Chapter 451 The Principle of Antigravity

"Dean He, isn't this just a maglev train? If you bring the train system over, can you make a spaceship fly?"

Ma Yuejin lay face down on the blueprints, his finger tracing the lines of the drawing. He looked up, his face contorted with disgust, as if he'd swallowed a fly. He shoved the blueprints onto the table, took two steps back, and crossed his arms over his chest.

He Yuzhu didn't look at him, but pointed to the data on the blueprint. "A maglev train levitates a few centimeters, this design is 100 meters. A 50-tesla magnetic field, one square meter of coil generates 20 tons of lift. The Kunlun is 2,000 tons, it can be supported by a 100-square-meter coil. Tell me, which country's maglev train can support a ship?"

Ma Yuejin opened his mouth, but couldn't find the words to refute. Qian Zhiyuan squatted at the other end of the blueprints, examining a tiny annotation with a magnifying glass, without looking up. "Dean He, the theoretical model has similarities to the spatial perturbations we observed in the superconducting ring experiment. A strong magnetic field compresses space and can also counteract gravity. The force is the same thing, just in different directions."

"Then it wouldn't be called maglev anymore," Ma Yuejin said in a low voice, as if he were talking to himself.

He Yuzhu didn't respond to that.

Lin Jianguo pushed open the door, holding a calculation report. He walked to the table, opened the report, and his expression was not good. "Theoretically feasible. But the required magnetic field strength exceeds the limits of our current high-temperature superconducting materials." He paused, "To offset the 2,000 tons of the Kunlun spacecraft, the electromagnetic force on the coil exceeds 100 tons of stress per square centimeter. The tensile strength of the existing strip is only one-third of that number."

The magnifying glass in Qian Zhiyuan's hand remained motionless on the paper.

Ma Yuejin spoke first. "One-third? That's way too far off."

A few seconds of silence filled the conference room. He Yuzhu walked to the whiteboard, picked up a marker, and drew a curve. The horizontal axis represented the levitation height, and the vertical axis represented the magnetic field strength. "Ten meters, thirty meters, fifty meters, one hundred meters. The existing materials can't support one hundred meters, so let's start from thirty meters. At thirty meters, the ground effect is weaker, and the ship can remain stable."

Lin Jianguo flipped to the back pages of the calculation report, tracing the numbers with his finger. "A height of thirty meters requires approximately thirty-five Tesla of magnetic field, and the material strength requirement is forty tons per square centimeter. The current high-temperature superconducting tape has a tensile strength of thirty-five tons. We're still five tons short."

Ma Yuejin glanced at Qian Zhiyuan. "We're five tons short. Is there any way to fix it?"

Qian Zhiyuan bit his lip and remained silent. He Yuzhu stared at him; he lowered his head, his eyes fixed on the table. After several seconds, he finally spoke, his voice much lower than usual.

"The reinforcing layer of the strip... can be thickened." He paused for a moment, "If the volume fraction of carbon nanotubes is increased from 30% to 40%, the strength can increase by 30%."

Ma Yuejin's eyes lit up. Qian Zhiyuan immediately poured cold water on his enthusiasm.

"But if conductivity drops by 10%, current density also drops. Heat generation worsens, requiring an upgrade to the cooling system. Upgrading the cooling system increases weight, demanding even more lift. It's a vicious cycle."

He emphasized the words "vicious loop," then threw the pen on the table. The pen bounced up, rolled to the floor, and no one picked it up.

He Yuzhu stood in front of the whiteboard, holding a marker, without moving. His gaze moved from the curve to Qian Zhiyuan's face, paused for two seconds, then turned around and drew a circle on the whiteboard.

"Let's not use large coils anymore. Let's try a different approach." He drew a dense array of small dots inside the circle. "We'll use multiple small coils to form an array, with each coil independently controlling the magnetic field. If the material strength isn't enough, we'll compensate with quantity. If the stress on a single coil is too high, we'll break it down into ten smaller coils, distributing the stress over a larger area."

Qian Zhiyuan stood up, walked to the whiteboard, and stared at the circle for a few seconds. "Distributed magnetic levitation?"

"Yes. Just like phased array microwave weapons, if the power of a single antenna is not enough, hundreds of small antennas are combined to form a large beam. The same applies to anti-gravity; if the magnetic field of a single coil is not enough, hundreds of small coils are combined to form a strong magnetic field."

