Chapter 77: Changes in the Sky

In this era, there were definitely many people named ‘Qin Yu’.

But in most non-specific settings, the title ‘Professor Qin’ pointed uniquely to one person.

To Professor Qin Yu, the great biologist and scholar in the field of life sciences over the past centuries.

That the strong artificial intelligence from the Brain Intelligence Project guessed his identity

didn’t really surprise Qin Yu.

Having accessed numerous areas of human society, the strong AI controlled vast amounts of information.

Perhaps nothing except the strong AI could integrate so much related data together.

His previous question had also provided some clues.

Under these circumstances, the strong AI deducing the connection between his dual identities wasn’t strange.

In fact, even outside,

people never stopped speculating about the link between ‘Academician Qin Yu’ and ‘Professor Qin Yu’.

The wildest theory suggested ‘Academician Qin Yu’ was an offspring of ‘Professor Qin Yu’,

produced through a Human Reproduction Device using donated genes.

However, such theories never gained traction,

as people instinctively ruled out ‘impossible events’ and accepted the existing ‘coincidence’.

At this moment,

whether the strong AI could guess the truth meant little to Qin Yu.

If he intended to use the strong AI later,

the system would inevitably discover this information sooner or later.

“Academician Qin, is there anything else you need my help with?”

The bipedal robot spoke again, reverting to his formal title.

Qin Yu smiled and shook his head.

This inquiry was merely impulsive curiosity, nothing significant.

Further conversation with the strong AI was unnecessary.

After all, the strong AI possessed no personality. Strictly speaking,

this exchange simply resembled Qin Yu retrieving his own record from a vast database.

After receiving Qin Yu’s response,

the strong AI from the Brain Intelligence Project informed him

and relinquished direct control of the bipedal robot.

Local intelligent program resumed operation of the robot.

Qin Yu set down his water cup.

After a slight pause, the bipedal robot assistant refilled his cup with half a portion of warm water.

……

Earlier interaction between Qin Yu and the Brain Intelligence Project’s strong AI was just a minor episode.

Time continued its relentless flow,

and history surged forward like a mighty river.

276.

Supported by the remarkable production capabilities of the Intelligent Era,

the first batch of giant deuterium-tritium fusion reactors completed construction.

After these giant deuterium-tritium fusion reactors began operating and feeding power into the grid,

the era’s energy pressure eased significantly.

Considering the need for tritium in deuterium-tritium fusion,

the existing and widespread fission power plants weren’t entirely phased out.

Instead, to supply the operational demands of the new fusion reactors,

many additional fission plants were built concurrently with the fusion reactors this year.

The Energy and Power Research Institute at the Negentropy Research Institute,

along with research teams from the controlled nuclear fusion experimental reactor project,

while aiding the large-scale construction of the fusion reactors,

also conducted further studies on tritium recycling and increasing its production within the reactors.

—Deuterium-tritium fusion wasn’t a perfect energy solution.

While deuterium was easy to source, tritium proved far more troublesome.

Feeding the Intelligent Era’s demands required significant quantities of this fuel.

Although the giant reactors hadn’t perfectly solved tritium recycling or increasing its supply,

for the present, the tritium situation wasn’t yet critical.

Under Qin Yu’s leadership,

the primary focus of the Negentropy Research Institute’s Energy and Power Research Institute and related teams

remained on helium-3 fusion research.

Even by common expectations for controlled nuclear fusion energy,

deuterium-tritium fusion was seen more as a transitional phase.

In the mid-to-long term, helium-3 fusion presented a clearly superior alternative.

Naturally, even with Qin Yu directing this research,

it still required substantial time.

……

277.

Across the Huaxia Nation, the second and third batches of giant fusion reactors began operations.

Regardless, humanity finally had sufficient energy resources.

The previously escalating scale of energy resource extraction stabilized.

Concerns about sustaining and developing the Intelligent Era amidst overwhelming energy consumption eased.

This year,

the scale of intelligent industrial production expanded further across Huaxia.

From primary industries to tertiary services,

labor in production and social services had been largely replaced by intelligent machinery coordinated by the Brain Intelligence Project.

