by <unknown>
Although this table also pointed out that decisions such as DINK, non-marriage, late marriage, and childbirth were bound to increase in the future, after all, with a growing base, the population would continue to expand. Around the year 2050, the world's population would officially exceed the 10 billion mark.
However, although this table anticipated the evolution of human cultural trends, it did not anticipate the rise of Blacklight Biotechnology.
Nonetheless, the Earth Federation did not become pessimistic just because it had reached the population explosion number ahead of schedule. On the contrary, the Earth Federation said that mankind had never been as hopeful as it was now.
Blacklight Biotechnology's single-handed establishment of a permanent alien colony, Ares Science City on Mars, marked a stunning step forward for civilization. Since then, human beings had been promoted from planetary natives to an interplanetary species and had completely entered the era of extraterrestrial colonization.
Although the current Ares Science City could only accommodate hundreds of thousands of inhabitants, the four continents had also sent spacecraft to Mars. Four permanent colonies of a larger scale were under construction on Mars. In less than ten years in the future, at least ten million people would officially immigrate to Mars.
This development had made many people vaguely aware of the secret rivalry between the four continents and Blacklight Biotechnology, but at least on the surface, the two sides still maintained a show of goodwill and harmony.
Not only that, but also, with the implementation of the mankind anti-aging project, the average human lifespan had exceeded the 100-year mark. The period of life extended was by no means old age, but youth and middle age.
These two periods had been greatly extended, which meant that the problem of an aging society was gradually alleviated. With the promotion of age-reversal treatment programs, countless elderly people had turned into middle-aged people. According to this trend, the established definition of "middle-aged" in the Earth Federation population had been modified from 40–60 years old to 40–80 years old.
Under such circumstances, many countries had begun to adapt their policies to extend the retirement date. Although there were some voices of opposition, after this momentous shift, unless one did not opt for the "age-reversal treatment programs" to increase one's lifespan, one could only obey the rules that had been changed on a general level.
"Because of the prospects and development of extraterrestrial colonization technology, no country or continent in the world has issued an order to restrict population growth."
At this time, Chen Chen was sitting in the office, silently watching the population announcement issued by the Earth Federation while Little X said, "Obviously, all countries in the world are very optimistic about the migration of human beings to other planets."
"But of course."
Chen Chen nodded and chuckled. "After all, our Blacklight Biotechnology has paved the way for them in advance. Of course, they aren't willing to limit their population. If they know that we have even prepared the space warp engine technology that we'll need in the future, wouldn't they be leaping with delight?
"However, although we've obtained the blueprints and data on the space warp engine technology, we're still figuring things out."
Little X added on to Chen Chen's words. "It's estimated that in two or three months, the first space warp engine can be manufactured and then we'd still need to produce a compatible spacecraft."
Chen Chen nodded when he heard these words and said thoughtfully, "It's time to build a spaceport that belongs to our Blacklight Biotechnology. After all, the main focus of human activities will be diverted to space in the future and it's time to form our own interstellar fleet."
"But what should we do?"
Little X tilted her head and curiously said, "A spaceport that can manufacture outer spaceships is probably shockingly expensive. Although nuclear-powered engines can greatly reduce the cost of transporting materials into space, if you want to hurry up and build a huge space station before the completion of the space warp engine, it's probably not that easy. We'll have to launch at least a thousand rockets."
"Dummy."
However, Chen Chen flicked Little X's forehead lightly and laughed. "Do we need to send the spaceport into space part by part? Isn't it enough to launch the black Gantz sphere into space?"
Little X nursed her forehead. At first, she was shrinking back subconsciously, but after Chen Chen's words, her eyes suddenly lit up. "That's a good plan! The black sphere only needs electricity and the Gantz satellite uses signals to easily teleport things between two points. As long as a black sphere is transported to space, we can continuously teleport supplies there!"
Thus, it was decided. Soon, a nuclear-powered rocket had been arranged in the aerospace base. At the same time, the engineers also received a secret engineering drawing. According to the requirements on the engineering drawing, they secretly spent a few days manufacturing a crude mechanical platform.
This platform had over a hundred robotic arms. The longest one adopted a folding built-in robotic arm structure. Its maximum operating distance could reach more than a hundred meters and it could bear a load of a thousand kilograms. Even the smallest robotic arm was two or three meters long and could withstand a hundred kilograms of weight.
Strictly speaking, the mechanical platform was a fully automatic workshop of unknown function!
After this mechanical platform was folded in, it could collapse into a giant cylinder with a diameter of 25 meters and a length of more than 50 meters. Then, the cylinder was installed in this nuclear-powered rocket that had been prepared for a long time.
After that, there was no need to make an application to the Earth Federation. Today's Blacklight Biotechnology indeed had the qualification to launch satellites by itself. Blacklight Biotechnology only informed the Earth Federation of the geosynchronous orbit data to indicate the position it would be occupying and then this rocket was launched silently.
