Chapter 948 - We Found Gold

It had been a while since the last time he saw Yang Yuan, but Yang Yuan did look a lot better compared to before.

On the one hand, it was expressed in his temperament. On the other hand, it showed through his skin color.

Although he was the CEO of the subsidiary, the nature of his work and his persistence for knowledge made it impossible for him to stay in the office as a white-collar worker. Instead, he often traveled between the mining areas in MLL and Madagascar. For this reason, his skin color was much darker than before.

His ex-girlfriend Su Fei did impact him dramatically, but now, he wasn’t crushed by her. Instead, he came back stronger and reached new heights in his career and abilities.

The old friends met, and after some small talk, Yang Yuan didn’t waste time as he immediately turned around and took a stack of reports to discuss work.

“The results of the analysis on the ore samples have come out.”

“The results are quite amazing! In addition to iron and siliceous, we also discovered a surprisingly large amount of titanium in the asteroid core! And the quality is astonishingly high!”

“We found a treasure! Mining and refining must be done by our department. We have the equipment and technology! The specific data is here—you should see it yourself!”

Yang Yuan was ecstatic when he was explaining. He waved his fist in the air with excitement. Jiang Chen could clearly feel that his current mood was even more excited than when Jiang Chen handed over the exclusive mining rights of MLL Island minerals to him.

“Rest assured. All the mining-related projects are yours.”

Jiang Chen smiled and took the report from his hand. He looked at it and he was even more astonished when he actually read through the data.

The first section was an overview of the Bennu asteroid. Some of the data were measured by Space Launch Center. The asteroid had a diameter of about 500 meters and a volume of about 36.8 million cubic meters. The average density determined by spectroscopy was about 4.5 times that of water, which was 4.5 tons per cubic meter. The mass of the asteriod reached an astounding 165 million tons.

He turned to the most critical part, the mineral reserves.

According to the verification done by Future Mining based on the ore samples, there were more than 40 million tons of asteroid iron ore reserves, and the ore grade was an astonishing 80%(1)!

It was an impossible-to-reach number on Earth because it meant it must exist as pure iron! It was impossible to form this mineral in an oxidizing environment. Almost all iron in the Earth’s crust existed in nature in the form of oxides.

But space was different.

The 40 million tons of iron ore would allow for the refining of more than 30 million tons of steel at an ultra-low smelting cost. Not only would it be enough to maintain the industrial parks in Ange and New Malaysia Special District for several years, but they could also export to international markets on a large scale to earn foreign exchange!

Although the value of iron ore was high, it still paled in comparison to the titanium ore in the core.

High-performance titanium alloys and titanium-based composite materials had a high specific strength, high corrosion resistance, high durability and low weight, which were unmatched by other metals. However, there weren’t many titanium mines held by Celestial Trade. Except for the debris recovered from the apocalypse, most of the external structures of Celestial Trade used high-strength aluminum alloys.

It was common knowledge that titanium ore still had a rich reserve. It was considered a rare metal rather than a precious metal, but titanium alloys were quite rare. There were two main difficulties that hindered the development of titanium alloy technology. One was the smelting of titanium alloys while the other was the processing of titanium alloys.

The first was smelting. Aside from the number of complicated processing steps, since titanium was chemically active at high temperatures, after titanium ores were processed into titanium sponge, it must be smelted once or twice through cacuum arc remelting (2) to produce high purity titanium ingots!

Because of the complicated production steps, the cost was naturally high.

It was precisely because of this that the price of titanium ore differed drastically based on purity. Fewer impurities meant less difficulty in the refining process, and too many impurities meant little to no processing value. However, in general, the price of titanium ore remained constant around 1,000 RMB. As for the price of titanium ingots, the price was exponential.

The other problem was processing. Titanium ingots alone were useless; it was even more difficult to process titanium ingots into pipes, plates, screws, bearings, and even aerospace engines.

Up till now, only the UA and Russia possessed acceptable titanium welding technology. Due to Russia’s good welding technology and the high titanium ore reserves in Siberia, they even built several nuclear submarines with titanium alloys – known as the fabled Alpha Attack Nuclear Submarine that remained controversial from construction to service. This particular submarine was unafraid of magnetic mines and possessed a horsepower that could even catch the MK-48 torpedo.

Because the cost of titanium alloy production and processing was extremely high, some people called it a “goldfish.”

Only the Cold War could give birth to this absurd and powerful weapon.

But now, with close to 30 million tons of high-grade titanium ore, Jiang Chen now had the chance to “splurge.” The reserve was more than enough to change the aluminum alloy of the entire space elevator into titanium alloy, let alone constructing submarines made of titanium alloy casing!

The titanium ore found on the Bennu asteroid wasn’t only rich in reserves, it was also high grade. There was even pure titanium found in the ore sample! The cost of smelting would also be much cheaper than producing titanium ore in any titanium mine on the planet. The ore produced from the mines in the Siberian cold regions were incomparable!

Just for the sake of the 30 million tons of high-grade titanium ore, Jiang Chen must firmly hold onto the asteroid.

“The smelting of the ore will be up to you. The second electric Stingray P-1 will be completed by Future Heavy Industries very soon and delivered to Celestial City’s port by next month. You will have to train qualified pilots as soon as possible. The production of the Bennu asteroid must be ramped up, especially the titanium ore, which is very important for our space colonization plan!” Jiang Chen handed the report back to Yang Yuan and ordered a series of tasks.

Yang Yuan grinned and confidently assured Jiang Chen: “You can rest assured. Space mining is the strategic direction of Future Mining! Several mining experts in our company have been training on the astronaut training base on Ange Island for almost half a year. It won’t take long before they can obtain Stingray P-1’s driving qualification certificate.”

Jiang Chen smiled and nodded.

The Stingray P-1 currently working on the Bennu asteroid was owned by Future Mining, but the pilot was rented from Celestial Trade. The pilot mainly trained for the A-1 attack type and the C-1 transport type. It was inefficient to let someone driving a tank to operate a mining vehicle.

Today, he came to Future Mining headquarters for two tasks, and now that he finished one, there was one more.

“There’s still something else I have to ask you.”

“The external ore processing unit that completed design some time ago—is it ready?”

(1) Overall, the quality of iron ore is mainly judged based on the Fe (Iron) content. More specifically, ores with Fe contents above 65% are regarded as high-grade ores. (Source: AJB Muwanguzi, ‎2012)

(2) Vacuum arc remelting (VAR) is a secondary melting process for production of metal ingots with elevated chemical and mechanical homogeneity for highly demanding applications. Certain metals and alloys, such as Ti, cannot be melted in open air furnaces. (Source: Wikipedia)