowded at this moment.
The time for the start of the meeting was getting closer and closer. However, Academician Ge Huaizhi, who was sitting at the head of the conference table, had no intention of announcing the start of the conference. He just glanced back and forth between his watch and the door.
Seeing that the time was about to come, the assistant sitting next to him whispered, “Academician Ge… the meeting is about to begin.”
“I know,” he replied impatiently. Academician Ge cast his gaze to the door again and said casually, “Where’s Academician Lu? Is he coming?”
A wry smile appeared on the assistant’s face as he replied in a quiet voice, “He… replied to our email that he would consider our invitation, but he didn’t seem to say that he would definitely come.”
What is that guy doing?
He’s the Chief Consultant, but he’s not even attending such an important meeting.
Although he knew that his academic status was not enough to criticize the big man, Ge Huaizhi couldn’t help but sigh heavily at Lu Zhou’s unreliability.
“Consider our invitation? Look at the time… He probably won’t come.” He glanced at the people in the conference room. After a moment of silence, Academician Ge lowered his voice. Still unwilling to give up, he said to his assistant, “Go outside. If he is lost… bring him over here.”
After hearing these words, a wry smile appeared on the assistant’s face, but he didn’t say anything. He just nodded before walking out of the meeting room.
After his assistant left, the door of the conference room was closed again. Academician Ge sighed and cast his sights on the bustling conference room.
He reached out his knuckles and knocked hard on the table. He waited for the meeting room to quiet down before he spoke in a serious tone.
“The meeting outline has been posted, so I won’t waste everyone’s time.
“This meeting is very important, and I hope everyone can pay extra attention.
“Then, let’s begin.”
Everyone knew that even though the space elevator had the word “elevator”, it was not the same as the conventional elevator known by most people. This elevator wasn’t built from the bottom up, but from the top down.
Which meant they had to first select an area on the ground with relatively stable geological activity as the anchorage, then build a space station on the geosynchronous orbit above the anchorage.
Then from this space station, they had to lower the “ladder” bit by bit before finally landing it on the anchorage.
It was precisely because of this that this space station above the geosynchronous orbit could be said to be the most important component besides the ladder itself.
Taking into account the importance of this space, the Space Elevator Project Office collected design proposals for the design of this space station in the form of open tender, from both academia and industries within the Pan-Asian Cooperation.
Considering the investment scale and strategic significance of the project, almost all scientific research units or enterprises engaged in space station design or space engineering research within the Pan-Asian Cooperation had participated in the bidding of the project.
As for the purpose of this meeting… It was natural to evaluate the design schemes of these research institutions and enterprises at an expert evaluation meeting.
The expert team for bid evaluation was personally led by Academician Ge. The core researchers of the entire space elevator project team participated in this meeting.
They soon began to dive into the main topic.
The first to be displayed was the design plan of the Institute of Aerospace Science and Technology of Yanjing University.
As a 40-year-old man walked to the center of the circular meeting room, he put a thumb-sized cassette on the projection device located in the center of the meeting room.
Soon, a blue light beam appeared in the center of the meeting room, and a ring-shaped space station about a meter high and a foot wide appeared in front of everyone.
The experts in the aerospace field who were sitting here today were no strangers to this middle-aged professor.
As an expert in the field of aerospace engineering, Professor Zhu Haiqing, who taught at Yan University, had participated in the design of the Atlantis space station and was considered a well-known big name in both industry and academia.
The design plan launched by the Institute of Aerospace Engineering of Yan University was completed by the research team led by Professor Zhu.
“This is the design plan of our Yan University Aerospace Research Institute.
“Referring to the design of the Tianzhou space station, we have divided the entire space station into residential, commercial, and industrial areas, which are distributed from the inside to the outside.
“The counterweight rod located in the center of the space station is the core of the entire design plan. Considering that as the quality of the space station changes, the center of gravity of the space elevator will float up and down in geosynchronous orbit. This design can ensure that the center of gravity of the space elevator is always in the right position.”
When telling this design proposal, the man had a confident smile on his face.
After listening to his explanation, whispers were spreading in the conference room.
Looking directly at the holographic blueprint floating in the beam, Professor Zhang, who was sitting next to Academician Ge, whispered, “What do you think of this plan?”
