Chapter 469: Empty

Li Qingye did not stay at the Chad branch for too long.

The first year of Xinghe is September 20th.

Under the escort of the aerospace fleet, he arrived at the operating area of ​​the Meroe branch. In order to avoid being too abrupt, he did not go directly to the Darfur Plateau, but went to South Meroe first.

The space carrier slowly passed over the city of Juba, the capital of South Meroe, and then landed at an airship airport on the east side.

Mapel, the manager of the Meroe branch, had been waiting at the airport for a long time.

As soon as Li Qingye stepped off the airship, he felt a wave of heat: "It's really hot in this place!"

Sanchi Badaliyar quickly took a small electric fan to blow him some air.

"Chairman, welcome to Meroe Branch. I am Mapel, responsible for the company's regional operations and management." Mapel is not a pure black, but a mixed race of black and yellow from Motor Island, with a biased skin color. to the Javanese.

Li Qingye smiled and commented: "This city is well built!"

"It is our honor to be able to catch the eye of the Chairman. Chairman, this is the industrial catalog of Juba City. Please take a look."

Mapel held up a beautiful booklet in his hands.

Li Qingye took it and flipped through the brochure, which contained various projects and industries invested and constructed by the company in the local area.

For example, the Juba Dam is under construction. Juba is the core city on the upper reaches of the White Nile. The river channel here has a very large drop, making it very suitable for dam construction.

He closed the brochure: "Let's go to the SkyTrain Company and have a look!"

"Okay, Mr. Chairman."

The convoy drove slowly on the road.

Juba City is a highland city with an altitude of about 500 meters. The temperature is relatively mild. At least compared to other low-altitude cities in the region, it is not too hot to do outdoor activities.

After the power of Homo sapiens Corporation entered here, it invested a lot of infrastructure.

Due to the late-mover advantage, many of the new technologies developed by Homo Sapiens in the later stages have been reflected in the city's infrastructure construction.

For example, the green carpet created by genetic recombination technology covers almost the entire surface of the city's buildings, making Juba City look almost emerald green.

This green blanket can absorb water molecules in the air through photosynthesis. Its fleshy stems and leaves are similar to succulents and have a strong water storage capacity.

The green carpet can regulate air humidity, oxygen and carbon dioxide concentration, absorb harmful gases, and maintain the indoor temperature between 26 and 28 degrees Celsius.

Since the entire city is covered with a green carpet, the outdoor temperature in Juba is maintained between 20 and 35 degrees Celsius.

Just now, Li Qingye felt a heat wave at the airport. That was because there was no large-scale green carpet in the area to regulate humidity and temperature.

Li Qingye could see the streets and alleys along the way through the car window.

In addition to the locals, there are also many East Asians with obvious skin colors, or brown Southeast Asians or white North Africans.

The minibus took a tour around the neighborhood and then came to the outskirts of the XC area.

"Chairman, we are here." Mapel said as he opened the car door.

After Li Qingye came down, he saw a huge factory with a large station on one side of the factory.

However, the station is not on the ground, but in mid-air, and the track is also in mid-air.

This is the product of the Meroe Air and Railway Group - the composite overhead railway.

Li Qingye entered the production base.

After receiving the notice, the factory director Fan Haibo ran over sweating profusely: "Huhu... Chairman, welcome to our factory for inspection. I am Fan Haibo, the factory director."

"Don't be nervous, I'm just taking a look. I heard that you are building the Meroe Southern Plateau Railway. How is it going?"

Fan Haibo, who was secretly relieved, quickly replied: "Chairman, we have already constructed 86 kilometers of experimental lines, and the current operating conditions are good."

Then Fan Haibo introduced the technology of their factory in detail.

The construction and operation of this kind of overhead railway are somewhat different from traditional railways.

Specifically speaking, the material properties are great, and only with sufficient material performance support can we play this kind of overhead railway.

The construction process is very interesting. A biosynthetic aluminum-silicon material is first used to synthesize a 10-meter-diameter hollow pipe. This material is 3.27 times stronger than ordinary steel.

After the one-time synthesis of the pipe, a construction airship modified from a transport airship was used to pull the 8,400-ton, 300-meter-long pipe into the sky.

According to the conditions of the soil and rock formations below, the flight height is randomly adjusted, aimed at the target area, and then the pipe is dropped directly from a high altitude.

Under the influence of the earth's gravity, this huge pipe will instantly penetrate 240 to 280 meters underground.

There is a small pipe system called "capillary" in the wall of the pipe. Construction workers can inject special genetically recombinant bacteria to integrate the pipe with the underground rock soil to enhance the comprehensive load-bearing capacity of the pillar.

Usually 4 to 6 hollow pipes are driven into a node.

Then, according to the height of the track, the factory will customize a batch of hollow pipes that are smaller in diameter than the ground pile pipes and can just fit into the inner diameter of the ground pile pipes. However, this kind of hollow pipe is sealed at both ends.

An airship is also used to insert a smaller hollow pipe into the ground pile pipe.

Due to gravity, the small pipe will squeeze the soil and rock of the ground pile pipe, causing the soil and rock inside to become increasingly compact.

Of course, the small pipe has a limit ring to prevent the pipe from falling too far.

After completing the construction of the columns, the next step is also the modular node equipment, which can connect the four columns.

Normally, the distance between each node will be about 10 kilometers, and the part between nodes is connected.

It is a special nano-alloy that was previously used in the Dandelion project. The cables made of this alloy connect two nodes in a set of four.

The diameter of the cable is only 3.4 cm, and its load-bearing capacity is very strong.

Construction crews will then lay lightweight alloy plates and rails on the cables.

The rails can run high-speed load-carrying railways, and suspended trains can be used below the rails to form dual-purpose rails that carry freight above and passengers below.

In addition, because the material performance is good enough, four horizontal parallel rails are arranged between the two nodes, which is only the lowest utilization rate.

If the route in the area is busy, you can also consider adding three-dimensional lines. The maximum layout is 4 floors above and below, with 4 horizontal rails on each floor, for a total of 16 rails.

Moreover, each rail can be used both up and down, which is equivalent to running 32 tracks.

The reason why the Meroe Sky Railway Group came up with this kind of railway.

On the one hand, there are too many nature reserves in Africa. To build a railway on the ground, it must pass through nature reserves and wildlife habitats.

On the other hand, it is because Africa's infrastructure is so poor. Building surface roads and railways is not only costly, but also very troublesome.

For example, there are vast deserts, tropical rainforests that flood every three days, and a large number of uninhabited mountains and hills.

As for the underground railway, the company is of course also working on it, but it is more wary of the super-large mantle plume and the Noumian aquifer underground in Africa, so it is more cautious about the underground railway project.

After much deliberation, Meroe Branch decided to build a lower-cost overhead railway.

Of course, this cost is for the Homo sapiens company. If it is other forces, the cost of the overhead railway will be higher than that of the ground railway.

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