Chapter 93: Maiden Voyage
Li Qingsong had made it clear that once he fully mastered secondary pressure thrust technology, he would leave Ceres for the Inner Solar System. For the time being, he had little need for ships built with current technology. As a result, the once-thundering shipbuilding factories on Ceres had all been shut down for over a decade.
But now, under Li Qingsong’s command, they were being brought back to life.
Raw materials began arriving by train once more, and large numbers of Clones converged on the factories. The power grid was overhauled and began delivering immense amounts of electricity again.
And so, the factories once again began churning out a massive number of components.
All of these components were transported into orbit around Ceres, where assembly began.
The centerpiece of this operation was the secondary pressure Thrust Device, with a total mass of over 5,000 tons.
A complete secondary pressure Thrust Device consisted of three modules: a nuclear fission reactor module, an internal combustion engine module, and an electromagnetic control module.
Assembled together, these three modules formed a complete, state-of-the-art Thrust Device.
It was impossible to disassemble because its manufacturing requirements were so high that it could only be produced on the ground.
Yet the freighter had to be assembled in space.
Having no other choice, Li Qingsong had to develop a special method for transporting massive cargo, using a fleet of 40 dedicated aerospace vehicles just to lift it.
This Thrust Device had a total volume of over 10,000 cubic meters, measuring 50 meters long, 25 meters wide, and 10 meters high.
Over 1,000 attachment points were specially welded onto its surface, from which 1,000 high-strength cables extended.
The cables were bundled in groups of 25, with each bundle leading to a single aerospace vehicle. In total, the 40 vehicles used these 1,000 cables to hoist the behemoth.
The chemical fuel in the forty aerospace vehicles burned explosively, firing violently as they pushed their propulsion to the absolute maximum. In precise coordination, they worked together to accelerate the 5,000-plus-ton engine.
Instantly, the hoisting site was thrown into a whirlwind of dust as countless gases vaporized, creating what looked like a thick fog appearing from thin air.
But even with the propulsion of the 40 aerospace vehicles pushed to the maximum, the enormous engine only accelerated sluggishly.
There was no helping it; the engine was simply too heavy. Even split among 40 vehicles, each one had to accelerate a mass of over 130 tons.
This had nothing to do with the Gravity of Ceres, only with the object’s inherent mass. Mass is immutable, remaining constant in any gravitational field.
As vast quantities of fuel were expended, the engine slowly ascended at an upward angle, gaining both altitude and velocity.
Finally, after circling Ceres three times, the engine’s speed reached 950 meters per second.
At this point, it could finally orbit Ceres on its own without any additional pull.
One engine was delivered, then a second, and a third. In the end, a total of 50 engines were transported into space.
They were accompanied by a massive quantity of spaceship components.
In the vastness of space, the steel plates of the ship’s hull were welded together, the frame was erected, the engines were mounted, internal circuits were connected, and pipelines were linked...
Finally, after several months, the first ship Li Qingsong built himself utilizing secondary pressure Thrust Devices was complete!
It was, without a doubt, a behemoth.
It was 330 meters long, 50 meters at its widest point, and 20 meters at its tallest.
Its total volume reached 73,000 cubic meters, with a massive unladen weight of 16,000 tons!
When fully loaded, its maximum total mass could reach 80,000 tons!
Cargo from the surface of Ceres and from orbit, all destined for Enemy God Star, flowed into the enormous freighter like a river into the sea, filling every last one of its cargo holds.
Next, the maiden voyage that Li Qingsong had long awaited finally began.
The fission reactor’s power output began to increase, providing electricity for the ship and generating surplus energy.
The internal combustion engine fired up. Its 2,000-plus tons of liquid oxygen and methane began to combust, generating high-temperature, high-pressure gas that was fed into the secondary pressure chamber.
Energy from the fission reactor rapidly heated this gas, turning it into plasma due to the extreme temperature.
Before the plasma could damage the physical chamber walls, the electromagnetic confinement system activated, tightly constraining the high-temperature, high-pressure gas within a small volume and preventing it from making contact with any solid matter.
When the pressure rose to a certain point, the electromagnetic confinement system opened a channel.
Then, like water bursting through a collapsed dam, the extremely high-pressure plasma shot out through the channel with unstoppable force, surging at a velocity of 30 kilometers per second.
Propelled by this immense counter-thrust, the freighter’s massive 80,000-ton hull began to accelerate, eventually breaking free from the Gravity of Ceres and heading toward Enemy God Star, over 40 million kilometers away.
Throughout this process, the acceleration never ceased, not even after its speed reached 12 kilometers per second.
Previously, once a freighter reached 12 kilometers per second, it would enter an inertial cruise and stop accelerating.
It wasn’t that they were incapable of reaching higher speeds.
In the zero-gravity environment of space, as long as you accelerate continuously, your speed will continue to increase.
The most crucial problem was the lack of fuel.
You could indeed reach a higher speed by accelerating constantly, but once you arrived at your destination with no fuel left, how would you decelerate?
The 12-kilometers-per-second limit was a reluctant compromise, a product of balancing fuel capacity against transport speed and travel time.
But this freighter’s speed was still increasing.
kilometers per second, 30 kilometers per second...
It didn’t stop until it hit 60 kilometers per second!
Its acceleration efficiency wasn’t any higher than other freighters, but its duration of acceleration was several times longer.
Previous freighters couldn’t have reached such a speed even if they burned through their entire fuel supply.
And now, even after accelerating to a high speed of 60 kilometers per second, the freighter had only consumed a mere 800 tons of its chemical fuel!
Not even half.
Its overall fuel efficiency was six times greater than that of an ordinary chemical-propulsion freighter!
At this unprecedented speed, it reached the vicinity of Enemy God Star in just eight days.
After spending a day decelerating, consuming another 800 tons of fuel, it finally docked at the port on Enemy God Star.
In total, it took nine days to complete a journey that would take an ordinary ship over a month.
And it used less fuel!