“It’s quite satisfactory.” Academician Ge touched his chin and continued after a moment of indulgence, “As of now, I can’t see any problems.”
Professor Zhang smiled and said, “If even you can’t see any problems, it’s a good plan then?”
“Don’t say that. No one has actually built a space elevator before, so past experience doesn’t matter. We all cross the river by feeling the stones; no one is better than anyone.” Academician Ge continued, “Let’s look at a few more plans.”
Professor Zhang, who was also one of the review committee members, nodded and said in agreement, “You’re right.”
After finishing the final explanation, Professor Zhu Haiqing, who was standing in the center of the meeting, bowed slightly to the members of the review committee before leaving the meeting room.
Next up was Academician Liu Binrui from the Institute of Aeronautics of the Jinling Institute for Advanced Study.
Academician Liu was also an incredible expert. Although he was 60 years old, he was still active at the forefront of aerospace engineering research. And unlike Professor Zhang of Yan University, he had considerable practical experience in the design of large space stations.
This included both the Lagrange Space Base for the Pan-Asian Cooperation and the new orbital transfer station over Tiangong City. His research results were applied to these large projects.
Although the review meeting was on the proposal instead of the qualifications of the bidder and the academic resume of the project leader, everyone had to admit that the results of this big name, compared to those that were sent by low-end research institutions, were much more impressive.
After seeing the plan proposed by Academician Liu, the expression on Academician Ge’s face became more and more tangled.
It wasn’t because the plan was bad.
But because both seemed good that he didn’t know which choice to make.
“Let’s go through all the plans first… Wait until the end to make a selection.” After making a mark on the form, Academician Ge glanced at Professor Zhang next to him and continued to ask, “How are the preparations on the matrix side? Has the application been completed?”
Professor Zhang nodded.
“The Ministry of Science and Technology has already contacted the military through the chairman of the board, and they agreed for us to use the matrix for twelve hours.”
The matrix was an array of quantum computers seized from the hands of The Awakened.
Although they hadn’t figured out where this “matrix” came from or who built it and for what purpose, the research conducted by the Pan-Asian Academy of Science had finally eliminated most of the danger.
Considering that this supercomputer was used for scientific research, especially in the field of computational simulation, it had an unparalleled powerful performance. This time, Academician Ge deliberately used the space elevator project team’s scientific research priority privileges and applied to use this supercomputer for the calculation and simulation of the space elevator design schemes.
“Twelve hours?”
After a while, Academician Ge nodded and said to himself, “It should be enough.”
…
In fact, it took way less than twelve hours.
Most of the waiting time was consumed in the long communication distance and relatively narrow communication bandwidth.
If it was just calculations, for the quantum computer array buried deep under the asteroid’s surface, twelve hours was simply unnecessary.
Just a few minutes might be enough.
Finally, they went through all the design plans. After synthesizing the opinions of other researchers in the project team, Academician Ge announced the filtered list and expressed his gratitude for the active participation of those research units that were eliminated.
The next step was to verify the calculations and simulations on the supercomputer.
All the data was transmitted to Ceres hundreds of millions of kilometers away. After being tested by the quantum supercomputing array there, the staff of the space elevator project team received the returned data from the Pan-Asian Academy of Sciences.
Looking at the project list projected on the holographic screen, Professor Zhang cast a questioning glance at Academician Ge, who was sitting next to him.
“Which one to start first?”
Academician Ge pondered for a while and said, “Let’s start with Yan University’s plan.”
His first impression of Professor Zhu’s plan was quite good. Professor Zhu should be able to get a good evaluation result.
And if the first result was good news, it would undoubtedly be a huge boost to the morale of the entire space elevator project team.
Both Academician Ge and Professor Zhu Haiqing were full of confidence in the results of the evaluation!
Professor Zhang nodded quickly. He quickly typed on the holographic keyboard. Soon, the simulation results of the Yan University’s design scheme appeared in the holographic beam.
However, the moment they saw this result, almost everyone showed a surprised expression on their faces. Their hearts instantly sank to the bottom of their stomachs.
The originally expected picture of the stable operation for the space elevator did not appear. Instead, there was scattered space junk floating in geosynchronous orbit and calculation parameters marked in red.
The largest number caught everyone’s attention.
Plan success rate…
Less than 3%!
What the hell?!
