Chapter 78: The Vast River
In the vastness of deep space, the enormous cargo container gradually vanished from sight.
Meanwhile, at the starting point of a 30-kilometer-long rail built on a gentle slope of Enemy God Star, another cargo container was ready for ejection.
At the same time, products from tens of thousands of factories across all of Enemy God Star were surging into the port of this launch base via train.
At the port, they were transferred, sorted, and packed into standard cargo containers. These containers then queued up at the start of the ejection rail, where they were secured onto launch carts in preparation for ejection.
And so, one by one, the cargo containers were ejected into space. Under the automatic control of the traffic AI, they underwent further acceleration and were flung onto a trajectory toward Ceres.
On average, a standard cargo container was ejected every half hour.
With each container having an average mass of 1,500 tons, this single catapult alone could launch approximately 25 million tons of cargo annually.
And Li Qingsong had built a total of 20 such catapults on Enemy God Star, strategically placing them beside various industrial clusters to optimize transportation.
That meant they could launch an average of 500 million tons of cargo per year!
This was more than enough to meet the transportation demands between Enemy God Star and Ceres.
’This method is great, but the power consumption is astronomical...’
Li Qingsong mused to himself as he watched Catapult Number One, which had already begun operations.
Accelerating a standard cargo container from a standstill to 800 meters per second required a total of 4.8 x 10^11 joules of energy.
In terms of electrical energy, that’s equivalent to 133,000 kilowatt-hours.
But electrical energy could not be converted to kinetic energy with one hundred percent efficiency; there were always losses. This catapult, for instance, had a conversion efficiency of only about 50%.
Therefore, launching a single container required approximately 260,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity.
Launching 48 containers a day would consume 12.48 million kilowatt-hours! Factoring in other energy losses, this single launch base had a daily power consumption as high as 13 million kilowatt-hours.
Meeting the demand of this one launch base required a power plant with an installed capacity of approximately 550,000 kilowatts operating at full capacity, 24/7.
But the high power consumption wasn’t even the biggest issue.
The biggest problem was that this massive amount of power wasn’t drawn steadily. Instead, it was discharged in a short, concentrated burst.
It took about 80 seconds to launch one container. During that time, all 260,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity would be discharged.
Each launch cycle was 30 minutes, or 1,800 seconds. For the 1,720 seconds of the cycle outside of the 80-second launch window, power consumption would plummet.
This massive power fluctuation was the greatest technical challenge in constructing the launch base.
But for Li Qingsong, solving this problem was only slightly complex, not truly difficult.
The reason was simple: he had 20 launch bases!
By staggering the launch times of the different bases, he could ensure that there was always one container in the process of being launched at any given moment. This would smooth out the overall power consumption.
Even if there were occasional fluctuations, it didn’t matter.
Li Qingsong’s overall industrial portfolio was massive. With tens of thousands of factories, how much electricity did they consume annually? Since the total power consumption was so immense, the power grid had to be incredibly robust.
And with such a robust grid, the impact of these fluctuations and loads could be minimized to a completely manageable level.
Likewise, Li Qingsong delegated the complex task of power dispatching—determining how much output each power plant should generate and whether to increase or decrease power—to a power management AI.
The Clones in the power sector were still only responsible for supervision, maintenance, and high-level decision-making.
Now, with the construction of these 20 launch bases complete, Li Qingsong had finished all his construction tasks on Enemy God Star.
In the future, a steady stream of resources would arrive automatically, without him needing to expend much more effort here.
After only a few days, over a thousand containers, carrying a total of more than a million tons of cargo, had already embarked on their journey to Ceres.
"Time to head back."
At his command, half of the 3.3 million Clones originally brought to Enemy God Star immediately withdrew, returning to the massive cargo ships.
On the way there, the cargo ships had been fully loaded with construction equipment.
For the return journey, they were filled with various resources produced on Enemy God Star.
After several months, the vast fleet finally returned to Ceres, and the communication latency between Li Qingsong and his Clones was finally gone.
No latency meant that more complex, time-sensitive work could finally get underway.
"You’ve had a long rest. That’s enough. Everyone, get to work!"
At Li Qingsong’s command, the massive construction projects resumed.
Brand-new research bases, more advanced research equipment, smart upgrades for the factories, and so on.
But at this stage, Li Qingsong’s construction efforts were somewhat hamstrung. He couldn’t proceed at full capacity, and the engineering progress was slow.
The reason was still the same: insufficient local resource production on Ceres.
But that was fine. The resource shipments from Enemy God Star would be arriving soon.
Li Qingsong eagerly waited as he carried out the preliminary preparations.
A year slowly passed. Finally, after a period of almost unbearable anticipation from Li Qingsong, the first cargo container reached Ceres. Without any external intervention, it autonomously and accurately entered orbit, beginning its revolution around the dwarf planet.
From there, the work was simple. It was merely a matter of dispatching specialized deceleration thruster units to attach to the container, slow it down, and guide it to a port on Ceres.
The first cargo container was slowly brought down to the port. Once opened, the container itself was sent to be recycled—it was also considered part of the cargo. The one thousand-plus tons of initially refined Oxygen Ore within were quickly loaded onto a train, which then thundered away toward the factories.
After the first container came the second, then the third...
Container after container of Oxygen Ore, methane ore, steel, aluminum and copper ingots, rare earth elements, cast components, basic chips, lubricants, starch...
These containers flowed onto Ceres like a vast river, breathing new life into the numerous factories that had been parched by the metaphorical drought.
The resource depletion crisis Li Qingsong had been facing was, in that moment, completely resolved. The various projects that had been restricted, unable to operate or conduct research at full capacity, were finally unshackled.
’Finally, I can push our technological development forward at full throttle again.’
Li Qingsong mused to himself. ’In that case... it’s time to begin research and development on the second-tier Warship: the Venus-class Warship!’