Chapter 360 Side Effects
Chapter 360 Side Effects
"Got it..." Jiang Miao hung up the phone and looked at the report on the table with deep eyes.
The title of the report clearly reads: Report on Research on the Atmosphere of Venus.
He murmured to himself in a voice that only he could hear clearly: "There is water, and the water content is not small..."
Gently turning the ballpoint pen in his hand, Jiang Miao closed the report after a while. Due to this unexpected discovery, the aerospace management department of the Asian Federation also responded quickly.
If we say that the space management department of the Asian Federation has been struggling with the investment intensity in the three major directions of the moon, Mars and Venus.
Now Blue Whale Aerospace's discovery of the Venus atmosphere has played a decisive role, making them more inclined to focus on investing in the Venus exploration plan.
Of course, this does not mean that the Asian Federation will not develop the moon and Mars.
之前亚洲联合体在这三个星球的投资力度上，大概在6:6:4:1:1左右。
That is, the lunar project accounts for 30%, the Earth's near-Earth orbit project investment is 30%, the Mars project investment is 20%, the Venus project investment is 10%, and other aerospace projects investment is 10%.
For example, China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation focuses its main efforts on low-Earth orbit projects and lunar projects. The investment in other projects is relatively small, and the emphasis is on participation.
Many other private aerospace companies and official aerospace companies owned by member states of the Asian Commonwealth are also concentrated in low-Earth orbit, the moon and Mars. Venus is indeed a planet that few aerospace companies are willing to set foot on.
This situation occurred mainly because the multiple Venus exploration missions of Chilusia and America in the last century all ended in failure. The one that barely succeeded, Chilusia, only allowed the probe to operate on the surface of Venus for a short time before it was destroyed by the terrible environment on the surface of Venus.
In fact, among the eight exploration airships of Blue Whale Aerospace, the three airships that floated at a relatively low position only operated for a short time before losing contact in the atmosphere of Venus.
The five airships in higher altitudes survived and have been floating in the atmosphere of Venus for nearly a month.
The report in Jiang Miao's hand is the first analysis report on the atmosphere of Venus compiled by Gu Linyu based on the detection data of this month. This is also the first time in human history that the atmosphere of Venus has been so comprehensively understood.
Compared to Mars, which is more distant and has less solar energy resources, Venus is far ahead of Mars in both distance from the Earth and amount of solar energy resources. In addition, with the discovery of easily collected water resources, the space management departments of the Asian Commonwealth have attached great importance to this planet.
In Gu Linyu's analysis report, he and several relevant researchers mentioned several plans for collecting water vapor from Venus' atmosphere.
These plans will be tested during subsequent launch missions by carrying past equipment.
For example, condensation collection method.
This plan adopts the principle of condenser, taking advantage of the high temperature environment of Venus' atmosphere, and the water-containing clouds pass through the condenser to collect a large amount of sulfuric acid solution, and then use a vacuum negative pressure nano water purifier to extract the water in the sulfuric acid solution.
This equipment will be equipped on special water-collecting airships.
There are also electrostatic adsorption solutions and diatomaceous earth nanocrystal adsorption solutions. Blue Whale Aerospace will adopt whichever one has higher efficiency and lower energy consumption.
However, Jiang Miao did not express any opinion on the matter of collecting water resources in the atmosphere of Venus, but he felt that the sandblasting storm in the middle airspace of Venus' atmosphere was a bit tricky.
After all, this sandblast storm poses too great a threat to airships.
Although human beings have good material technology now, such as high-strength tungsten steel composite plates, they can withstand high temperatures, high corrosion, and sandblasting storms.
But the problem is that airships cannot use fully covered tungsten steel composite plates. After all, airships need sufficient buoyancy, and tungsten steel plates are too heavy.
Even though the gas concentration in Venus' atmosphere is about 92 times that of the Earth's atmosphere, there is still no way to cover the entire surface of the airship with tungsten steel plates.
Although Jiang Miao was concerned about this matter, he did not ask Blue Whale Aerospace to solve the problem immediately, nor did he personally develop any new materials.
