Chapter 261 Cheap

Chapter 261 Cheap

Chapter 261 Cheap
The Blue Whale 1001 airship left Weicheng Airport and returned to Minqin Airport at around 9 o'clock that evening after 27 hours and minutes.

The reason why the return trip took two hours longer was naturally because we were flying against the wind.

Not only did the time consumption increase, but the unit energy consumption also increased by nearly one-third.

The cost accounting office of Blue Whale Airship Company has now conducted a comprehensive review and cost accounting for this actual flight.

Wan Gaofeng, who was still in the airship remote control center, sat on an ergonomic chair and listened to the report.

"Mr. Wan, based on various data, we have completed the cost accounting for this test flight, taking into account the depreciation of the airship, energy consumption, airport and waterway usage fees, insurance, manpower and management. The current cost is 0.114 yuan per ton per kilometer, while our charging standard is 0.2 yuan per ton per kilometer."

Wan Gaofeng looked at the cost accounting items one by one: "Six containers, with a total weight of 6 tons, transported from Weicheng Airport to Minqin Airport, the total cost is 192 yuan, 32640 yuan per container?"

"Yes, Mr. Wan, the maximum load of each of these new containers is 31.5 tons, which is about 1 yuan per ton. This cost is already very low."

In response to this question, Wan Gaofeng also saw the freight reference comparison data.

The distance from Weicheng to Minqin County by road transportation is about 986 kilometers.

The cost of transporting 190 tons of cargo by road will vary depending on factors such as the mode of transport and the type of vehicle.

If the whole vehicle is transported, a semi-trailer with a load capacity of about 30 tons is selected, which requires about 7 vehicles. According to the quotations of some logistics companies, the price of whole vehicle transportation for about 1000 kilometers is between 500 and 600 yuan per ton, and the total cost is about 9.5 to 11.4 yuan.

If it is LTL transportation, the prices of LTL transportation of different logistics companies vary greatly, averaging about 400 yuan per ton. The transportation cost of 190 tons of goods is about 7.6 yuan.

The airship only costs 2.448 yuan.

This cost is basically the same as the cost of sea transportation and slightly lower than inland waterway transportation.

It directly kills road transportation. After all, the speed of road transportation is slower than that of airship, its carrying capacity is also smaller than that of airship, and its energy consumption is relatively large.

Of course, road transportation is also irreplaceable. For example, for short-distance transportation, the flexibility of airships is definitely not as good as road transportation.

At this time, the cargo unloaded by Blue Whale 1001 was towed by a large truck to the Hailufeng Storage Center in Minqin County.

At the same time, another batch of containers of semi-finished artificial silk were loaded onto the airship and flew to Weicheng Airport again.

However, the exclusive pilot of the airship remote control center had already completed his shift.

In order to avoid traffic accidents caused by fatigue driving, the pilots at the airship remote control center are usually in groups of two. One group controls the airship for eight hours. Unless there are special circumstances, they work around the clock.

Now it is the second group of pilots who are in charge of the airship.

Currently, Blue Whale Airship Company has joined hands with the Logistics Division to train 50 groups of professional pilots in advance, as well as a large number of ground staff and air traffic controllers.

From the northwest to the northeast, 11 airports are being built simultaneously.

On the contrary, the airport projects in North China, Jiangnan, Southwest China and South China have been progressing relatively slowly. It is not because of deliberate obstruction by local governments. On the contrary, after hearing about Hailufeng’s airport projects, those areas with inconvenient transportation hope that Hailufeng can build airports locally.

However, at present these projects are just intentions, and there are no implemented projects.

The reasons are very complicated.

On the one hand, the inland population is dense, and it is obviously difficult to find a piece of vacant land of at least 5 square kilometers to build an airport.

On the other hand, the density of aircraft and drones in the mainland is relatively high. Although the airship flies at low altitude, the airspace still needs to be coordinated. This issue is still under discussion.

Of course, for coastal areas, Hailufeng Company plans to build offshore airports to avoid occupying too much land.

Since airships and airplanes cannot use the same airport, the current idea of ​​the civil aviation sector is to establish a low-altitude aviation system that is completely independent of aircraft.

Why not merge it into the existing civil aviation management system? The answer is to compete for industry standards.