After half a day, the mechanical platform in the rocket had entered the geosynchronous orbit.
With the successful orbit, the fairing on the rocket was completely discarded and the five brackets that clung to the inside of the rocket were also extended at a forty-five-degree angle at the tail of the rocket. From a distance, it looked like a throne held high and the entire mechanical platform was flooded with colorful signals.
If anyone saw this, they would be shocked to realize — so much for it being a satellite, this was a prototype of a huge space station!
This huge mechanical platform gradually stretched out its frame on orbit. As the robotic arms slowly unfolded, it looked more and more sinister. It did not need solar panels at all as the nuclear fusion reactor in the platform could supply energy to the satellite for centuries.
At this moment, most of the rocket parts on the mechanical platform began to slowly detach and fell toward the earth. The platform was suspended in orbit, facing the earth's surface far away. In the center of the platform, a black sphere half the size of a person, which was embedded in the surface, also gradually glowed with icy blue light.
Everyone knew that it was very difficult to set up a space station in outer space. Even if the required technology was achieved, the transportation of materials was also a massive problem as they needed to be launched from the earth by rockets.
Although the advent of nuclear fusion thrusters had greatly reduced the cost of launching rockets, the time cost had not been reduced. It also required multiple launches to transport materials. It would take more than several years to build an adequate space station in the boundless void of outer space.
However, the emergence of the black Gantz sphere perfectly solved this problem. Although the black sphere's teleportation required a lot of electric power, it was already indescribably affordable compared to the cost of launching.
At this time, as the black sphere started its teleportation, the parts that had been prepar
ed for a long time were teleported to the mechanical platform and the hundreds of mechanical arms immediately began operation. Bit by bit, as if these were building blocks, it started to construct the prototype of the space station.
Chen Chen was ambitious indeed. The first space station he wanted to build was by no means similar to the small space station of the Earth Federation that could only accommodate a dozen people and was not even the size of a villa. What he wanted to build was a giant space dock.
In the future, this space station would not only be able to berth hundreds of warships and resource transport ships but would also be a space transportation port. Resources mined from the solar system did not have to be transported directly back to the earth. Instead, the resources would be accumulated here and then be transported back by proprietary ships.
In other words, this space station would be a large-scale spaceport unprecedented for humankind. Through this port, Blacklight Biotechnology could naturally gain more authority and more benefits…
A space station that suddenly appeared naturally quickly attracted the attention of the Earth Federation. In particular, they noticed that this space station suspended in a synchronous orbit over Namibia grew rapidly with each passing day, which astounded the upper echelons of the Earth Federation.
They could not understand how Chen Chen did it, so they tried to get information from Blacklight Biotechnology. However, only Chen Chen and Little X knew about this plan, so all their efforts were in vain.
In this manner, in less than three months, when autumn was arriving, the space station had reached the size of a hill.
After three months of fully automatic construction, the space station at this time had begun to take shape. From the outside, it looked like a drawn bow. At the same time, at the position of the bowstring, there were five horizontal docking sites.
Four of the docking sites were empty. In the docking site of the first row, a 30-meter-long, cigar-shaped spacecraft was moored quietly. Each docking site represented a berth.
Today's spaceport was only beginning to take shape, so it could only berth small spacecraft, and there were only five berths. After the spaceport personally designed by Little X was completely built, it could berth a large spaceship more than a hundred times larger than the Ares.
At this time, as the last part was delivered to the spaceport, a black sphere with a diameter of one meter, surrounded by three metal rings, appeared in the teleportation warehouse of the spaceport.
At the same time, there were five Black Knights in space suits.
Through the long-distance control of Little X, the Black Knights carried the weirdly shaped metal ball into the spacecraft moored in the port. After that came a complicated installation and loading process until the metal ball was fully installed inside the spacecraft. At this point, a spacecraft equipped with a space warp engine was finally completed.
Yes, that weird black sphere was the first space warp engine that Chen Chen had attempted to produce based on the technology he acquired from the Event Horizon dimension.
The next step could not be any easier.
In the southern part of the Eco Science City, in addition to the space base, a huge space observatory had already been built a few years ago.
Here, rows of radio telescopes with an area of more than thousands of square meters had been erected, each of which was over ten thousand square meters in size. They formed a super array and looked toward the sky in a unified manner.
Over time, these radio telescopes slowly rotated like gigantic sunflowers.
Any one of these radio telescopes alone might not be as powerful or as large as FAST (the Sky's Eye of China), but there were hundreds of radio telescopes gathered here. Together their scale had exceeded FAST, reaching an unprecedented level.
Chapter 602: Subspace's Kiss |
The "Courage Voyager" was the name of the spacecraft responsible for the space warp experiment.
