Chapter 115: We Will Continue to Soar into the Cosmos
Chapter 115: We Will Continue to Soar into the Cosmos
In the sixteenth Year of the Human United Era.
This year, on Earth, Qin Yu turned eighty years old.
But compared to the average lifespan of one hundred and eighty years, Qin Yu was just middle-aged by visible standards.
This year,
After Qin Yuan made the decision regarding the further development of Mars and the other planets of the Solar System,
The Negentropy Research Institute as a whole, with all its research divisions and teams of researchers, naturally harbored no doubts about this issue any longer.
Following that meeting at the Negentropy Research Institute,
The HCC announced this news to the general public.
“The Huaxin News Agency, authorized by the HCC, hereby releases the following news.”
“At present, Human Civilization’s development and construction of the Moon have been initially completed. The scale of the Lunar Surface Cities and Lunar Surface Intelligent Industrial capacity already provides sufficient surplus capability to accomplish further lunar development and sustain the operation of the Lunar Surface Cities.”
“The Moon, as part of Human Civilization’s territory, has been incorporated into its domain. Lunar Surface Cities are functioning normally under the HCC, alongside all other human cities.”
“Therefore, to facilitate Human Civilization’s continued development and to secure more resources and space, the HCC will commence, from this moment, concurrent development and construction projects for Mars, the Asteroid Belt, Venus, and other regions within the Solar System.”
“The production capacity of Earth-based Smart Industrial Clusters will support the simultaneous development and construction of the Venus, Mars, and Asteroid Belt regions.”
“The current scale of Lunar Surface Smart Industrial capacity and resource development will further accelerate its rate of expansion to meet the needs of the development and construction projects for Venus, Mars, the Asteroid Belt, and other regions.”
“The HCC will henceforth gradually and simultaneously incorporate Venus, Mars, and the Asteroid Belt into Human Civilization’s domain.”
“According to the development and construction plans for Venus, Mars, and the Asteroid Belt region provided by the Negentropy Research Institute, upon the completion of development in these respective areas, a zone stretching from Earth to Mars, the Asteroid Belt, and Venus will form the innermost ring of Human Civilization’s settlement region within the Solar System during the HCC era. Additionally, it is not ruled out that, in the future, following the completion of development and construction for Venus, Mars, and the Asteroid Belt, projects will continue further out towards the outer reaches of the Solar System…”
For the vast majority of people within the HCC, this news was not very surprising now.
There were also no real doubts about the Negentropy Research Institute’s decision to advance into the Solar System beyond lunar development, extending Human Civilization’s territory towards Mars.
For the overwhelming majority of people,
Since the Moon had already been developed and built into something quite impressive by Human Civilization,
It was only natural that expansion should continue towards larger and more distant planets.
There were so many planets, moons, and celestial bodies within the Solar System, all holding such vast resources.
With Human Civilization now possessing the capability to reach them, there was no reason to leave those resources untouched.
Who cared if they were immediately usable? Grab them first and bring them into Human Civilization’s fold.
Who ever complains about having too many resources?
Anyway, even with the grand commencement of development and construction projects on Mars, Venus, and the Asteroid Belt,
It wouldn’t really impact their daily lives.
The prodigious productive capacity of Human Civilization’s entire Smart Industrial system meant that even a tiny fraction leaking out was more than enough to support everyone’s normal existence.
So,
Naturally, after the Huaxin News Agency completed the information release,
Both online and in reality, people reacted with excitement, keen interest, and engaging in heated discussions.
“…When are they going to open the lottery for migration to Mars or a Venus city? I’ll be the first to sign up!”
“Hey there, see your location tag says ‘Guanghan City, Moon’? Tired of hanging out on the Lunar Surface already?”
“Not exactly tired, it’s… I think it’d be awesome if, just in my lifetime, I could keep moving to the farthest Stellar City as humanity expands… Just thinking about it thrills me.”
“Pretty romantic… I also want to ask, when will Mars’s first city be built? I won’t move there though, I still prefer the Earth’s surface. But going for a trip to experience the alien landscape would be amazing.”
“This is great! Our journey is towards the stars and the cosmos! Someday, the entire Solar System will be part of Human Civilization’s domain!”
“After the full development and construction of Venus, Mars, and the Asteroid Belt, doesn’t that mean the total resource base of our entire civilization could jump several levels?”
“Exactly! Compared to planets, the Moon is just too small. Once we integrate the next two planets and the Asteroid Belt into our civilization, how powerful Human Civilization will become – I can’t even imagine!”
