Chapter 92: 100 Explosions
Even in the vacuum of Ceres, where there were no atmospheric shockwaves, the seismic tremors from the explosion and the flying shrapnel caused catastrophic damage to the surrounding laboratory buildings.
Even some twenty-odd Clones were killed.
Furthermore, the modular nuclear fission reactor was utterly destroyed. Its nuclear fuel was scattered everywhere, raising the radiation levels in the surrounding area to a truly terrifying degree.
Li Qingsong felt a hint of resignation.
He had anticipated that the first test was unlikely to succeed, but he hadn’t expected the failure to be this complete.
’It just blew up... What went wrong? The magnetic confinement should have been strong enough. It shouldn’t have exploded...’
As the thought crossed his mind, Li Qingsong immediately organized the Clones to collect the wreckage for technical analysis while rapidly repairing the buildings on site.
All the radioactively contaminated rocks, building materials, and wreckage were hauled away, a new floor was laid, and just like that, the contamination problem was solved.
After all, Ceres has no atmosphere, so there was no need to worry about radioactive particles spreading.
On Earth, an experiment that killed over twenty people and caused severe nuclear contamination would have been a world-shaking disaster. The entire project might even have been shelved. But to Li Qingsong, twenty-odd Clones were nothing to worry about.
This failure did not affect the overall research project in the slightest. In fact, not far from here, the second experiment was already underway.
After the wreckage was collected and analyzed, Li Qingsong’s research finally confirmed that the explosion wasn’t caused by insufficient magnetic confinement strength, but by excessive, unanticipated pressure.
The cause of the excessive pressure was a poorly controlled heating rate in the nuclear fission reactor.
The plasma was heated to an extreme temperature, and the confinement wasn’t strong enough to hold it. As a result, the plasma, possessing immense internal energy, expanded like an explosive, and the resulting blast wave completely destroyed the entire facility.
’Now that’s a problem.’
Li Qingsong mused silently, ’Perhaps I need to add a temperature control device.’
Even as he worked on this problem, another earth-shattering explosion rocked a different test site.
Another failure.
’What went wrong this time? Hmm... The magnetic confinement device was unstable? No, I’ll have to keep adjusting it.’
Once again, it was a failure to control the high-temperature, high-pressure plasma. It had turned into a bomb, blowing its own housing to smithereens.
To achieve greater thrust, one had to master greater energy. When controlled, a high-energy object could provide a stable output, contributing to efficiency far beyond anything before it.
Poorly controlled, it was a bomb that could obliterate everything.
It was fortunate this was happening on the surface of Ceres. If a spaceship’s engine had exploded like this in space, there would be no one to call for help.
Undiscouraged, Li Qingsong repeated the repair process and began the experiment anew.
For a time, it seemed as if weapons tests were being conducted across the various test sites on Ceres, with explosions going off one after another.
Often, a base would be newly repaired only to be blown up again a few days later. It would be blown up, rebuilt, and not long after being rebuilt, blown up again.
This was a research methodology the Human World would never tolerate. But it was an undeniable fact that this method—exposing every flaw through practical application, with no regard for cost or resources—was the most efficient.
And so, after more than a hundred explosions, the new secondary-pressurization thrusters Li Qingsong built finally stopped exploding.
To solve the explosion problem, Li Qingsong had, through the relentless series of blasts, identified, optimized, and improved over ten thousand distinct details, comprehensively enhancing material performance, improving device stability, and even overhauling the entire structure three times.
But even though they no longer exploded, they still couldn’t function properly.
A whole new host of problems appeared in succession, overwhelming Li Qingsong: inexplicable shutdowns, vibrations, voltage instability, overloads, and overheating.
So be it. He would face each problem as it came.
Often, an engine would run for just a few minutes before shutting down inexplicably. A swarm of Clones would then descend upon it, completely disassembling it, meticulously inspecting every component and every structure to determine the type of failure. After fixing it, they would reassemble it, only for it to shut down again after a short run time. Then they would inspect it again, and so the cycle repeated.
Furthermore, Li Qingsong hadn’t built just one of these test sites—he had built 100!
One hundred test engines operated and failed day and night, watched over by one hundred research teams who worked around the clock, not daring to slack off for a moment.
Under these conditions, three years slowly passed.
「Lab 67」
Inside the vacuum test chamber, a brilliant blue flame blasted continuously from a massive nozzle.
Countless pipes and wires extended from the even larger engine module, a combination of a fission reactor, a chemical engine, and a secondary-pressurization device.
One of these wires was connected to a monitor, where numbers continuously flickered.
One of them was a timer. At this moment, it had ticked up from 00:00:00, bit by bit, to the current 23:58:55.
Another number displayed its thrust power.
As the thrust power constantly shifted, it traced a fluctuating curve. The curve had extremely small fluctuations, nearly forming a straight line.
When the timer finally reached 24:00:00, the faint vibrations in the ground slowly subsided. The brilliant blue flame also gradually faded away.
The engine had smoothly ceased its thrust.
Looking at the extremely steady thrust power curve before him—its stability meant that the output of the secondary-pressurization thruster was also consistently stable—Li Qingsong’s heart filled with joy.
Three years!
After three years of painstaking, round-the-clock, all-out research, he had finally built the first secondary-pressurization engine capable of running stable for a full twenty-four hours!
At this stage, although it still couldn’t be called mature, it had at least qualified for the next phase: large-scale, practical application testing.
’Time to build a fleet of cargo ships powered by these secondary-pressurization engines. We’ll have them run freight missions between Enemy God Star and Ceres!
’Whatever hidden dangers or flaws the engines still have, they’re bound to be exposed as long as the total runtime is long enough.’
Li Qingsong couldn’t be bothered to do things the Human World way—testing, optimizing, and adjusting bit by bit until the risks were minimized before deployment.
It came back to the same principle: real-world application was the best way to test an engine.
’As for the risks... what risks? It’s just a spaceship. If it blows up, it blows up. I can afford to build more!’