You should know that the current civil aviation system is based on the systems and standards of Europe and the United States, and the airworthiness certificate of large aircraft must pass the review of Europe and the United States.

If airships and airship airports are also incorporated into the existing civil aviation system, the result will be to refer to European and American aviation standards.

We can build airships from scratch, so why should we refer to European and American aviation standards? Wouldn’t it be better to build our own set?

Anyway, it is impossible for airship airports and airplane airports to be interchangeable, so it is better to be direct and build an independent airship aviation system.

Moreover, special bean silk materials and products will not be exported casually, especially artificial spider silk types, which are basically not allowed to be exported abroad. This means that the airship will not be promoted overseas in the short term, so there is no need to consider foreign standards.

Once the domestic airship aviation technology has fully matured and formed a complete system, foreign countries that want to introduce it can only learn from this standard. Those regions with average strength simply do not have the ability to independently build their own airship aviation system.

Although the European Union and America have the ability to independently build airship aviation systems, they have huge internal problems and are full of uncertainties. They will inevitably be key control areas for airship technology, and there is no need to consider their markets in the short term.

Therefore, at this stage, airship aviation is mainly promoted domestically, while gradually establishing a set of management and operation standards.

Of course, Hailufeng Company is also aware that with the efficient operation of the Blue Whale airship test flight, other companies will also enter this transportation market.

In order to build a comprehensive airship transportation system, Hailufeng Company has begun preparations for the construction of the Universal Airport Group and plans to introduce investments from all parties.

This is an inevitable choice.

After all, due to the huge size of the new airship, the required airport area is also very large. As a result, many regions can only build one large airship airport, and even many eastern cities can only have one airship airport shared by several cities.

In this case, it is difficult for Hailufeng Company alone to fully coordinate the interests of all parties.

Moreover, the government will not allow the airship transportation industry to be monopolized by one company. In the future, there will definitely be multiple airship transportation companies in the country.

At present, the Northwest and Northeast regions have obvious first-mover advantages in developing the low-altitude transportation industry, mainly because these regions have large areas of wasteland and are sparsely populated, making it relatively convenient to plan waterways and airports.

Especially in the northwest region, airship transportation has overwhelming advantages over road and rail transportation.

After all, many local cities are very far away.

For example, Gansu Province is 1659 kilometers from east to west; the east-west distance of southern Mobei is 2400 kilometers; the east-west distance of the Western Region is 1950 kilometers, and the north-south distance is 1550 kilometers.

Given such distances, the construction and maintenance costs of roads and railways connecting each city are extremely high.

This transportation difficulty due to long distances has resulted in the cost of transporting agricultural products and mineral resources from the northwest to eastern cities being higher than imported products shipped by sea from abroad. This is the consequence of high transportation costs.

The new airship can fundamentally solve this problem.

Break geographical restrictions and further integrate the Northwest’s economic system into the Eastern economic system.

...

Over the next week or so.

The Blue Whale 1001 airship flies between Minqin and Weicheng every day, and each round trip takes about 16 to 17 hours.

During the eight days, except for a return to the factory for maintenance on the third day, the rest of the time was spent flying, with a total of 11 round trips and a total transportation of 4180 tons of cargo.

Among them, Minqin's exports are mainly boron bean silk, silicon bean silk, artificial silk and silk fabrics.

The products exported from Weicheng are mainly high-purity borax, tropical fruits, daily necessities, precision instruments, engineering equipment, etc.

Minqin in December.

It was freezing cold at this time.

There was a little snow these days, but the amount of snow was not enough to cover the ground and was quickly cleared away by the strong wind and sunshine the next day.

However, Minqin County was very lively at this time because the huge investment of Hailufeng Company here caused the population here to soar by nearly 6.

You know, the population of Minqin County was just over 7 before, but now 6 people have suddenly poured in, almost doubling the population.

At the same time, the population from the surrounding rural areas also concentrated in the city.

Fortunately, Minqin High-tech Zone has prepared enough houses. In order to ensure that the supporting facilities of the industrial park can be put into use before winter, China Railway Construction Group, which contracted the project, has transferred several thousand construction workers in the past six months.

Currently, there are nearly 1.8 houses built in the industrial park, and there are nearly 6800 temporary container houses.