“You can’t imagine it, but I dare to… Speaking of which, how long does a spaceship trip to Mars take currently anyway…”
The discussions raged on, online and off,
But this buzz itself didn’t significantly impact the Negentropy Research Institute’s, or the HCC’s, plans to push ahead with developing and building on more planets within the Solar System.
Concurrently with the announcement of this project,
The Negentropy Research Institute, along with the Earth and Lunar Surface Smart Industrial systems centrally controlled by the Strong Artificial Intelligence from the Brain Intelligence Project,
Were already busy mobilizing for the effort.
The various research divisions and teams within the Negentropy Research Institute, according to their respective fields of expertise,
Gathered together, formulating more detailed plans for the development and construction of Mars, Venus, and the Asteroid Belt.
Beyond the overall Solar System planetary development plan itself, this also involved designs for Martian cities,
And modifications to current Intelligent Machinery and other hardware designs to account for differences in planetary surface conditions.
However, given that Human Civilization had already enabled Lunar Surface Cities to house over ten million permanent residents,
Further development and construction of the Solar System’s inner regions, such as Mars, presented no truly insurmountable technological obstacles at this stage.
It largely involved design adjustments tailored to the specific conditions on each planet’s surface.
Human Civilization’s current relevant technology was itself already sufficient to handle conditions on Venus, Mars, and within the Asteroid Belt region.
And the Strong Artificial Intelligence had already begun directing parts of Human Civilization’s Smart Industrial and Smart Production systems,
To start manufacturing and building the necessary equipment for developing Venus, Mars, and the Asteroid Belt region.
For example, more Electric Propulsion Spaceships.
Thanks to the Moon’s gravity advantage, the majority of Electric Propulsion Spaceships bound for Venus, Mars, and the Asteroid Belt region would, as per the plan, be constructed and launched from the Lunar Surface.
…
And so it was, also in this year, that the Negentropy Research Institute
Directly and formally initiated the official development and construction of Mars, Venus, and the Asteroid Belt.
Towards the end of this year,
The first batch of specialized Electric Propulsion Spaceships rolled out:
The Zhu Rong series, built for transit between the Earth-Moon System and Mars by the Lunar Surface and Earth-based Smart Industrial Clusters.
The Tai Bai series, built for transit between the Earth-Moon System and Venus.
The Fan Xing (Myriad Stars) series, built for development and construction efforts in the Asteroid Belt region.
One after another, they launched from the Lunar Surface, bound for their respective targets.
By this time, the development of the Electric Propulsion System, advanced through years of R&D at the Negentropy Research Institute’s Energy and Power Research Institute, had progressed beyond the DT03-1 model to a new improved version, DT03-02.
The thrust of a single Electric Propulsion Engine had increased significantly again without any increase in its size.
Applied to the Electric Propulsion Spaceships, this meant a marked improvement in the cargo capacity per ship and in travel speed.
Nevertheless,
For Human Civilization, the greatest obstacle to developing Venus, Mars, and the Asteroid Belt regions remained the sheer distance.
Compared to the mere 300,000-plus kilometers between Earth and Moon,
The closest approach of Mars to Earth still exceeded 55 million kilometers, with an average distance over 200 million kilometers.
Venus’s closest approach was over 40 million kilometers.
The Asteroid Belt lay even further out, beyond the Martian Orbit, nestled between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter,
At a distance exceeding two Astronomical Units (AU) – over 300 million kilometers – from Earth.
Even with Human Civilization’s most advanced Electric Propulsion Spaceships, capable of longer acceleration burns over greater distances to achieve higher maximum speeds,
Accounting for both acceleration and deceleration phases, travel from the Earth-Moon System to Mars still took over half a month. A round trip required a full month.
The situation was similar when heading to Venus or the Asteroid Belt.
As for other issues, they could be overcome by Human Civilization, which had now fully entered the Type I Civilization stage and was charging toward Type II Civilization.
But one problem remained unsolvable for now: the significant time required for this journey.
They could only build more spacecrafts for travel between these regions and Earth to lessen the impact of distance on Human Civilization’s upcoming development plans for Mars, Venus, and the Asteroid Belt.
Regarding Mars development:
The Negentropy Research Institute’s strategy closely mirrored their approach to Lunar Surface development.
The first fleet of Zhu Rong spacecrafts primarily carried Intelligent Machinery for resource exploration and mining on Mars’ surface.
They would begin by extracting resources from Mars’ surface, followed by establishing Smart Industrial Clusters to process these resources locally. Then, they’d build other elements of the Smart Industrial System.
Finally, they would utilize Martian resources themselves to construct Martian cities.