In fact, the overall strength of Hailufeng Group's silicon carbide nanotube material is still acceptable, but its wear and impact resistance is not as good as that of heavy metal elements. This is determined by the inherent physical properties of the elements, and no matter how much artificial modification is done, it is difficult to change this situation.
In the past few days, Gu Linyu also commissioned the materials laboratory of Hailufeng Group to conduct a large number of simulation experiments.
Fabrics woven with large areas of silicon carbide nanotubes can withstand the combined impact of sandblasting storms, sulfuric acid, and high temperatures for about 334 hours.
Taking into account the actual conditions of Venus' atmosphere, which is not as continuous and high-intensity as simulated in the laboratory, fabrics woven from this material are estimated to last for more than 1000 hours.
But this is still not as good as the specially made tungsten-steel composite plate. During the experiment, a one-centimeter-thick tungsten-steel composite plate could last for a month without any obvious cracks or holes.
If the thickness increases to two centimeters, the overall performance of the tungsten steel composite plate will be better.
Adding tungsten to the material can greatly improve the material's resistance to temperature, corrosion, physical impact and friction.
The upper limit of silicon carbide is obviously lower than that of special tungsten steel.
Using materials that can withstand the harsh environment of Venus' atmosphere is obviously a rather extreme approach.
Jiang Miao saw another solution proposed by a scientific research team of China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation at the end of the report.
They called that idea the "fishing plan."
The so-called fishing plan is to build a large floating platform in a high-altitude area with a relatively normal environment, and then arrange cables from the floating platform, use the cables to hang a special high-strength collection cabin, and let the collection cabin descend into the aquifer to collect water resources.
In this plan, the strength requirements of the collection cabin are guaranteed, and the problem that the airship is difficult to descend to the sandblasting airspace is solved.
It has only been about a month, and many research teams have come up with various solutions, which made Jiang Miao more reassured. Therefore, he chose to let things take their own course and only adjust the general direction of the Venus project from behind the scenes.
Jiang Miao also welcomed the Asian Federation's space administration's plan to increase investment in the exploration of Venus.
After all, it is impossible for the Hailufeng Group to monopolize a planet, nor does it have the power to fully develop Venus. This definitely requires the intervention of official forces.
Now that the government is willing to increase investment, he naturally has no objection.
In fact, the impact of the Venus exploration plan is still very large.
In other words, since the beginning of the Platinum Age, various scientific research projects of the Asian Federation have received tremendous support.
Science and engineering are becoming increasingly popular nowadays because after a large number of scientific research projects have been launched, many previous theoretical research have gradually entered the application stage.
For example, Hailufeng Group plans to invest 10 billion yuan in the Venus development plan over 5000 years. Such a huge capital investment was hard to imagine before the Platinum Age.
If official space agencies and private space companies are included, the Asian community's investment in the space sector reached 2147 billion yuan last year, and this year the figure will exceed 3000 billion yuan.
With the discovery of the existence of a large amount of water resources in the atmosphere of Venus, Jiang Miao estimates that the Asian Federation's investment in outer space exploration will continue to increase.
Jiang Miao rubbed his eyes and came back to his senses. He opened his work tablet and checked several internal confidential research reports.
These include the non-rejection organs he has been studying last year. In addition to the technical breakthroughs in eyeballs and kidneys, he started a research project on artificial livers last month.
Today, he routinely checked the progress reports of various laboratories and saw the internal paper completed by the laboratory of the artificial liver research project just yesterday.
This kind of internal paper is also what distinguishes Hailufeng Group from many other companies.
Since the establishment of the Asian Union and the North Atlantic Union, Hailufeng Group has been continuously strengthening its restrictions on various technology-related papers.
Papers like this one related to artificial organs basically do not appear on public paper platforms.
Although this will lead to the division of knowledge, Jiang Miao is not a selfless person, especially when it comes to the whole of humanity, he will not appear too selfless.
After all, European and American forces are far ahead in terms of being inhumane. If they are allowed to obtain the biotechnology of the Hailufeng Group, they might produce some world-destroying biochemical products in a secret laboratory one day.
The secret laboratories in the Amazon rainforest are a typical example.