Lin Jianguo quickly flipped through the calculation report, reaching the last few pages, and pointed to a line of numbers. "I've calculated the distributed solution. An array of one hundred coils, each one meter in diameter, would have only one-fifth the stress of the overall solution, and the existing materials would be more than sufficient."

Ma Yuejin walked back from the corner, picked up the pen that had rolled on the ground, and wrote a number on the edge of the drawing. "One hundred coils—the complexity of the control system has increased a hundredfold. The current and phase of each coil must be adjusted in real time to ensure a uniform magnetic field. Can Galaxy VI withstand it?"

"Three quadrillion calculations per second is enough," Lin Jianguo said.

Qian Zhiyuan was silent for a moment, then walked back to the table and smoothed out the crumpled drawing.

"Dean He, if this system is successfully developed, it will be even more impressive than a rocket launch."

He Yuzhu didn't reply. He walked to the window, his back to them. The wind and sand from the Gobi Desert lashed against the glass, making a soft rustling sound. He remembered the cold numbers on the system interface when he redeemed this set of blueprints—levitation height, magnetic field strength, material stress. Now they had become coils and formulas on the blueprints, the pen that Qian Zhiyuan had tossed out, and that "one-third" on Lin Jianguo's report.

"Don't worry about how impressive it is yet," He Yuzhu turned around. "Think about how to make a sample. A small sample with a diameter of ten meters to verify the distributed array principle. I want to see it floating in the test field before the end of the year."

Qian Zhiyuan took a deep breath. "Six months. From blueprints to prototype, at least six months."

"Then let's do it in six months. By the end of this year, I want to see a ten-meter discus floating in mid-air."

Qian Zhiyuan remained silent. Ma Yuejin squatted down and drew a circle on the ground with his finger. "A ten-meter-long discus, floating in the air without any support underneath. Suspended in mid-air solely by magnetism. If this thing really works, it will be more spectacular than a rocket launch."

"Dean He, during the review meeting for the coil array design, some people raised concerns about its safety." Lin Jianguo turned to another page of the document. "They said that if one of the coils in the distributed array fails, causing a sudden change in the magnetic field distribution, wouldn't the ship become unstable?"

Qian Zhiyuan looked up. "The failure rate of a single coil is 0.05%. If a hundred coils are running simultaneously, the probability of at least one failing is 0.5%. Once a coil fails, the surrounding coils will be overloaded, and the stress will instantly exceed the limit. If not dealt with in time, the chain reaction will cause the entire array to fail, and the hull to become unstable."

Ma Yuejin frowned. "Then what should we do?"

Qian Zhiyuan took out a folded sheet of paper from his pocket, unfolded it, and revealed a control logic diagram. "Each coil is equipped with an independent current sensor and temperature sensor. If an anomaly is detected, the control chip cuts off the power supply to that coil within ten milliseconds, while simultaneously redistributing the current to the other coils to compensate for the magnetic field gap."

"Ten milliseconds? Can the control chip be that fast?" Ma Yuejin asked.

"With Galaxy-6 as the main controller, the signal delay is less than one microsecond. Data from one hundred coils is calculated in real time, and a new allocation scheme is generated within one millisecond. Ten milliseconds is a conservative estimate."

He Yuzhu looked at Qian Zhiyuan. "The fault protection scheme should be written into the design specifications. During prototype testing, a coil failure should be deliberately created to verify the system's fault tolerance."

Qian Zhiyuan was taken aback. "Intentionally creating a malfunction? That might burn out the coil."

"It's better to burn out a coil than to burn it out during flight. It would be too costly to wait until the Kunlun spacecraft is airborne to verify it before doing so."

Qian Zhiyuan gritted his teeth. "Okay. I'll arrange it."

He Yuzhu walked back to the table and rolled up the blueprints. "The preliminary research on the anti-gravity system will be finalized today. Distributed array, one hundred coils, controlled by Galaxy 6, with ten-millisecond fault protection. Qian Zhiyuan will lead the effort, Lin Jianguo will write the algorithm, and Ma Yuejin will conduct the verification. We'll produce a small-scale design within three months and a ten-meter prototype within six months."

He glanced at Qian Zhiyuan.

"I want to see it float by the end of the year."