In order to avoid health risks during the renovation process, these houses are decorated in an industrial style, with whitewashed walls, tiled floors, and furniture that is either made of iron or reinforced concrete, or custom-made from Silicon Bean Components Factory. Zhang Xiangdong, who came here from southern Henan to work, brought his wife, children, and mother with him to facilitate his work.

He has just returned from the textile factory.

Then I saw my wife Su Xiaomei was laying out something.

"Xiaomei, did you buy the floor?" Zhang Xiangdong asked curiously as he put the coat he had just found at the door on the coat rack.

"Yes! I bought it with the money on your employee card. It's quite cheap, only thirty-five yuan per square meter after discount." Su Xiaomei spread pieces of abaca carpet on the ground, and then stuck their edges together with the Velcro that came with it.

Zhang Xiangdong took off his sneakers, stepped on it and found it was abaca cloth: "Isn't this abaca cloth from Qiongzhou? This kind of product has been made now?"

"I saw many people were buying them, so I ordered some. It's just right to decorate the living room, otherwise it would be too monotonous." Su Xiaomei stood up: "Xiangdong, lift the sofa together, I will hide the corners under the sofa."

"it is good."

The couple worked together to lift the sofa and laid the rest of the carpet on top.

This type of carpet is an abaca carpet with imitation wood grain, and each piece is one square meter in area, making it convenient for consumers to arrange it according to the size of their room.

Their small living room is only 16 square meters in size, which is exactly the right amount of 16 carpets.

After fixing the carpets and resetting the sofa and other furniture, Su Xiaomei finally let out a sigh of relief: "Huh..."

"Eat some fruit. I just bought some at the supermarket on my way back." Zhang Xiangdong came out after washing the fruit and called out to his mother and son in the room, "Mom, little pig, come out and eat some fruit."

"Here I come!" His impetuous son Zhang Xuanzhe ran out with his cell phone.

Wang Hongxia, the mother who was still taking a lunch break, wiped her eyes and walked out of the room slowly, yawning as she walked: "Ha... Dongzi, you're back? How was your work today?"

"Same old as always." Zhang Xiangdong handed the cut navel orange to his mother.

"You bought so many fruits. Fruits are not cheap in this winter." Wang Hongxia felt a little distressed when looking at the big plate of fruits.

"Mom, the purpose of life is to eat and drink. Otherwise, what's the point of making money? Besides, fruits have become much cheaper recently." Zhang Xiangdong did not agree with the consumption concept of the older generation. He picked up a large piece of pineapple and started eating.

His wife Su Xiaomei remained silent. After all, she knew her mother-in-law's character well. As a daughter-in-law, if she opened her mouth to refute her mother-in-law, she would be unpopular.

As for Zhang Xuanzhe, who was only eight years old, he didn't care about money. He ate the mango with big mouthfuls, and his eyes were fixed on the pineapple, dragon fruit and navel orange on the plate.

However, Su Xiaomei was quite shrewd. She was worried that her mother-in-law would get angry with her husband again and run back to her hometown in southern Henan. Then she would have to pick up and drop off her son from school and cook for herself, so she quickly changed the subject:

"Xiangdong, how much cheaper are fruits these days?"

"This red pitaya is three yuan a pound, and the navel orange seems to be..." Zhang Xiangdong put down the orange peel and took out the receipt from his trouser pocket: "Navel oranges are four yuan a pound, star fruit is four yuan and two yuan a pound, and mango is four yuan and five yuan a pound."

"It's really much cheaper." Su Xiaomei, who often buys fruit, was quite surprised: "A few days ago, a pound was two or three yuan more expensive than this. Why did the price suddenly drop?"

Zhang Xiangdong picked up another piece of carambola and said, "It should be related to the airship from the airship company. The airship has been flying these days and has brought a lot of fruits from Weicheng."

"Is that so? I did see an airship flying over from the south. It turns out that the airship was used for transportation. I wonder if it can carry passengers."

Zhang Xiangdong shook his head: "It shouldn't be possible. The airship is full of hydrogen. If it explodes, it will be terrible."

"No wonder my boss has been smiling these days. It turns out that the prices of vegetables and fruits have dropped." Su Xiaomei was talking about her work.

Wang Hongxia finally finished a piece of navel orange slowly, and then picked up a piece of red dragon fruit: "Xiaomei, how is your restaurant business?"