After this incident, Jiang Miao became more wary of Europe and the United States.
In fact, he had removed those key technical contents from various papers a long time ago. Now, most of the papers published by Jiang Miao and his wife are monkey versions.
As I flipped through the pages, more than ten minutes had passed without me noticing.
"Huh?" Jiang Miao exclaimed in surprise when he saw the latter part of the progress report on the artificial organ laboratory. Then he stopped and re-read the previous pages. Touching the prickly stubble on his chin, he fell into deep thought.
After a moment, he picked up the intercom and dialed a number.
beep...
"Hello, boss? What's up?"
"Zhe Ting, I want to ask about page 37 of the progress report you uploaded yesterday."
"Wait a minute... Page 37..." After a while: "Boss, you asked..."
Jiang Miao stared at the tablet screen. "What do you think of the new characteristics of the controllable cancer cells forming a capsule that wraps around the artificial liver?"
The voice on the other end of the phone was a little nervous: "We also discovered this situation accidentally when we were conducting related experiments on artificial test subjects recently..."
"Well, go on..."
"The cancer cell-modified capsule can deceive the body's normal cells. After transplantation, the bile secretion pattern is set, so the recipient's body is likely to be unable to adapt..."
"This discomfort manifests as weight loss when eating less, bloating and diarrhea when eating more. If you don't eat on time, the consequence may be frequent gallstones..."
Jiang Miao has already seen this part.
Obviously, this has something to do with the particularity of the liver system. The liver system is not a system that is open 24 hours a day. To be precise, the digestive system is not a human system that runs at full capacity 24 hours a day.
Therefore, the artificial liver must also take this into consideration, although some of the connected human nerves can allow the brain to affect the operation of the artificial liver.
But artificial livers are artificial after all, and the human body's native nervous system is somewhat incompatible with this artificial organ.
Especially for a special organ like the liver, which is located in the digestive system, the time for humans to eat is definitely not unified. After all, everyone's living habits are different.
As a general-purpose artificial organ, it can only be designed into a relatively fixed pattern, such as three meals a day, with an approximate time set for each meal.
At the designated time, the set genes will activate the corresponding functions and begin to secrete bile into the gastrointestinal tract.
If the recipient does not eat when it is time to secrete bile, the bile will be secreted too much, which will accumulate in the body and form gallstones.
If the recipient eats a lot when bile is not being secreted, it will cause indigestion in the recipient.
Obviously this is not a good phenomenon.
"Boss, although we can customize the three meals a day for each patient to match each patient's living habits, I think this goes against the original intention of our research and development of non-rejection organs..."
"I know." Jiang Miao knew this very well.
If a customized artificial liver is created for each patient, it is certainly possible with current technology, but the cost would be extremely high.
You should know that there is a huge difference in cost between products produced on assembly lines and custom-made products.
Jiang Miao said slowly: "We can consider providing this kind of exclusive customized service to the rich, but there is no need for this for universal artificial livers. We can just let the patients eat on time."
"Thank you for your understanding, boss..."
Jiang Miao would naturally not customize any organs just to suit ordinary patients, as ordinary patients could not afford such customized organs.
According to the assessment of the scientific research department of Hailufeng Group, if customized artificial organs are to be made, the cost of a set of organs will increase more than ten times.
Taking artificial liver as an example, the cost of the universal type is estimated to be 1.8 Hua yuan per unit; the cost of the dedicated type is 33 Hua yuan per unit.
If the cost of surgery and the profits of Hailufeng Group are added together, a dedicated artificial liver transplanted into a patient would cost at least around 70 yuan.
Even with medical insurance reimbursement, this price is still unaffordable for ordinary patients.
However, the difference between the exclusive type and the universal type is only the fixed times for three meals a day, and the cost-effectiveness is really too low.
Jiang Miao would not consider providing this product to ordinary patients.
However, he is more optimistic about another side effect of artificial liver.
This side effect can lock the body's absorption of nutrients at an upper limit, which can make it difficult for patients who have received artificial liver transplants to exceed a certain weight limit.
In other words, this side effect can control weight, which is actually a good side effect for some patients.
(End of this chapter)