Chapter 68: Ignite
Li Qingsong was desperate to get to Earth and see for himself what had happened there.
How could there be no signs of industry? How? After all those years of development, all those people, all that advanced technology... was it all just gone?
Without leaving a single trace?
Unfortunately, Li Qingsong couldn’t go right now.
Not only could he not go himself, but he couldn’t even manage to launch a Detector there.
On the surface, Li Qingsong had built a massive space base and amassed a fleet of hundreds of Warships, making his technology seem incredibly advanced.
But in reality, it was all for show.
Their existence was entirely owed to one crucial prerequisite.
The low Gravity of Ceres, and its lack of an atmosphere.
The advantages of these two conditions were so immense in the early stages of a civilization’s development that they allowed Li Qingsong to possess so many assets in space, even when his capabilities didn’t even measure up to those of Human Civilization during its nation-state era.
Launching a Detector seemed simple, but the first problem it presented was one of trajectory planning.
Without a deep understanding of the major planets in the Solar System, without knowing their detailed orbits, masses, and fluctuations in their gravitational fields, how could anyone plan a trajectory?
And if you couldn’t even plan the trajectory, you could forget about using their Gravity for acceleration and deceleration, let alone factoring in all the complex variables for the final trajectory calculations.
Launching a Detector wasn’t a matter of brute force—you couldn’t just hurl it in the right direction.
Second, there was another problem to consider.
The distance was immense, up to 15 billion kilometers. How could communications be maintained?
Even if communications could be maintained, how could he pinpoint the Detector’s location? And even if he could pinpoint its location, how could he precisely adjust its trajectory, ensuring it performed course corrections and burns at the right times?
This entire series of problems involved incredibly complex and advanced mathematics, astronomical observation, and fundamental principles.
But right now, none of these problems could deter Li Qingsong.
He couldn’t be bothered with anything else.
In an instant, hundreds of thousands of Clones were reassigned. Combining his own knowledge with what he had learned from interrogating the Blutuk Civilization captives and from reverse-engineering their technology, Li Qingsong threw himself completely into the task of developing an Earth Detector.
The first challenge to tackle was the Deep Space communications system.
Li Qingsong planned to deploy three large space antennas around Ceres and another three around Enemy God Star. These would be used to maintain contact with the Detector on its long voyage.
Second, Li Qingsong began assigning personnel to manufacture a second, a third, and eventually a total of ten space-based optical telescopes.
To gain a deeper understanding and collect detailed data on the eight major planets of the Solar System, optical telescopes were indispensable.
Third was the construction of the Detector itself. It had to be exceptionally reliable—after all, once it entered Deep Space, he would have no way to physically access it. It also needed to possess incredible precision and sensitivity.
The Detector could only carry a limited amount of fuel, which had to be used with meticulous efficiency. Wasting even a little could mean failing to reach its destination.
At the same time, when fuel had to be used, it had to be used. The timing and amount had to be exact; the slightest deviation could send it flying off course.
Fourth was the launch vehicle for the Detector.
The previous method of using a spaceship to accelerate it to a certain speed and then just releasing it wouldn’t work this time.
Spaceships had limited fuel capacity and could only provide so much acceleration.
Left with no other choice, Li Qingsong had to do what the Human World had done in its development of aerospace technology: revisit rocketry. Not the single-stage rockets used in his Interstellar Missiles, but multi-stage rockets.
Only a multi-stage rocket could accelerate the probe to a high enough velocity to reach Earth in the shortest possible time.
Otherwise, if the journey took decades or a century, it would be pointless.
While ensuring the base’s normal operations and manufacturing continued, hundreds of thousands of Clones toiled day and night, pushing themselves to their limits.
Gradually, ten optical telescopes were deployed around Ceres. They began to observe the Inner Solar System without pause, precisely measuring the mass, density, and other properties of every major celestial body.
The Deep Space communications technology also achieved successive breakthroughs. Ultimately, several colossal antennas, each 100 meters in diameter with an area of about 8,000 square meters, were assembled in space.
They formed a plane perfectly perpendicular to the ecliptic.
Three of the giant antennas, arranged in an isosceles triangle with Ceres at the center, formed an array. Coordinated with the ground-based communications center, they achieved the effect of a single antenna with a 4,000-kilometer aperture.
Li Qingsong created the same setup at Enemy God Star, deploying an identical three-antenna array.
In the precision machining workshops, hundreds of Clones, aided by machinery, worked with rapt attention. With a focus even more meticulous and earnest than when they had soldered transistors onto circuit boards, they fabricated the Detector’s components piece by piece.
In the orbital factories, a colossal three-stage rocket, 230 meters long and 20 meters in diameter, was slowly being assembled.
And it wasn’t just one—five were being built simultaneously.
Their engines had already undergone multiple test firings at the ground base, but Li Qingsong still wasn’t confident about the rocket as a whole.
Humanity on Earth had never built such a massive rocket.
So, Li Qingsong decided to run a test.
A total of forty thousand tons of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen were pumped into the enormous rocket. Following the ignition command, an incandescent plume of fire erupted from its tail, propelling the giant rocket—with a total mass exceeding sixty thousand tons—to accelerate and slowly break free from the Gravity of Ceres.
But its flight was short-lived. Before it had gotten far, it exploded in a massive fireball.
The tens of thousands of tons of liquid hydrogen and oxygen had turned it into an unprecedentedly massive bomb. Like a second Sun, it lit up the dim surface of Ceres.
But it didn’t matter. Li Qingsong still had four more.
He quickly had the debris collected, the data analyzed, the failure point identified, and the necessary modifications and optimizations made...
The second rocket was also a failure. The second stage failed to ignite.
The third failed as well, this time due to hydrogen embrittlement causing a fuel leak.
Not a single one of the first five rockets was successful. Undiscouraged, Li Qingsong applied the lessons learned and had another five giant rockets built.
After three more failures, the fourth attempt was a success. Li Qingsong’s base of technical expertise was finally becoming mature.
This fifth rocket of the new batch would be the one to carry the small Detector into space.
It was placed reverently atop the rocket.
Meanwhile, the Deep Space communications network, trajectory calculations, tracking, and positioning systems were all ready.
Ignition!