"It's good. Hunan cuisine is definitely more popular in this cold weather."

While eating a navel orange, Zhang Xuanzhe said incoherently: "Mom, let's go eat grilled fish!"

"Didn't we eat it a few days ago? Wait a few days!"

"No, I just want to eat."

"Huh?" Su Xiaomei widened her eyes.

"Uh..." Zhang Xuanzhe was suppressed all of a sudden.

Ate fruit.

Zhang Xiangdong, who hadn't taken a shower for several days, took some clean clothes and went to the shower room to take a shower.

Turn on the music on your phone.

As the gentle melody slowly sounded in the shower room, the sound of dripping water also echoed in it.

After applying shower gel, Zhang Xiangdong took a piece of loofah and rubbed his skin.

The shower water flows into a special pipe through the floor drain and reaches a sewage pool specially built underground in the community.

Then, pure water is quickly extracted from the sewage, and the pure water quickly enters the circulation pipe and becomes non-drinking water for households in the community again.

In this way, even if the population of Minqin County has increased by nearly 80,000, it can still achieve relatively abundant per capita water supply.

At present, the recycling rate of non-drinking water in residential areas can reach about 95%. Even if each person uses 1 cubic meter of non-drinking fresh water every day, under such a high recycling rate, it is only equivalent to consuming 0.05 cubic meters of fresh water.

In other words, the amount of fresh water actually consumed by these residents in a year is only equivalent to 18.25 cubic meters.

With an additional population of 146, about million cubic meters of fresh water will be consumed each year.

In addition, the old residential areas have also begun to be gradually transformed.

You should know that before the technological transformation, the annual water consumption for daily life and livestock in Minqin County was about 1245 million cubic meters, which supported the local population of .

If the sewage treatment system and water pipelines are comprehensively renovated and upgraded, and the drinking water for poultry and livestock is cut off, it is estimated that the entire Minqin County will only need about 500 million cubic meters of fresh water for domestic use, which can save 745 million cubic meters of fresh water.

The saved fresh water will be used as industrial water in Minqin High-tech Industrial Park.

The high-tech industrial park has also fully adopted water-saving technologies in its water usage, ensuring that the water recycling rate within the park can reach 95%.

This will allow 745 million cubic meters of fresh water to basically have the same effect as 1.49 million cubic meters of fresh water.

After all, one cubic meter of fresh water needs to circulate about 20 times before it is basically consumed.

This means that the region's available water resources have increased by about 20 times.

Of course, the technological improvement in the scale of water resources available is limited to cities and industrial areas. If the water resources used in agriculture, animal husbandry and rural areas are difficult to recycle and reuse.

After all, water for irrigation, water for livestock and poultry, and domestic water in small rural areas are either difficult to recycle or it is not cost-effective to build a special pipeline network and water purification system.

But as time goes by.

All parts of Gansu Province have also learned from Minqin and are preparing to comprehensively transform the water supply network in towns and industrial areas starting next year to ensure that the scale of domestic and industrial water use is reduced while the current amount of water resources does not increase, and a part of the excess water will be used for agricultural use and ecological replenishment.

This could further enhance Gansu's agricultural potential while restoring the ecosystem of a portion of the river.

In fact, it is not just Gansu Province that has such an ambitious plan. Qin Province, Mo Nan, the Western Regions, and Jin Province, which are generally subject to water resource constraints and have no way to obtain fresh water through seawater desalination technology, have all begun to study how to maximize the internal water recycling rate.

This is the most feasible solution to solve the water shortage problem in these areas at present.

As for the idea of ​​laying water pipelines from the coast to transport water inland.

Except for large flat plains like the North China Plain, there is basically no need to fantasize about those secondary terrace areas located inland with relatively high terrain.

Even the water transfer plan for the eastern part of the southern desert envisioned by Hailufeng Company is feasible only because the eastern part of the southern desert is very close to the Bohai Sea and there are a large number of natural rivers that can be used.

However, areas like the central and western parts of Monan, Shanxi Province, Qin Province, Gansu Province, Hetao, and the Western Regions do not have the conditions for large-scale long-distance water transport.

Therefore, the optimal solution at present is to increase the local water recycling rate as much as possible and increase the diversion of the Yellow River flow.

(End of this chapter)