Blast Furnace

Agriculture was the foundation of all industries. After all, only once people no longer had to worry about going hungry and had enough food to eat could they think about other things.

At this stage, Li Qingsong had preliminarily solved the agricultural problem, producing enough food to supply some clones with sufficient rations without requiring them to engage in agricultural production.

That made industrial development inevitable.

Without industry, agriculture would also be limited in scale, forever confined to inefficient manual labor. Expanding the population would be nothing but wishful thinking.

After briefly reviewing his current population and agricultural scale, and factoring in his subsequent development plans, Li Qingsong quickly came up with a proposal.

"Steel was the foundation of all future development.

If he wanted to continue expanding the population and developing industry, steel was indispensable.

Even if he did not develop industry and focused only on agriculture, he still could not do without steel.

At this stage, the Planting Shelves, pipelines, and detachable components aboard Deep Space had all been used up.

Without a sufficient supply of steel, he could not even build a new planting base.

The output of No. 1 Planting Base could barely support thirty-seven clones. How could that possibly be enough?

Then... I'll build a Steelmaking Blast Furnace! The earlier surveys showed that Luoshen Star also has iron ore. The reserves may not be large, but they are more than enough for me."

The knowledge base did not contain the technology for building a blast furnace, but it did contain the basic principles. Li Qingsong could design one himself, so that was not a difficult problem.

Aside from technical materials, Deep Space also carried two machines capable of supporting the steel requirements for manufacturing the Steelmaking Blast Furnace itself.

One of them was the Multifunctional Intelligent Ore Smelting Equipment. It could follow the parameters set by Li Qingsong to smelt and refine various minerals.

Of course, since it was multifunctional, it was inevitably not very large, and its efficiency was far inferior to that of specialized equipment. Still, it was sufficient as initial startup equipment.

The other machine was the Multifunctional Metal Processing Equipment.

It could process various types of metal into different shapes according to the set parameters.

These two machines had been specially prepared for Li Qingsong by the Earth team. This way, if he encountered certain extreme situations, he could manufacture some parts himself.

Although anything he made himself would certainly not perform as well as professionally manufactured equipment, it could still serve as a substitute in a pinch.

Now, Li Qingsong planned to use these two machines to produce steel bit by bit, process parts bit by bit, and ultimately "piece together" a Steelmaking Blast Furnace.

The construction technology for a Steelmaking Blast Furnace was not in Deep Space's knowledge base.

After all, there was no way Li Qingsong, who had previously been an astronaut, would ever have needed such technology.

Fortunately, the knowledge base contained the relevant fundamental scientific principles.

Thus, the two clones aboard Deep Space once again began studying day and night, while simultaneously waiting for the birth of the latest five clones.

Some time later, the five new clones were finally born, bringing Li Qingsong's total population to twenty-two. The blueprints for the Steelmaking Blast Furnace he had designed were also finally completed.

Afterward, he carefully transported those two crucial machines from Deep Space to Luoshen Star, carefully assembled them, and connected them to No. 2 Generator.

When he had built No. 2 Generator, Li Qingsong had already considered the future power demands of these two machines and deliberately left some capacity to spare. Thus, the additional power consumption would not affect crop growth.

Once the self-check was complete and the operating parameters had been set, iron ore that had been brought back along the way while collecting Oxygen Ore and Tholin Mine ore was crushed into small pieces and placed into the smelting furnace.

Electrical energy was converted into thermal energy, melting the ore. Then, through a series of processes, the iron was refined and mixed with a certain proportion of carbon, chromium, nickel, and other elements. In the end, it became Low Temperature Steel that could retain its performance in Luoshen Star's frigid environment.

Li Qingsong placed this thirty-kilogram piece of Low Temperature Steel into the metal processing equipment.

According to the previously set parameters, the Low Temperature Steel was processed into components of all kinds of shapes.

Some of these parts were large, some small; some light, some heavy.

Following the blueprints he had designed earlier, the clones slowly assembled and welded these components together, eventually turning them into something resembling a large tank.

This large tank stood three meters tall and measured one and a half meters in diameter. It used electricity as its energy source, while everything else was manually controlled.

Temperature control, material feeding, discharge, monitoring, and everything else all had to be handled manually by the clones. After all, Li Qingsong currently had no automation technology.

According to the design specifications, at full power, this blast furnace could produce an average of around two hundred kilograms of steel per day, with an annual output of seventy-three tons.

On Earth—if there were still humans on Earth at this moment—such output would probably not even be worthy of the smallest rural steel workshop. But to Li Qingsong, it was a divine tool.

A divine tool capable of opening the door to industrialization for him.

Looking at the crude blast furnace covered in rough marks, Li Qingsong's heart brimmed with joy.

He seemed to see an endless stream of molten steel pouring from the blast furnace, becoming Planting Shelves, becoming components, becoming massive machines...

But... unfortunately, this blast furnace could not yet be put into operation.

The reason was simple: it consumed too much electricity.

Its power rating was eighty kilowatts. At this stage, the combined output of his two generators was only a little over forty kilowatts. Even if he supplied all of it to the furnace, it would not be enough.

Besides, steelmaking also required a sufficient supply of ore.

Given the quality of the iron ore on Luoshen Star, producing two hundred kilograms of iron each day would require at least six hundred kilograms of iron ore per day.

At present, the five miners in the entire Mining Team only hauled back a combined average of four hundred kilograms of Tholin Mine ore and Oxygen Ore each day. Even if they hauled nothing but iron ore, it still would not be enough.

There was no helping it. Though the blast furnace had now been built, Li Qingsong could only leave it idle for the time being and turn to making something else.

A Steam Generator with sufficient installed capacity.

The principle behind a generator was equally simple: it merely required a rotor to continuously rotate around a stator.

Li Qingsong did not intend to build a Steam Turbine and a generator as two separate machines.

He planned to combine the two into one and directly build a Steam Generator.

That would reduce the amount of work required and make it somewhat more efficient.

The Multifunctional Intelligent Ore Smelting Equipment once again began producing steel plates that met the standards, while the processing equipment turned them into components.

Then, a total of eight clones worked together to assemble and secure those parts.

After more than another month of work, the Steam Generator, with an installed capacity of one hundred and fifty kilowatts, was finally completed.