As the spacecraft left the port, it soon flew to the designated space warp location, preparing to start the first space warp experiment in human history.
The starting point of this space warp experiment was the orbit of the Moon and the end point was the orbit of Mars. At this time, the distance between the two points was about 80 million kilometers. The acceleration of an average spacecraft, from here to the end point, would take around seven days, which was 168 hours.
However, if one entered the subspace through space warping and used subspace navigation technology, one could compress the distance by ten thousand times. That was to say, in theory, it would only take one second to reach that destination.
Of course, whether a spacecraft was in reality or in subspace, there must be an acceleration process, so the actual time it took would be more than one second.
Currently in the space observatory, Chen Chen was silently watching the data from the radio telescopes. At the same time, a group was busying about in the large hall. Everyone looked solemn, preparing for the first warp.
"Preparing for the navigation experiment, subspace navigation begins in three minutes!"
A cold electronic voice came from the broadcast and everyone was even more fired up, getting busy in their respective posts, constantly testing the accuracy of the data in front of them.
"Activating the nuclear fusion reactor!
"The nuclear fusion reactor has been activated, the temperature is currently rising, and the output power is stable…
"Activating the liquid helium cooling system!
"Activated. The pressure is stable now!
"Activating the strong magnetic ring. The space warp engine is starting to warm up!"
Chen Chen nodded to himself. He raised his head and glanced at the big screen above his head.
He saw dozens of monitoring footage on the big screen. These were all images sent from the spaceship Courage Voyager, but because of the distance, these images were slightly delayed.
Back when humanity first reached Mars, there were already signs of information delay in communications. Due to the distance between the two, the signal delay between Earth and Mars was as much as two to three hundred seconds. If humans got out of the solar system in the future, a mere phone call would take up years.
It seemed that it was time for quantum information transmission technology to be vigorously developed…
Chen Chen thought silently.
The thought flashed through Chen Chen's mind, but at this moment, the screen above his head displayed the core objective of this experiment — the space warp engine device.
At this time, on the periphery of the engine, three ring-shaped strong magnetic devices spun madly around the black sphere in the center, like three blurry afterimages. As they continued to rotate, the black sphere in the center also rotated unceasingly. After a while, perhaps it was an illusion, but Chen Chen felt that the black sphere in the center seemed to be slightly shifting toward a liquid form…
Of course, Chen Chen was familiar with this sight. The movie had one such scene where a member of the rescue team came to the liquefied space warp engine and slightly extended his hand, reaching into the black liquid.
It was as if the entire space warp engine became a space gate at this moment.
It was just that no one knew what was behind this gate. The rescue team member was finally pulled in. When he came out again, he had become a walking corpse without any consciousness.
As if something across the gate had taken his soul…
This was the danger of subspace. Chen Chen was not ignorant of such dangers. If he had a choice, he would not choose this way of traveling in contact with subspace. However, the universe was far too vast, vast enough to drive any civilization to desperation.
Based on the speed of the current nuclear fusion engine, taking away the time required for acceleration, it would still take more than half a year to travel out of the solar system.
The Milky Way was about 100,000 light-years in diameter, which was billions of
times that of the Solar System. This was an extremely devastating number. Even if one factored out the fuel and accelerated a spacecraft to subluminal speed, it would take more than 100,000 years to fly from one side of the galaxy to the other.
Not to mention the Milky Way was just a grain of sand in the observable universe.
Therefore, conventional flying methods would inevitably not be able to support the rise of civilization. If Chen Chen wanted to progress, sooner or later he still needed to develop space warp engine technology. If this was the case, then he could not afford to shrink back…
These thoughts flashed through Chen Chen's mind and the cold mechanical voice continued.
"The space warp engine has reached critical value. The core of the magnetic field is currently at 50 billion atmospheres and the strong magnetic rings are very stable! Ready to start the warp operation…
"One minute to the activation of the space warp engine…"
The cold electronic voice from the broadcast immediately resounded in every corner of the hall and at the same time, a low warning alarm followed, indicating that the experiment had entered the final stage.
Chen Chen looked somber. It was not only him, even the atmosphere in the entire hall had turned grave. The low and depressive aura weighed heavily on everyone's heart. Everyone was staring at the data stream in front of them, not daring to let down their guards for a moment.
"30-second countdown to start the space warp engine, be ready…
"Ten-second countdown, ready…
"Ten!
"Nine!
"Eight!"
…
"Three!
"Two!
"One!
"Space warp activating!"
With that order, Chen Chen only saw that the space warp engine on the screen, from the initial black mass, became brighter and brighter, and finally turned into a blinding beam, completely flooding the surveillance lens!
A few seconds later, that was, when the corrected delayed time also reached the time of the warp, all the monitoring screens flickered with static, and the space observatory completely lost contact with the Courage Voyager!
