Chapter 46: Type-1 Spaceship
This initial ignition test did not last long, nor did it involve actual flight.
Just over ten minutes after it left the ground by more than ten meters, it landed under Tom’s control, and the engine shut down.
Afterward, the Clones waiting nearby swarmed it, using various tools to dismantle it piece by piece, beginning to inspect the changes that had occurred in its various components during the process.
The engine system and ejection system were particularly important.
Thus, Tom saw that after only a dozen minutes of ejection, due to high temperature and high pressure, the engine components and ejector components had already undergone some unexpected changes.
"This won’t do; further adjustments and optimizations are still needed."
A simple "optimization and adjustment", when put into practice, is an extremely complex, comprehensive project involving multiple disciplines.
On Earth, such a thing would be impossible to achieve without tens of thousands of people working for one or two years.
But here on Loshen Star, the situation is different.
At this moment, the total population under Tom’s command has reached 1.4 million, and the number of consciousness connections has increased to 600,000. Correspondingly, the number of Clones working in the scientific research base, fully disengaged from production and solely dedicated to advancing technology, has also increased to 300,000.
What does it mean for a Civilization to have half of its population dedicated to scientific research?
Compared to Human Civilization, though its population has increased to tens of billions, even if all scientific researchers are counted—even including engineering and science university students—the total scientific research population of the entire Civilization is only about 600 million, accounting for merely 6%.
Yet, this 6% of the scientific research population has propelled Human Civilization to a very high level, even enabling it to launch a spacecraft carrying Tom to Loshen Star at the edge of the Solar System for scientific exploration.
And at this moment, the scientific research power Tom possesses is far more than a simple 50%.
These 300,000 scientific research Clones all possess knowledge reserves across all disciplines, have no communication costs between them, work 24 hours a day, year-round, without any internal friction, and dedicate all their energy to scientific research.
In total, a single scientific research Clone of his, roughly estimated, is probably equivalent to 20 Human scientists.
Thus, this is equivalent to 6 million high-quality Human scientific researchers conducting scientific research!
At this moment, approximately 50,000 scientific research Clones, equivalent to about 1 million Human scientists, have been put into the optimization and adjustment work of the aircraft.
Consequently, just three days later, a new optimization plan was released. Five days later, a new aircraft prototype was built.
This time, it flew to a height of several hundred meters, traveled several kilometers, and lasted for half an hour.
Then followed further optimization and adjustment, repeating this process. Finally, half a year later, a finalized mass-produced aircraft model was successfully built.
"Ignition!"
At this command, within this aircraft, which still maintained a hemispherical shape, the liquid methane and liquid oxygen stored in the fuel tank were released into the combustion chamber under the control of an automatic chip.
The electric igniter ignited them, and they immediately began to burn violently, rapidly expanding in volume, with temperature and pressure sharply increasing.
Through specially designed ejection pipes, these high-temperature, high-pressure gases were directed to the bottom of the aircraft and ejected downward.
Thus, the aircraft slowly ascended.
After ascending, the gas ejected from below weakened, and instead began to eject from the rear. Consequently, the spacecraft began to move, flying faster and higher.
Because Loshen Star has no atmosphere, it cannot maintain altitude using air buoyancy, so the spacecraft must continuously eject from below, otherwise, it will fall.
The process of ejecting downwards to maintain the spacecraft’s altitude and ejecting backward to control the spacecraft’s speed is entirely automatically adjusted by the chip; Clones only need to input the corresponding commands.
At the same time, flying on Loshen Star has another advantage: there is no air resistance. Once accelerated to a sufficient speed, it only needs to maintain altitude, and it can continue flying under inertia.
This further saved a large portion of fuel.
The first finalized spacecraft built by Tom, at a speed of up to 2000 kilometers per hour, spent several hours directly circling Loshen Star, then after a fierce deceleration, it hovered again over the test site.
The nozzles below fiercely ejected, propelling it to land steadily at a relatively slow speed.
After another comprehensive inspection, confirming that everything met expectations, Tom immediately issued the command.
Mass production!
Over the years, Tom has always been troubled by the slow speed of goods circulation.
Large quantities of goods, such as ore, do not require speed and can slowly travel along railway lines.
However, for small, special goods, such as a base urgently needing certain components, a chip factory producing more advanced chips that need to be widely deployed, a base urgently needing more Clones for replenishment, and so on, when these goods and personnel also have to slowly travel by train, it becomes somewhat intolerable.
Now, the Feal-1 Series spacecraft, named by Tom, has been finalized for mass production, which can perfectly compensate for this shortcoming and further enhance the overall productivity of the entire base cluster.
"It’s a pity that at this stage, the Feal-1 Series spacecraft can only operate near Loshen Star and cannot enter space, so it cannot be considered a true spacecraft."
Tom felt a slight regret in his heart: "But it doesn’t matter.
Anyway, here on Loshen Star, planes and spacecraft are one and the same. During mass production and subsequent large-scale use, the shortcomings of the Feal-1 Series will continuously be exposed, and I can then optimize it specifically.
Once optimized to a certain extent and its performance improved to a certain degree, its maximum speed will naturally break through 830 meters per second, exceeding Loshen Star’s first cosmic velocity, and enter an orbiting trajectory."
Currently, the maximum speed of the Feal-1 Series is 2000 kilometers per hour, approximately 550 meters per second, which is still a significant distance from 830 meters per second.
Of course, even if it reaches this speed, it can only orbit Loshen Star. To break free from its gravity field and enter space, the speed needs to reach approximately 1.2 kilometers per second, or 4320 kilometers per hour.
With the finalization of the Feal-1 Series, the spacecraft industrial base, which had been built in advance but had never been put into production, finally received the definitive specifications and production standards.
Tens of thousands of Clones immediately entered the production lines. After a series of debugging and adjustments, the production line finally began full-power operation.
Not long after, large numbers of Feal-1 Series spacecraft began to appear in the sky of Loshen Star, trailing long plumes of exhaust as they roared across the sky.