At this critical moment of installing the planetary reactor, a huge storm made Bai Yi a little flustered.
The storm arrived unexpectedly. Initially a minor cyclone in the Eastern Hemisphere, it grew within 30 minutes into a massive storm encompassing half the planet. Its intensity reached near theoretical limits, with weather satellites measuring winds exceeding 130 kilometers per hour near the eye.
And because Bai Yi had already flattened all the peaks on the new Mars, the flow of these rapidly rotating air on the planet was almost unimpeded. As a result, the atmosphere was further disturbed, and the gases on the other half of the planet were also drawn into the carnival.
Neither the mechanical swarm nor the construction units could safely complete their operations in the current external environment. Although the storm was only on the surface and would not affect the installation of the reactor deep within the planet, the surface supplies had not yet been fully transported underground. This annoyed Bai Yi, forcing him to pause the installation process.
Like a final, lasting blast of energy, the storm lasted a full 72 hours, encompassing the entire planet. Winds exceeding 100 kilometers per hour not only halted construction of the new Martian base but also destroyed the conveyor belts built into the planet's surface for transporting ore. The winds tore the belts apart, scattering debris with them, with some smaller fragments carried thousands of kilometers away.
However, this level of damage wouldn't affect Bai Yi much beyond the effort required to clean up. Since the moment the tunnel boring machine entered the ground, the conveyor belts had already lost their value. Even without this storm, Bai Yi would have dismantled them all in the near future.
After the most violent moment passed and the power of the storm subsided slightly, Bai Yi immediately began to take stock of the losses suffered in the storm.
This was the first base, but because it was still relatively early, there weren't many buildings yet. Furthermore, the Galactic Alliance's infrastructure was of exceptional quality, so while some was damaged in the construction storm, none of it affected the core structure and could be quickly repaired.
After another period of waiting, the wind speed had dropped to a level where work could continue. Swarms of builders and mechanical swarms immediately emerged from their respective shelters and quickly devoted themselves to their respective projects according to the revised plan.
Some of them were still working on the construction of the planetary reactor, while others were sent by Bai Yi to install atmosphere strippers at various nodes on the planet.
New Mars is currently transforming from a fortress planet into a planetary fortress ship. Its atmosphere will only become a burden on this super-ship in the future. These gases floating on the planet's surface pose a safety hazard when interstellar ships dock, and also reduce the power and accuracy of weapons launched from the planet. This is especially true for orbital guns mounted at the planet's equator. When these projectiles impact the atmosphere at hypervelocity, friction with air molecules will cause a significant loss of kinetic energy.
Bai Yi will install an atmospheric stripper on the surface of the new Mars.
Atmospheric strippers can break up the heavy elements in a planet's atmosphere and increase the energy contained in the particles that make up the air. These pressurized light particles will escape the planet's gravity due to the acceleration of molecular thermal motion.
This phenomenon of gases escaping from planets happens all the time on Earth, with helium and hydrogen being the most typical examples. These two gases, due to their extremely small molecular weight, are able to overcome the Earth's gravitational pull and easily escape into space.
However, hydrogen easily reacts with oxygen to form water, so there are large reserves of hydrogen on Earth. However, helium is an inert gas and is difficult to react with other substances under natural conditions. Therefore, helium, which accounts for 20% of the total mass of the universe and is second only to oxygen in abundance, has become a rare gas on Earth.
In ancient times, before great breakthroughs in geophysics were made, helium could not be produced artificially and could only be obtained from helium mines buried underground. The monopoly companies that mined gas made a fortune from this.
However, there is almost no hydrogen and helium in the atmosphere of the new Mars. Before Bai Yi arrived, the planet had been ravaged by the combined stellar radiation and stellar wind for billions of years.
The gas that could escape had already fled completely, and the remaining traces had been almost completely decomposed by solar radiation due to the lack of magnetic field protection. The remaining gas was at best just some leftovers. What Bai Yi had to do now was to completely dump these leftovers into the garbage can that was the universe.
Tens of thousands of atmospheric strippers were carried by swarms and builders to their designated locations for installation. The stripper's main body was a cylinder, five or six meters tall, often carrying an extra-long chimney several dozen meters long. The top of the cylinder served as the air intake, where air was drawn into the device, processed, and then ejected at high speed from the chimney.
The atmospheric stripper is a set of atmospheric particle stripping components. According to different functions, the set is divided into a decomposition part and a pressurization part.
The decomposition part is responsible for filtering the air and splitting the heavier elements. This process is like throwing an atom into a crusher. The transmission of strong nuclear force between protons and neutrons will be interrupted, which will cause the atomic nucleus to disintegrate and then recombine to form new matter after the interruption. The energy released in the whole process will be transferred to the pressurization part.
The pressurization section is responsible for increasing the pressure of the gas passing through the decomposition section. It's worth noting that pressurization here doesn't simply mean compressing the gas, but rather imparting internal energy to the particles within it, which ultimately manifests as heat. This pressurized treatment allows the particles to more easily escape the planet's gravity.
The installation of tens of thousands of strippers took only a day and a half, thanks to the minerals mined from the underground of New Mars and the lava planet. With these resources, Bai Yi was able to expand his construction team.
By now, there were already thousands of construction units at his new Martian base alone. Half of these units were deployed underground, while the remaining half worked alongside the swarm on the surface. Besides installing the strippers, they also had to begin constructing planetary engines on the planet's surface.
After all, this planet will eventually be transformed into a navigable spacecraft, and it will not work without an engine.
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