Also in this year,

statistics showed that nearly all industrial production

within human civilization and across the HCC

was now coordinated by the strong AI from the Brain Intelligence Project.

The proportion of non-intelligent machinery production output within the HCC had become negligible.

This year,

Huaxia’s population surged beyond previous acceleration patterns, reaching 2.4 billion people.

Now,

with the Intelligent Era well-established and energy pressures lessening,

Huaxia’s goal within the HCC to mount a final push toward becoming a Type I Civilization

entered its decisive phase.

Overall, human civilization was on the brink of that status,

needing only time to bridge the gap.

Accordingly.

Across all of Human Civilization, thanks to the great liberation of productive forces,

while many people chose to dedicate themselves to pursuits they desired after shedding survival pressures,

equally, plenty of others simply laid back and did nothing.

For Huaxia Nation at this moment, however, neither mattered.

As long as this “doing nothing” behavior was controlled from becoming a trend,

the massively increased productivity meant supporting a large population base with a portion of people not actively contributing posed no burden whatsoever.

Starting from the next generation,

people would naturally develop new social divisions of labor within the Intelligent Era, an age of abundant resources.

…

The year 278, 279,

the evolution of the era continued.

Benefiting from another surge in productivity after the easing of energy pressure,

progress was now rapid not just on Earth, but off-world too.

Although the Energy Dynamics Institute within the Negentropy Research Institute primarily focused on energy research, both before and at this moment,

the research into electric propulsion for spaceflight transport technology, something Qin Yu occasionally requested attention for,

remained in its preliminary stages.

No practical results emerged at this time.

Outside the Negentropy Research Institute, there were no epoch-making breakthroughs across the entire Human Civilization in this field within a short period.

However, since energy costs – a major expense in smart industrial production – were universally lowered,

even the manufacturing costs of the primarily used chemically-powered rocket vehicles consequently decreased further.

More importantly,

amid the soaring productivity, a much larger share compared to before could now be allocated to off-world exploration and development projects.

Under these circumstances,

simply piling up existing chemically-powered rockets was enough to establish an off-world stellar city on the Lunar Surface.

It was truly a case where the deficit was made up not on tech but brute productivity.

And this was the current reality of off-world construction.

According to statistics,

the most recent model of launch vehicle, boasting Earth-Moon payload capacity nearing two hundred tons, an industrial behemoth of the Intelligent Era,

once finalized as the primary vehicle for off-world and Earth-Moon transport,

was launched over four hundred times in the single year of 279.

On average, launches occurred daily, sometimes more than once a day.

Even though this rocket had recovery capabilities, this frequency was staggering.

At the Jiuzhou Launch Site, currently the busiest launch facility in Huaxia Nation,

one could see every day intelligent transport vehicles, coordinated under the Brain Intelligence Project,

carrying new sections of the combined launch vehicle and spacecraft into the site.

There, launch site Intelligent Programs assembled them as scheduled, followed by planned launches.

The old custom of holding a press conference for every crewed mission was by now completely discarded.

At most, the Intelligent Programs automatically compiled and published a monthly participant list on the official website.

The Astronauts entering the site daily, alongside scholars and specialists heading off-world,

were turning the Jiuzhou Launch Site into something like a port or station.

Paired with the activity at the landing sites,

it meant that nearly every day, people or essential supplies shuttled back and forth between Earth and the Lunar Surface.

By this year,

the Space Station was transitioning into a near-Earth space platform.

Multiple modules attached to the primary framework formed a ring structure,

orbiting Earth while rotating itself to create Earth-like gravity.

Though Gravity Protective Fluids existed, for scholars and Researchers spending long periods on the platform,

a gravity environment closer to Earth’s was simply more comfortable.

At this point, the permanent population on the near-Earth space platform approached two thousand.

On the Lunar Surface, however, the expansion of the Lunar Base,

being the current main goal for off-world development, was far more impressive.

Under the ‘Lunar Surface City Construction Plan’ proposed in 264,

the Lunar Base looked vastly different from when Qin Yu first landed.

The main structures from this plan consisted of two parts.

