Chapter 5: Steam
Under the current conditions at Base One, growing crops was clearly impossible.
First, Li Qingsong needed a stable heat source to maintain a suitable temperature inside Base One.
Second, Li Qingsong needed a stable power source. After all, there was no sunlight on Ceres, so sunlamps were a necessity.
And sunlamps were notorious power hogs.
The fission reactor on the landing craft couldn’t solve both of these problems. He had too little fission fuel left, and once it was used up, it would be gone for good.
He had to find a way to get a power supply from Ceres itself.
Li Qingsong’s twelve brains began to think at once.
’Alright, I’ll build the simplest possible steam turbine. It’ll drive a generator to produce electricity, and I can even recycle the waste heat, piping it into the base to raise the temperature.’
And so, the two bodies remaining on the Deep Space Spaceship immediately began studying the principles of steam turbines, while two other Clones started ferrying all the necessary materials and parts down from the ship to the surface of Ceres.
The remaining eight Clones boarded the only two planetary rovers and began to traverse the dim, dark-red glowing landscape of Ceres.
They were searching for and collecting minerals that would be needed later.
The principle behind a steam turbine is simple: burn fuel to create high-pressure steam, which in turn drives a generator to produce electricity.
But simple in principle is difficult in practice. The two Clones on the surface of Ceres struggled, but they finally managed to cobble together a steam engine using only the available tools and materials.
The steam engine had two layers: an inner and an outer. The inner layer contained the combustion chamber and boiler, like a typical steam engine, while the outer layer consisted of two separate thawing chambers.
Each thawing chamber was connected to the outside via a feed port.
While the steam engine was being built, the other Clones weren’t idle either.
They dismantled the generator from the landing craft—the one originally connected to the nuclear fission reactor—and linked it to the new steam engine using gears and belts.
Meanwhile, other Clones brought down large quantities of piping from the Deep Space Spaceship—both flexible and metallic.
These pipes, only a few centimeters in diameter, were all connected together, then laid out across the floor of Base One like underfloor heating pipes.
Its inlet and outlet were also connected to the steam engine.
After all this was done, the Clones who had been out collecting minerals returned in the planetary rovers.
The beds of both rovers were loaded with minerals that were variously transparent, milky white, dark red, or pale blue.
After unloading these two hauls, the temporary fuel storage area was completely full.
"Alright... commencing first ignition!"
Li Qingsong made the decision with great solemnity. Two Clones each carried a piece of ore—one dark red, Tolin, and the other pale blue, Solid Oxygen—and dropped them into the two feed ports, letting them fall into the thawing chambers.
Heat, temporarily diverted from the nuclear fission reactor, was channeled into the steam engine’s thawing chambers, causing the materials—frozen solid by the extreme cold—to slowly melt and vaporize.
When the gas concentration reached a certain level, the two different gases broke through a series of preset barriers and flowed into the combustion chamber.
With the appearance of an electric spark, the mixture of the two gases immediately began to combust violently.
Inside the boiler, the water, frozen into a solid block of ice, began to melt under the heat, turning to liquid before it slowly started to boil.
Feeling the slight tremor from the steam turbine as the water boiled, Li Qingsong was filled with joy.
The water was boiling. Steam was now being produced continuously, and the pressure mounted.
When the pressure was great enough, the heavy rotor was finally pushed into motion, beginning to turn reluctantly. This rotational force was transmitted through the mechanical linkage to the generator, and at last, an electric current appeared.
Ahead, inside Base One, which had been plunged into darkness when its power was cut, the lights finally flickered on, bringing light once more to this dark world.
But that wasn’t the full extent of the changes.
As more blocks of Solid Oxygen and Tolin were fed into the engine, continuously melting and combusting, the steam that had already done its work on the rotor—but was still extremely hot—flowed through the connected pipeline and into Base One’s "underfloor heating" system.
The floor of Base One, which had long since cooled, began to heat up again. The oxygen, nitrogen, and other gases that had condensed into frost due to the extreme temperatures started to sublimate and rise once more.
Base One, which had deflated, began to swell as the gases filled it, eventually returning to its original form.
This cooled water vapor would then return to the steam engine through the end of the pipeline, ready for another cycle of heating and work. Afterwards, it would again be channeled into Base One, cooling itself down while raising the base’s temperature.
Li Qingsong’s heart filled with joy as he watched the entire, organically integrated system begin to run smoothly.
’With this steam engine, I finally have a stable source of power.’
As for fuel, Li Qingsong wasn’t worried in the slightest.
Billions of years of evolution and accumulation had left the surface of Ceres covered in Tolin; the total amount was likely in the hundreds of trillions of tons, far more than he could ever use.
The Solid Oxygen Ore that acted as an oxidizer was also plentiful on Ceres. If he ran out, he could simply go mine more.
The temperature inside Base One was still relatively low, hovering around 0 degrees Celsius. But that didn’t matter; Li Qingsong knew it was because the steam engine wasn’t yet running at full power.
There wasn’t much demand for electricity yet, so there was no need to run the engine at full capacity. Any excess power generated would simply go to waste.
With the steam engine built, several Clones got busy again.
They made repeated trips in the landing craft between the Deep Space Spaceship and Base One, dismantling all the equipment from the ship’s cultivation bay and bringing it down to the base.
A grinding machine was also brought over.
Once the grinding machine was hooked up to the power supply, the steam engine could finally be run at full capacity. Consequently, the temperature inside Base One rose rapidly, eventually stabilizing at around 30 degrees Celsius.
The grinding machine roared to life, pulverizing the ores Li Qingsong had found—ores rich in potassium, nitrogen, and phosphorus—and turning them into a fine powder.
Inside the small confines of Base One, ten Clones worked in a flurry of activity.