I can upgrade the shelter-Chapter 826 - 724: Lowering Costs

After the construction work on the defense line in the Middle East Region began to proceed smoothly, Chen Xin had some thoughts on the Dome City design that had been brought out and rearranged.

The country wants to restart the construction of Dome City, a plan he has confirmed with the higher-ups, who indeed have this intention, but they want to adjust the original Dome City design plan.

It has been mentioned before that this design was originally experimental, aimed at studying the coexistence between humans and the ecological environment, as well as the restoration of the ecological environment after a disaster.

According to the initial design, once Dome City is built, it’s not the end. A large number of research institutions and staff would maintain it, and species would be bred and multiplied within, establishing the ecosystem designed by Chen Xin to enable self-circular maintenance and stability.

Overall, rather than a city, it’s more like a large research facility.

For the current Flame Country, restarting Dome City’s construction is obviously not to continue this research project, but to accommodate the populace.

Since the sky was purified and the sun rose again, the country has actually been planning to bring the citizens living underground back to the surface.

After all, it’s well known that people need sunlight; long-term living underground can negatively affect the body. Living in underground shelters was a necessity for survival, but if things improve, citizens should return to living on the surface.

In fact, some regions and cities have already started transforming their shelters after the sun reemerged, preparing to return to surface living.

If not hindered by the war with extraterrestrial creatures, the country would have started promoting this issue long ago. 𝘧𝓇ℯ𝑒𝓌𝑒𝑏𝓃𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭.𝒸ℴ𝓂

Restarting the construction of Dome City is an attempt for this purpose.

After all, apart from having a dome over the head, life in Dome City is basically no different from cities before the disaster.

Now it requires a functional adjustment of Dome City, transforming from an experimental research city to a more specialized living city.

This is actually not difficult to achieve; the current Dome New City is such a city, accommodating tens of thousands of immigrants as a genuine living city, just differing from a pure living city due to certain limitations of the original design and the needs of wartime support.

The blueprint optimized by Chen Xin again is very suitable.

After all, it’s a city designed purely to accommodate population and meet living needs.

This blueprint was sent not only to the high-level officials responsible for the defense line in the Middle East Region but also to the country’s high-level officials.

However, the cost of Dome City remains too high. Even if the country can afford to build a new dome now, it is still a significant burden.

Thus, the higher-ups expressed to Chen Xin the intention to reduce costs, hoping he could further optimize the blueprint to allow the country to afford the construction costs for two dome cities.

Faced with this request from the higher-ups, Chen Xin didn’t refuse, but it’s not easy to achieve.

To reduce construction costs, apart from reducing material input, the only option is to cut labor costs. After all, construction costs are mainly these, and land doesn’t need to be included in the costs, as the land belongs to the state, not requiring payment.

However, neither material nor labor can be easily compressed.

Regarding labor costs, there’s actually no room for reduction, unless there’s a major improvement in current construction methods, allowing fewer workers to complete more tasks to reduce costs.

But this is not something that can be easily achieved, and even compressing labor costs won’t meet the higher-ups’ expectation for the country to afford the construction of two dome cities simultaneously.

After all, labor costs don’t constitute the major part of Dome City’s expenses; the larger cost lies in the materials for building the dome.

When designing the dome’s supporting structure, Chen Xin specifically chose lightweight materials, and even the dome’s outer layer was made from EFTE airbags and lightweight insulation materials rather than heavier materials like glass.

These lightweight materials significantly reduced the dome’s self-weight while maintaining sufficient structural strength. With some design additions from Chen Xin, they resulted in the Dome New City—a giant dome sheltering the entire city for tens of thousands.

However, the use of these materials constitutes the largest portion of Dome City’s construction costs.

These materials were already considered relatively high-cost even before the disaster, but with the sufficient industrial scale to mass-produce, it was natural to compress the costs to an acceptable level.

Yet the current industrial scale is clearly not comparable to before the disaster, and domestic industrial production capability also needs to support both Europe and the Middle East, leaving very few resources.

If costs can’t be compressed, the country’s current capacity might only afford to build one dome city, and even then, it’s tight.

If replacing these materials with cheaper substitutes, the dome’s weight and structure would be affected, requiring an overhaul of the original design—essentially starting from scratch.

Even for Chen Xin, it’s not something that can be easily accomplished.

Nevertheless, he gathered researchers from relevant areas to tackle this issue, to explore how to meet the higher-ups’ request.

The first issue raised was regarding construction; some suggested that current 3D printing technology could be used for Dome City’s construction, as this printing technology not only facilitates but also saves on labor input.

Chen Xin quickly adopted this suggestion and designed a new 3D printing device specifically for dome construction. As long as materials are ready, the dome’s supporting structure can be printed directly.

But it’s still not enough; while this does effectively reduce some construction costs, it still doesn’t meet the higher-ups’ standards.

To truly decrease costs, material innovation is necessary.

Faced with this problem, the researchers gathered by Chen Xin proposed two completely opposite plans.

One side hopes to develop new materials that meet construction requirements while being lower in cost, which can achieve the higher-ups’ requirements.

On the other hand, the other side hopes to focus on structural optimization, replacing expensive materials with cheaper ones, which can also meet the higher-ups’ requirements.