Chapter 81: Atomic Bomb
Li Qingsong was certain that once he mass-produced and deployed the Venus-class Warships, his fleet’s combat strength would skyrocket.
At that point, the large Venus-class Warships and the smaller Mercury-class Warships could coordinate. The Venus-class Warships would handle fortified targets and provide long-range fire support, while the smaller targets could be left to the Mercury-class Warships for harassment and dogfighting. This would allow for more diverse and flexible tactics.
If he’d had Venus-class Warships during the previous confrontation with the Blutuk Civilization Reconnaissance Fleet, the battle wouldn’t have been so risky and passive. He wouldn’t have needed to rely on various schemes to defeat the enemy.
’Considering my current industrial and technological levels, the number of Clones, my logistical supply capacity, communication capabilities, and operational radius... Hmm... For now, it would be best to maintain a fleet of 1,000 Warships in total.
’Of those, 800 will be Mercury-class Warships, 50 will be Venus-class Warships, and the remaining 150 will be logistical supply ships.’
Having made his decision, Li Qingsong immediately began the actual manufacturing process.
The massive starship assembly plant had now been completed, and the various component factories for building the starships were already in operation.
And so, with countless Clones hard at work, the production of the new warships began to proceed rapidly.
As manufacturing of the new starships began, all the Warships Li Qingsong previously owned—including the Mercury-class Warships equipped with the new engines—seemed somewhat redundant.
This was because during the development of the Venus-class Warship, Li Qingsong had accumulated enough technology to completely overhaul and upgrade the Mercury-class Warships, allowing him to build more advanced and powerful versions.
The old ones had outlived their usefulness.
But Li Qingsong had no intention of scrapping them for resources.
They still had other purposes.
At that moment, Li Qingsong was pondering another question.
’If industrial sectors like transportation, agriculture, animal husbandry, metallurgy, chemical engineering, power grids, and power plants can all have an AI handle their foundational tasks and achieve huge efficiency gains, can the same be done for combat?
’Can I also hand over starship operations that require real-time responses to an AI? For example, if it detects an incoming volley of projectiles, the starship could automatically activate its engines to evade.
’This would also solve the problem of me being unable to give real-time commands to distant Clones due to communication delays.’
Interstellar battlefields were bound to be enormous. Moreover, the more advanced the technology, the larger the battlefield. Until he mastered Super-distance Communication, Li Qingsong had to consider the issue of commanding faraway Warships.
After some thought, Li Qingsong finally made his decision.
’I don’t know if this path will work. After all, something like interstellar combat is quite different from daily industrial production.
’But what’s the harm in trying? Even if it proves unfeasible, it’s just a small loss of resources—a drop in the bucket.’
To be cautious, Li Qingsong didn’t install intelligent control modules directly into the new starships. Instead, he began retrofitting the decommissioned, older Mercury-class Warships.
A large number of sensors and controllers were installed in these old Warships. From this moment on, all data generated from their every operation would be collected by Li Qingsong.
A new Supercomputing Base was under construction and would soon be operational. The combat AI was also being written and would soon be uploaded to the supercomputer to begin its training, data feeding, and process of self-iteration and optimization.
At that point, the data collected from the old Mercury-class Warships would become the "food" to nurture the combat AI’s growth.
To generate enough data to feed the AI, these old Mercury-class Warships weren’t left idle. On the contrary, they became busier than ever.
Li Qingsong directed them to a location several hundred thousand kilometers from Ceres, where they engaged in a chaotic melee.
The roar of cannons was incessant, lasting all day. One massive cargo ship after another departed from Ceres, fully loaded with projectiles, shells, Interstellar Missiles, fuel, food, first-aid supplies, and more. They arrived at the battlefield and handed over these resources to the warships participating in the drill, as if throwing them into a bottomless pit. Then, they were obliterated, turning into fireballs and wreckage in space, and vanished.
Watching the supplies from ship after ship get delivered, even Li Qingsong felt a pang of heartache.
’This is just burning money! No, even burning money isn’t this fast!’
Although it wasn’t a real war, the resource consumption for even a live-fire drill was simply immense.
For projectiles alone, hundreds of millions were consumed in a single day!
Tens of thousands of tons of fuel were consumed in a single day!
Hundreds of Interstellar Missiles were consumed in a single day!
If he couldn’t get supplies from Enemy God Star, he probably wouldn’t be able to sustain the drills for long.
But, despite the high consumption, he had to continue. The combat AI, in which he had placed such high hopes, was waiting for the data generated by these drills to be fed.
While simultaneously directing Clones to manufacture new starships, conduct drills with old ones, manage basic production on Enemy God Star, run the large-scale industrial system on Ceres, and handle numerous R&D projects, Li Qingsong was still not satisfied. He once again assigned a portion of his Clones and invested his research efforts into another endeavor.
Li Qingsong placed extreme importance on this new research task.
He knew in his heart that the success or failure of this research would have a profound impact on his entire scientific framework, even affecting his whole industrial layout and tying into his future destiny!
It was only now, with all the prerequisites in place, that Li Qingsong dared to begin this research. Before, he wouldn’t have even considered it.
This research was the atomic bomb!
After a long phase of relying on chemical energy to power his entire operation, Li Qingsong had now finally decided to attempt a more advanced and efficient means of energy acquisition!
Nuclear energy!
Atomic bomb technology could be considered the very beginning of all nuclear technology.
To build an atomic bomb, and to successfully detonate it, Li Qingsong would have to master the entire process, from the initial prospecting of uranium ore to the subsequent steps of separation, purification, enrichment, calculation, and so on. He would also need to grasp the fundamental physical principles of nuclear energy from the ground up.
Only by mastering the uncontrolled nuclear fission of an atomic bomb could Li Qingsong begin the subsequent research into controlled nuclear fission technology.
The physical application of controlled nuclear fission technology is the nuclear power plant.
Once he could build nuclear power plants, he could then think about miniaturizing nuclear fission reactors. Only then could he consider subsequent technologies like secondary pressurized propulsion, or even the High-speed Ion Propulsion that the Human World had yet to master. Only then could he truly break free from the constraints of chemical fuel and truly enter the sea of stars.
Now, the gate to the sea of stars stood before Li Qingsong. He had no choice but to blast it open with an atomic bomb.