Homo Sapiens

「Three days later.」

Wu Gang reviewed the mass spectrometry analysis report from the survey team and finally understood what lay beneath Zone 7.

In the rock cores from three of the drill sites, they detected magnetite. Moreover, it wasn’t just simple magnetite, but vanadium-titanium magnetite.

Molybdenum and rhenium were also discovered.

He wasn’t a New Human who specialized in geology and mining, so he promptly reported the matter to headquarters.

The discovery of iron ore was secondary. The titanium, vanadium, molybdenum, and rhenium associated with it were the truly important finds of this survey.

In less than two days, hundreds of professional geologists and mining experts secretly arrived at Zone 7 of the Longlang Mountain aerospace base.

The mineralogist leading the team, Weng Xuehai, conducted an on-site survey. Then, based on the surrounding terrain and the trend of the mountain range, he designated another 12 drill sites.

Wu Gang was very concerned about this survey. "Dr. Weng, what do you think is the potential of this mining area? Will it affect the construction of the aerospace base?"

"Based on our initial findings, in the three drill sites where we found minerals, the deposits are located at depths between 450 and 570 meters. The ore seam is about 60 to 70 meters thick, and the area is approximately 500,000 square meters. The iron ore in this area alone amounts to about 150 million tons."

"That much?"

"The grade is a bit low, though. Samples from the three sites show a grade of only about 34%, which barely qualifies it as a standard iron deposit. Plus, it’s buried very deep," Weng Xuehai said with some resignation.

Another engineer specializing in mining, Ba Kang, smiled and shook his head. "Dr. Weng, you don’t need to worry about that. The Company has the technology to solve the problems of mining and mineral processing in ultra-deep strata."

Weng Xuehai seemed to have heard some internal news as well. "You mean the bio-erosion and fluid boiling extraction technologies you were experimenting with a while ago?"

"Yes," Ba Kang nodded.

He was the lead engineer for testing that technology.

Weng Xuehai glanced at the topographic map. "If we’re to use your new technology, we’ll have to use an inclined shaft. Given the surrounding terrain, I’m afraid there isn’t enough flat ground here."

Hearing this, Wu Gang already understood the unspoken implication.

They needed the aerospace base to adjust its plans as soon as possible. After all, while the iron ore could be left unmined, the rare metals definitely had to be extracted.

He spoke directly to the two men, "I’ll adjust the base’s layout as soon as possible to make enough space for the mining operation."

But Ba Kang, who was standing to the side, shook his head. "Base Commander Wu, don’t make any adjustments just yet. You can proceed with your other work first. We need to survey the general distribution of the ore seam to avoid forcing you to readjust later."

The main reason he stopped Wu Gang was that the new mining technology had a drawback: it tended to form large underground cavities, which could then lead to surface collapses.

This required that there be no buildings directly above the ore seam or within a one-to-two-kilometer radius, to avoid being affected.

This was also why the new mining technology could only use inclined shafts and not vertical ones.

It was to avoid building the mining operation directly over the ore seam.

Wu Gang frowned. "Engineer Ba Kang, will this kind of large-scale mining affect the launch site?"

Ba Kang looked at the map. "Judging from the current trend of the ore vein, it only exists in a part of Zone 7. We haven’t found any ore seams near the launch site. The straight-line distance between the two is over 3.6 kilometers, so it shouldn’t be a major issue. We’ll just have to control the scale of the extraction when the time comes."

This was actually one of the advantages of the new mining technology.

Traditional underground mining techniques not only require digging tunnels but also necessitate careful attention to ventilation and drainage. For ultra-deep veins in particular, these auxiliary facilities must be perfectly in place.

Mining drainage also causes a serious problem: the groundwater levels in the surrounding area are affected.

In severe cases, it can even cause ground subsidence in the vicinity.

The new mining technology doesn’t require miners to go underground. Instead, it bio-erodes the strata, breaking them down into fine particles. Then, water and air are injected to turn the strata into a slurry, and pumping equipment is used to extract the ore slurry from the ground.

During this extraction process, water is simultaneously injected into the mining strata from another point to maintain the groundwater level balance.

Of course, this type of mining has another drawback.

In karst topography, one must be wary of underground rivers and caverns to prevent the genetically modified bacteria from being unable to precisely erode the target strata.

However, in ultra-deep ore veins, the strata are generally composed of relatively dense rock layers due to eons of immense pressure, so underground leakage isn’t too serious of a concern.

This was especially true for the newly discovered vanadium-titanium magnetite deposit at Longlang Mountain, where the subterranean strata are quite dense.

The Homo Sapiens Company’s development of ultra-deep mining technology was, in fact, a product of its environment.

If the Homo Sapiens Company had access to the kinds of large, open-pit iron mines found in Australia, who would bother mining ultra-deep veins? It was simply because none of their four currently controlled zones had any particularly prominent metal deposits.

Therefore, they had to forge a new path, using bio-enrichment technology on one hand to extract some of their needed resources from the ocean.

On the other hand, they had to thoroughly exploit their domestic mineral potential.

Currently, for non-precious and rare metals, most places around the world only exploited open-pit and shallow mines.

This was particularly true in regions outside of Huaguo, where veins deeper than five hundred meters were usually not mined, mainly because the extraction costs were too high to be economically viable.

As for Southeast Asia, it was even more of a non-starter; forget five hundred meters, even mines deeper than one hundred meters were rare.

Even with Hongsawaddy’s mining technology, they could only exploit the richest, most superficial deposits throughout Southeast Asia.

Thus, mining deep deposits became another means for the Homo Sapiens Company to achieve resource self-sufficiency.

Although no major deposits had been found at surface or shallow levels, they were certain that by digging deeper, they would find many deep and ultra-deep ore veins yet to be discovered by humanity.

If their technology were powerful enough, there were heaps of rare metals and Gold in the Earth’s mantle and core.

The premise, of course, was being able to extract them.

The Homo Sapiens Company didn’t dare to dream about the resources in the mantle and core for now, but they had big ideas for the strata between the surface and a depth of ten thousand meters.

At the very least, with the new mining technology, extracting veins two to three thousand meters underground posed no major problems, and the cost of extraction wouldn’t be too high.

There were currently two main issues constraining the widespread adoption of this new mining technology.

One was the issue of secrecy.

The other was exploration. After all, the cost of drilling a borehole for stratum composition analysis increases with depth.

The first problem was currently unsolvable. Until the day the Homo Sapiens Company came out on top, these technologies had to be kept secret.

But the second problem had recently been solved.

And the key to solving it, once again, lay in the bio-erosion technology.

The specific operation was also very simple: a very long, thin, ultra-hard penetrator was launched with explosives directly into the strata, creating a narrow channel. A certain amount of erosive bacteria was then injected into this micro-channel.

This technique could create boreholes of extremely large diameter. Even for ultra-deep wells, this method could easily reach depths of two to three thousand meters at a very low cost.

The aerospace base simply hadn’t had time to update its technology yet, whereas the geology and mineral exploration teams were already using this new method.

Furthermore, this technology could also be paired with the Green Umbrella System, allowing them to drill ultra-deep and extra-large wells without needing to import large drilling rigs.

After all, large drilling rigs have a certain degree of technological sophistication. Importing them on a large scale was not cost-effective and could easily tip off outsiders that they were engaging in large-scale mining or oil drilling.

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