Chapter 125 Synchronous Light Rings Project_1

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Time hurried by…

During this period, whether on the Moon or on Earth, everyone was busy. Countries joined hands in cooperation to tackle various challenges and prepare for the battle against natural disasters.

Faced with such a tangible enemy, humanity showed an extraordinarily strong sense of unity. No longer filled with fear and despair, people fortified their determination to survive the catastrophe.

The food prepared on Moon Base gave them the faith to keep living, knowing that after this disaster, there would be a global food crisis and countless people might starve to death. But now that their greatest concern had been addressed, there seemed to be nothing that could defeat them.

Underground shelters could protect lives, the harboring hope for survival. With current human technology, they were full of confidence in this regard.

They united and fought side by side, practically defining the concept of a shared human destiny through their actions.

Nations mobilized all their strength not only to protect their people but also to preserve their industrial capabilities. Large equipment could only be reinforced on-site, which they knew was of limited use, and medium and small-sized equipment, as well as major factories, were all moved underground.

All middle and high-latitude regions across the globe were urgently excavating to create more underground shelter spaces.

The largest tunnel boring machines now could drill tunnels with a diameter of up to 42 meters, some even powered by nuclear energy, advancing more than 400 meters daily. In Lin Sen's previous life, the biggest tunnel boring machines reached diameters of less than 20 meters and could only progress less than 100 meters a day.

The space excavated by these large tunnel boring machines in one day could house 30,000 people, though the living conditions weren't very good. Besides having all the necessary facilities, on average, there were just over ten cubic meters of space per person.

Underground shelters were constructed with spiraling tunnel structures similar to mosquito coils, excavated by tunnel boring machines. Spiraling tunnels were interconnected, with main thoroughfares laid out, resembling a spider's web in their overall distribution.

In the shelter's residential areas, there were layers of small rooms stacked one on top of another, equipped with multi-tiered bunks and simple living facilities. Families were housed as much as possible, and of course, open flames were prohibited.

The huge tunnel caverns used 3D-printed frame structures made of Moon plastic steel materials, allowing for rapid construction. In the spacious main arteries of the caves, vehicles shuttled back and forth, bustling and orderly.

At the peak of global efforts, there were 800 large tunnel boring machines at work, 2,000 medium ones, and over 15,000 small ones.

Large and medium-sized tunnel boring machines could directly handle the construction of independent underground shelters, while small machines mainly worked on underground expansion, especially the expansion of urban underground facilities.

It was estimated that within half a year, nearly 1.8 billion living spaces could be provided through the underground network. Coupled with the expansion of many underground facilities, it was possible to accommodate over 2.5 billion people.

However, experts predicted that the population affected by the worst of the disasters could reach 3.5 billion. If another billion could be moved to low-latitude countries, it seemed the disaster might be survivable, at the very least preserving human life.

But the reality wasn't so simple, and the construction of the underground shelters did not proceed smoothly. Particularly in some free countries, people were reluctant to stay in the dark underground, hoping to move to low-latitude areas instead.

This significantly increased the management difficulties for the local governments. Whether excavating underground shelters or relocating populations to low-latitude areas presented immense challenges.

Large-scale relocation to low-latitude regions was technically feasible, but it brought severe conflicts between the original residents and the immigrants, involving complicated national-level coordination that was difficult to articulate.

The end result was that neither the large-scale population relocation nor the excavation of enough underground shelters was successful.

If the situation continued to deteriorate, as the deadline approached, people's anxiety escalated, and conflicts erupted in many areas. Sometimes freedom also became a sin.

Lin Sen witnessed this but was powerless to intervene, even though such an outcome was easily foreseeable. Decision-makers, after all, had to guess at human indifference and parochialism with the worst malice.

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Fortunately, the construction of the Giant Reflective Mirror in Earth's synchronous orbit, as a response to the global climate disaster, progressed very smoothly. In less than five months, the project was near completion, entering the final tuning stage.

The PDC named it the Synchronous Light Rings Project, overseen by Zhuang Yu.

24 Giant Reflective Mirrors in the 36,000-kilometer high synchronous orbit reflected sunlight accumulated on Earth. From the ground, the sky appeared to have several huge celestial lanterns strung together, piercing the night.