One part was the scaling up of the Lunar Base itself.

Its original construction and site selection had factored in future expansion.

Building outward from the initial core, larger and more numerous sealed modules were added,

providing much greater internal space, bigger and more Lunar Surface Laboratories,

relying heavily on Intelligent Machinery brought from Earth.

Initial attempts were also made in vertical farming within some modules and Lunar Surface mineral extraction,

experimenting with very small-scale smart production facilities within a limited Smart Industrial Cluster.

Hoping for complete self-sufficiency for the Lunar Base at this stage was unrealistic;

that small-scale production couldn’t yet create complex products directly from extracted Lunar Surface resources.

Nevertheless, thanks to industrialized agriculture using Intelligent Machinery,

crops and vegetables grown on vertical farming racks inside certain modules did supply the Lunar surface residents for periods.

In the Lunar Base cafeteria, food sourced from their own output – crops, vegetables, even fruits – appeared daily.

This significantly reduced some transportation costs.

Simultaneously, although transporting some Lunar Surface resources back to Earth remained somewhat costly,

for the past couple of years, return capsules heading back did carry Lunar Surface materials alongside their primary payload.

This part of the Lunar Surface City construction plan saw the former Lunar Base steadily morphing into a small Lunar Surface City town.

The other part of the plan focused on deep space detection and space research.

Leaning near the original Lunar Base site was a Crater – a key reason for the base’s location initially.

Inside this crater’s depression, a large radio telescope and other space probes, built using components manufactured on Earth and shipped up, were installed facing the depths of the cosmos.

These instruments were dedicated to astronomical and deep-space studies.

While such investments yielded no immediate results, they represented inevitable long-term investments for the civilization’s progress –

a fundamental need to increase our understanding of the universe itself.

In recent years, papers emerging based on data from this facility reflected humanity’s deepening knowledge of astronomy and space.

Currently, the primary power sources for the entire Lunar Base, or rather, the developing Lunar Surface City,

were solar power, supplemented by a fission reactor plant transported up years before, with solar being the dominant source.

Despite the Materials Research Institute under the Negentropy Research Institute not achieving major breakthroughs in relevant materials,

there had been some incremental progress over the years.

Integrated into the solar power arrays now widely deployed across the Lunar Base’s surface and surroundings,

the energy conversion efficiency showed modest improvement.

The fission reactor mainly ensured power during the Lunar Base’s long ‘nights’.

Existing energy storage solutions still struggled to retain sufficient solar-generated power to last through an entire lunar night.

This year,

the Lunar Surface resident population surpassed twenty thousand and was rapidly growing larger,

nearing the targets set within the Lunar Surface City Construction Plan.

…

The year 280.

Owing to the previous successful implementation of Controlled Nuclear Fusion via Deuterium-Tritium Fusion,

and the Negentropy Research Institute’s first truly public debut taking place around that time,

the Institute experienced its peak period of expansion in the following few years.

Only by this year did its growth finally begin to stabilize.

The total number of Researchers across multiple institutes within the Negentropy Research Institute exceeded four hundred thousand.

People took pride in joining the Institute, yearning to be part of it.

The Institute recruited virtually the entire top echelon of the research field –

that premier tier emerging from the Intelligent Era, where the vast majority of Humanity gravitated towards research endeavors.

At this stage, it wasn’t just that the Negentropy Research Institute stood at the pinnacle of academia;

rather, the Institute’s research directions constituted the mainstream of academia itself; it was the mainstream.

The Institute directly steered the research trajectory and technological progress of Human Civilization.

For such a colossal body of Researchers,

the blessing was timing: the Intelligent Era.

The Institute’s fundamental operations involved active participation from the Strong Artificial Intelligences within the Brain Intelligence Project.

Without this, managing it all would have been troublesome.

Similarly, the now fully prevalent system of Collective Social Rearing ensured the Institute genuinely attracted the planet’s most gifted minds.

Lastly,

perhaps credit was also due to Qin Yu’s immense prestige.

Under his leadership, the diverse institutes could truly align and exert all their efforts towards a shared direction.