Chapter 216: Extremely Precious Fuel
“You’re just going to use it to collect liquid metallic hydrogen?”
“Well, what else?”
Fan Ren spread his hands, his tone also somewhat helpless.
Afterward, the fox once again acted as the explainer.
As a fuel with extremely high mining difficulty, currently only spaceships built with silver-like super metal material processed by strong interaction force have structures that can withstand the high-pressure environment under gas giant planets without being crushed and damaged.
And this material is also an essential item for building Titan-class battleships.
Obviously, this material processing technology currently exists only in the hands of a few super civilizations.
And precisely because of this, super civilizations firmly control the source and pricing of liquid metallic hydrogen.
Moreover, because of the existence of the starfield market, various equipment in the application domain of liquid metallic hydrogen can also circulate on a large scale among various civilizations in the entire Galactic Alliance.
This makes it so that to mine this precious fuel, one must purchase a fuel collection spaceship at an astronomical price.
Of course, Human Civilization’s method of using a Titan directly to collect liquid metallic hydrogen has no problem at all.
“It’s just a bit extravagant.”
The fox pinched the flesh on his arm, trying to make himself accept this outrageous fact.
“The selling price of the most ordinary Titan-class battleship on the starfield market is as high as tens of trillions of star coins. You can convert it based on this ratio. Based on your civilization’s current mining speed of silver-like super metal, it would take how long to afford a Titan-class battleship.”
“43478.2 years.”
A’dai calculated this kind of problem with ease and instantly gave the answer.
“Yes, so now you know the value of the Titan warship, right? I’m really envious; you actually have one in your hands.
Back then, if our civilization had one like this, we wouldn’t have ended up”
The fox said this, and his tone couldn’t help but become a bit dejected.
But immediately after, he said in some surprise: “But according to the normal size of a Titan-class battleship, 50-55 kilometers is the limit. Going bigger would make the difficulty of requirements for materials and structural design even harder.
Take the Titan that the Sirius Civilization brought to the battlefield back then; it was only 50 kilometers in length.”
He paused, then shook his head: “Perhaps it’s just because my understanding of Titan-class battleships is relatively superficial. You know, there aren’t many of these things in the Galactic Alliance.”
Fan Ren nodded. The Sirius Civilization had existed for who knows how many years. According to the information given by the fox, they only had about 10 Titan warships in hand to this day, so one can imagine how much they cherished those 10 warships.
“No way around it; right now, this is the only way we have to collect liquid metallic hydrogen, but obviously, the collection speed of this method isn’t low.”
Hearing this, the fox’s mouth twitched. Could it be low?
The price of silver-like super metal processed by strong interaction force is so expensive it’s unimaginable for ordinary people. The fuel collection ships made from it are limited in size by this reason and are usually not very large.
Thinking of this, he rubbed his face again.
No matter what, even so, using this method to collect liquid metallic hydrogen was still hard for him to accept.
Soon, the group arrived all the way to the command room.
Under A’dai’s control, the internal simulation screen immediately switched.
In the pitch-black cosmic background, the Punisher that had been out of the factory for some time floated alone in a certain empty star domain.
“All Space Force personnel have fully entered the nano buffer cabins; testing can begin.”
“Begin testing. Pay attention to operational standards. This test will have no intelligent device intervention throughout. All route operations of the spaceship will be manually completed by our Qingluan Brigade test flight team.”
Li Jian’s voice rang out from the distant Jupiter-Mars Hub, his tone serious.
This was, at Fan Ren’s request, the first spaceship to completely detach from A’dai’s control.
In his plan, for Human Civilization to step into the Galactic Alliance in the future, they must adapt to this kind of life, work, and combat environment without artificial intelligence assistance.
This Punisher was, based on this consideration, used as a test ship for future combat vessels.
In the simulation hall, the performance of the Conqueror was extremely powerful. No one knew what method it used, but it simulated the surrounding environment of that Punisher and the ship itself so realistically it was as if they were watching on site.
“Engine ignition, begin advancing.”
With Li Jian’s command, at the tail of the spaceship, the super-large circle of plasma formed by several nuclear fusion engines began pushing the huge spaceship hull to slowly accelerate.
“Attention, afterburner mode in 10 seconds. Countdown, afterburner activation in 10.9!”
Hearing this, Fan Ren couldn’t help but smile helplessly.
Sure enough, the boss, as the legion commander of the Azure Phoenix Legion, even now holding the position of major general, still didn’t hide in the command hall to remotely command.
He personally boarded that test spaceship to command on the front line.
“Boss, don’t worry. Although you forbade me from participating in the structural design and research and development of this Punisher, I couldn’t help but do some calculations later. There’s no problem with this spaceship’s structure.”
Fan Ren nodded, not minding A’dai’s such ‘overstepping’ behavior.
“That’s impressive then. It seems our design bureau has grown very significantly in these past few decades. A’dai, you have a share of the merit in this.”
“Hehe.”
“Um, Mr. Fan Ren, I now somewhat understand your description of this Mr. A’dai.”
The fox interjected at this time.
Fan Ren looked at him puzzled and said: “How so?”
The fox thought for a moment and explained: “In the conventional sense, silicon-based life, without absolute power to overthrow the foundation of carbon-based life rule, will absolutely not defy orders from carbon-based life. They will disguise themselves as very obedient and absolutely obedient to carbon-based life on the surface.
Obviously, Mr. A’dai does not have this behavioral pattern.”
Fan Ren nodded; this was also precisely the reason he trusted A’dai.
Unlike the absolute obedience shown by Primal at the beginning, A’dai’s performance, if one set aside his seemingly omnipotent powerful abilities, was basically no different from before.
His personality was still honest, and while he obeyed Fan Ren’s words and plans, he would also have his own thoughts.
This made him even more real.
Fan Ren didn’t dwell too much on this issue.
Over there, after Li Jian’s thick command, if observed with a microscope, one could see a drop of extremely tiny liquid metallic hydrogen sprayed out from the center of the circle of plasma tail flame at the tail of the Punisher.
Immediately after, the outlet of the central nuclear fusion reactor opened, and intense reaction energy sprayed out, enveloping this drop of liquid metallic hydrogen in a high-temperature, high-pressure environment.
In the simulation room, everyone clearly saw a fierce white light flash for an instant, then it was covered by the plasma tail flames emitted by the surrounding nuclear fusion engines.
And on the counter board, after that drop of liquid metallic hydrogen exploded, due to the reaction force, the huge hull was pushed forward a large distance in that instant, increasing the spaceship’s body speed.
This situation was not a one-time occurrence. Under the operator’s control, after receiving feedback information on the spaceship’s speed increase, he began to slowly increase the output power of the afterburner device.
And accordingly, the entire spaceship tail kept flashing with white light, but all of it was firmly enclosed within the plasma.
