Chapter 52: Battleship
What shocked Tom was not just that.
Further analysis showed that the main components of these gases were carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, hydrogen sulfide, and chlorofluorocarbons, among others.
All these gases had one thing in common: they were all closely related to industrial activities!
Tom knew that Loshen Star already had an extremely thin atmosphere due to his long-term large-scale industrial activities and the massive discharge of industrial waste gases into the natural environment.
The main gas components of Loshen Star’s atmosphere were also these gases!
If these gases on Loshen Star were emitted by him, then who emitted the gases on that dwarf planet?
A very reasonable guess surfaced in Tom’s mind.
On that dwarf planet, only about 40 million kilometers away from him, there also existed some intelligent life—temporarily unable to determine if Human Civilization or other types—also carrying out relatively large-scale industrial activities!
He actually had a neighbor!
Since there was a neighbor, then who was it that detonated the infrared bomb near Loshen Star, attracting the Monster Birds swarm, and causing him huge trouble?
It could only be them!
So, why did they do this? Are they... connected to the mysterious disappearance of Human Civilization?
A strong sense of crisis rose in Tom’s heart.
In any case, judging from their act of launching and detonating an infrared bomb to kill with a borrowed knife, they were enemies, not friends.
"I need to launch a probe over there to figure out their situation."
Tom thought rapidly: "Although a distance of 40 million kilometers is not far, accurately launching a probe there is still somewhat beyond my current capabilities."
The radius of that dwarf planet was approximately 800 kilometers.
Launching a probe from 40 million kilometers away required precision comparable to accurately hitting a mosquito from over ten kilometers away.
Even if his probe could carry more fuel and constantly adjust its course in Deep Space, he would at least need sufficient remote sensing technology, space positioning, and long-range communication technology as support.
Currently, he was still basically blank on these technologies.
"Next, I must go all out to develop these technologies. Besides that, there is an even more important matter: building warships!
Regardless of whether they are backward or not, I will first go all out to build the most advanced warships at this stage, the more the better! No matter what, I must at least have some self-preservation capability!
Fortunately, the previous Kaitian-1 spacecraft has accumulated a large amount of spacecraft manufacturing technology for me, and the space laboratory is continuously producing new technologies. Manufacturing warships at this stage is completely feasible for me.
Now I only hope that my neighbor can give me some time and not come looking for trouble now..."
Tom pondered silently and made a decisive decision.
This stage was not a good time to fully develop technology. Scientific research consumed too many resources and manpower, which he temporarily could not support at this stage.
Therefore, after mobilizing the brainpower of tens of thousands of Clones to complete the design of his first-generation warship in a short period, Tom only retained more than 30,000 Clones to continue key scientific research, such as remote sensing technology, Deep Space communication, and Deep Space positioning.
All remaining scientific research Clones were dismissed and put into production.
He had to produce a large number of warships in a short period!
Numerous factories and bases immediately became busy.
The design of this first-generation warship was based on the Kaitian-1 spacecraft, with extensive technological innovations and many modules added.
The most important of these was obviously the weapon system.
What kind of warship has no weapons?
Besides that, the radar system was also crucial. After all, in Deep Space, radar was equivalent to the eyes of a warship.
In addition, attitude control systems, energy systems, communication systems, and so on, were also critical.
In the huge workshops, countless robotic arms, controlled by chips, moved flexibly and precisely, installing large numbers of components from other factories one by one into the spacecraft hull.
For the manufacturing of the first ship of this first generation, Tom specially allocated 1,000 Clones to do nothing else but focus on thinking.
Blueprints and actual manufacturing are always two different things. In the actual manufacturing process, a large number of previously undiscovered problems would be exposed.
So whenever a new problem arose, these 1,000 Clones would inspect on-site, think on-site, modify blueprints and adjust the structure on-site, and provide solutions on-site.
The modification plans from here would instantly synchronize with the thousands of factories involved in the spacecraft industry chain, so almost every component constituting the spacecraft would be modified and then sent to the final assembly workshop to once again undergo the test of actual manufacturing.
When problems arose, they would be modified again, and once corrected, they would be shipped over again, repeating the process.
After about half a month of busy work, with many stumbles and at least hundreds of modifications, including more than a dozen major overall revisions, the first ship of this first-generation warship was finally built.
Only with Tom could such high efficiency be achieved, completing so many processes in just half a month.
For a normal intelligent civilization, it would be impossible to accomplish all this without at least a decade or more.
At this moment, this warship, propelled by the fierce combustion of methane and oxygen, rapidly rushed into Deep Space at a speed far exceeding that of a cargo spacecraft.
Its exterior was still hemispherical, but unlike a cargo spacecraft, it had many additional facilities.
First were two freely rotatable machine guns.
They were powered by chemical propellants, with a maximum rate of fire of about 2,000 rounds per minute, and a muzzle velocity of 1 kilometer per second.
This already exceeded Loshen Star’s first cosmic velocity. This meant that even if fired from Loshen Star’s surface, these bullets, once launched, could enter Loshen Star’s orbit and never fall back down.
In the ammunition bay, Tom equipped it with as many as 400,000 bullets. Calculating with a bullet mass of 10 grams, the bullets alone weighed 4 tons.
It was also equipped with two autocannons that could fire shells with their own internal ammunition.
Each shell weighed about 15 kilograms, and it carried 200 of them, totaling 3 tons.
Besides the machine guns and autocannons, it also had 8 missile launchers at its bottom, capable of carrying 8 of Tom’s self-designed first-generation guided missiles. Each missile weighed 600 kilograms, adding up to 4.8 tons.
Excluding other items, the load of this warship from various weapons alone reached 11.8 tons!
If its "fuel tank" was full, it could be filled with a total of 50 tons of liquid oxygen and methane, at which point its overall mass would reach 120 tons.
At this moment, such a behemoth had arrived in Deep Space.