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The most critical part of the engineering challenge lay in the erection of the support structure for the Giant Reflective Mirror. The support structure had to account for the extreme conditions of space, ensuring the stability and safety of the Giant Reflective Mirror, while also considering the installation of supercomputers, attitude control, and feedback systems.

Moreover, the Giant Reflective Mirror for the Synchronous Light Rings project was much larger than the one on the Moon and required a control system many times more complex.

The construction of the Giant Reflective Mirror on the Moon aimed to provide energy for the Moon Base, but the Synchronous Light Rings project focused on how to regulate and affect the climate of specific regions, with attitude control being the most pressing concern to prepare for.

The attitude adjustment of the Giant Reflective Mirror for the Synchronous Light Rings project had to be much more precise than that used at the Moon Base.

The accumulated energy of the Giant Reflective Mirror for the Synchronous Light Rings project was intended to alter the thermal balance of the atmosphere, and if there were significant errors, it could entirely backfire.

Whether increasing ocean evaporation or moving weather fronts, every adjustment required utmost caution to prevent any mistakes.

The mirror surface of the Giant Reflective Mirror used nanomirrored film material, which, when not electrified, appeared as a thin, silver fabric—soft, smooth, and nearly weightless to the touch.

Once electrified, it could expand, becoming rigid like a polished mirror, making the mirror deployment a relatively simple task in the construction process.

Such a complex system could be completed in as little as five months, a testament to the hard work of the engineering team and related personnel. Each link, each detail, required careful planning and strict control. Undoubtedly, they had created a miracle once again.

Twenty-four "Heavenly Lamps" embedded in the expanse of the starry night sky resembled silver platters inlayed in the darkness.

Each Giant Reflective Mirror had a radius of approximately 80 kilometers, much larger than the Moon's 60 kilometers. Positioned in geostationary orbit, its apparent diameter was exactly half that of the Moon's. To match the size of the Moon, its radius would need to be 160 kilometers.

The sheer size inspired a sense of inexplicable reverence as if deities were gazing upon the Earth.

Looking up, the faint Moon pierced the darkness, serving as a lighthouse to guide us, protecting the light of hope within our hearts—a feeling of gratitude intermingled with anticipation.

The curvature of the Giant Reflective Mirror's surface could be adjusted, allowing it to reflect sunlight to Earth, converging into a massive patch of light on the ground.

Those within the light patch would witness an astonishing spectacle of a daylong celestial event.

But for those not under the light patch, the Space Mirror remained visible, as it did not wholly reflect light like a mirror but also diffracted a portion of the sunlight, making it visible, though its brightness was much lower than that of the Moon.

Meanwhile, the sky seemed a bit brighter than before, the result of reflected sunlight entering the atmosphere and undergoing diffuse reflection and refraction.

On the day the project was completed, PDC also hosted a global live broadcast, and humanity gained 24 more beacons overhead.

It was as if a new faith had taken root in people's hearts, with the hope that Synchronous Light Rings could address the ever-worsening climate issues.

To align with the 24 Giant Reflective Mirrors in adjusting the global climate, humankind also established over two million national-level large weather observation stations around the world, with many large weather research vessels scattered across the oceans.

Atmospheric observation of the weather from the sky was critical, involving countless sounding balloons, and space was littered with weather detection satellites, monitoring the global weather with virtually no blind spots.

Of course, atmospheric observation in the Arctic was of utmost importance. The number of weather observation stations established near the Arctic and the pressure belt was the largest, ensuring prompt awareness of the state of polar vortices.

All detection data was processed at the fastest speed by various supercomputers, with the processed data ultimately summarized at the United Nations Global Disaster Prevention and Control Headquarters.

Final decisions were made here, and commands were sent to the supercomputers aboard the 24 Giant Reflective Mirrors.

The supercomputers conducted repeated, precise simulations to find the optimal intervention plan. They then controlled the amount of heat reflected by the Giant Reflective Mirror to impact key points, hoping to completely change the climate of a targeted area over some time.

The controls had to be handled with great care; even the slightest difference in the amount of heat or a minor deviation in position could yield completely opposite results.

At the same time, the impact on the climate was global. Any local change could potentially cause substantial climate shifts in other regions. The butterfly effect was the perfect description of this phenomenon.