However, the development strategies for Venus and the Asteroid Belt were slightly different.
In the Negentropy Research Institute’s plan, the Asteroid Belt would focus on Intelligent Machinery mining and Smart Industrial Cluster processing in resource-rich areas.
They also considered establishing several remote, intelligent research outposts within the Asteroid Belt, operated by permanent Researchers based on Mars.
For Venus, the surface environment was far too harsh.
Thus, in the Negentropy Research Institute’s plan, constructing a Venus Surface City wasn’t currently feasible, though it might be considered later.
For now, the focus remained on extracting Venusian resources using large-scale specialized Intelligent Machinery. Moreover, a Smart Industrial Zone would be built in synchronous orbit around Venus for initial and secondary processing of mined materials.
…
Then, in the following year,
as Human Civilization continued pushing its development programs for Mars, Venus, and the Asteroid Belt,
the HCC reevaluated and revised its previously slowed Population Growth Plan.
“The HCC and the Negentropy Research Institute announce:
We will adjust the current Civilization Population Growth Plan.
The scale of the Social Upbringing Bureau (SUB) will be expanded.
New SUB facilities and related infrastructure will be established on the Lunar Surface.
Under the new Population Growth Plan, the total population within the HCC will reach at least ten billion within thirty years.
Further, this year, we will welcome the first newborns born at the Lunar Surface Social Upbringing Bureau.”
Before this,
the total permanent population across all Lunar Surface Cities had surpassed ten million.
However, these were all individuals who had voluntarily migrated from various Surface Cities on Earth.
Until this year, there had been no native-born residents within any Lunar Surface City.
But now, due to Qin Yu’s earlier decision, confirmed by the Negentropy Research Institute, the goal was to significantly increase the population base of Human Civilization.
The aim was to nurture more Researchers capable of working in cutting-edge fields, accelerating the development of Human Civilization’s overall strength and technological level.
This change was now implemented.
However,
the public reaction to the announcement by the Negentropy Research Institute and HCC was largely muted.
Primarily, it was because
regardless of how the Human Civilization population increase plan changed,
its execution wouldn’t require much from ordinary people.
The upbringing of the new population would be handled by the SUB and HCC.
Besides, in this era, survival wasn’t an issue, and competition wasn’t intensely fierce.
The increase in Human Civilization’s total population wouldn’t significantly impact most lives.
Under these circumstances,
the vast majority naturally had no strong opinions about the revised population plan.
“… A few hundred million more wouldn’t hurt. I don’t think our society feels much pressure adding five or six hundred million annually. I just hope we get more geniuses among these children… I yearn for some brilliant Researchers. A bit more change to mine and most people’s lives would be great.”
“Are we gacha pulling? Just have more people born each year; eventually, we’ll pull a super genius… Do you think we could ever get another like Academician Qin Yu…”
“… Hey, guy talking about Qin Yu, are you even awake? Someone like Academician Qin Yu appears once in countless ages, not just ‘in this time’.”
“Where are you placing Professor Qin Yu?”
“Professor Qin Yu is the most brilliant Life Scientist in centuries. Academician Qin Yu? The greatest scientific mind in centuries! Unequalled!”
“No way we’re comparing Professor Qin Yu and Academician Qin Yu? What’s there to compare…? Both profoundly changed history’s course and the entire face of our civilization.”
“… A little secret: sometimes I feel Academician Qin Yu’s birth was like the universe giving Human Civilization a cheat code…”
“Getting off track, way off! I’ve lived on Lunar Surface for years. Aside from Earth students here to study, I’ve never seen other kids in these cities. Kids are hope! So how many will be born here this year?”
…
That year, in the Lunar Surface branches of the Social Upbringing Bureau within each Lunar Surface City,
five million children were born via the Human Reproduction Device.
This number matched the total births from the Human Reproduction Devices across the entire Huaxia Nation in one year when the technology was first popularized.
From then on,
Lunar Surface Cities gained an additional source of population growth beyond migration from Earth.
On many levels,
this development held special significance for the Lunar Surface Cities of Human Civilization.
When the first child born at the Lunar Surface Social Upbringing Bureau arrived, Qin Yu was present there.
A Bipedal Robot managing the Lunar Surface SUB operation gently placed the infant into Qin Yu’s arms so that Qin Yu, the head of the Negentropy Research Institute, could see this newborn.
At that moment,
this scene before Qin Yu
felt strikingly similar to the scene centuries ago when the first child was born via the Human Reproduction Device.
The two moments, separated by hundreds of years, seemed to overlap, making Qin Yu feel momentarily dazed.