Age of Cosmic Exploration

With the documentaries, the public was slowly led to understand the meaning behind saving the Noah One, so the riots petered out and life returned to normal. They started planning for their future. After all, the one leading the Hope was the great hero, Yao Yuan.

Time slowly flew by and without one realizing, it had been one and a half months. The next scheduled warp was going to happen in another one and a half months. People had started to miss this peaceful solar system.

"...Ol’ Yao, since there is still another one and a half months and Eva didn’t see a bad future, can we try mining some resources?" Guang Zhen asked Yao Yuan openly as he sat across Yao Yuan’s table.

Yao Yuan focused on his documents and replied without taking his eyes off the reports. "This couldn’t have been your idea. Tell me, what you want to do?"

Guang Zhen chuckled and said, "Ol’ Yao, you also know that the proposal to upgrade of Defense Unit’s standard weapons has been handed in quite some time ago but has been constantly delayed due to the Genesis Project and the Black Star Troopers’ Space Armor 2, as well as experimentation with mini plasma weapons. We cannot let this drag on anymore. After all, the Defense Unit is the Hope’s strongest army after the Black Star Troopers. Therefore, I went searching for the scientists responsible for these weapon designs."

Guang Zhen didn’t go out of line, because even though Yao Yuan was the Hope’s Chancellor, the Hope’s government wasn’t really a dictatorship. Furthermore, Guang Zhen was the Hope’s second in command, and he had Yao Yuan’s complete trust. If he wanted, he could reassign Defense Unit soldiers and even Black Star Troopers without consulting Yao Yuan. Therefore, meeting the scientists was well within his power.

Yao Yuan started laughing, shook his head, and looked at Guang Zhen. "You’re here on their behalf, aren’t you? They didn’t dare to approach me themselves because this relates to the Hope’s survivability. If they make the wrong decision and anything happens to the Hope, they wouldn’t be able to bear the responsibility, so they hinted for you to come see me. They must have said something about the low resource levels on the Hope not being enough to upgrade the weapons of thousands of Defense Unit soldiers, right?"

Guang Zhen also laughed. He grabbed the cup of tea on the table and took a sip. "Of course, I knew they were sending me on a difficult task, but I was indeed shocked when I paid a visit to our storage room. It has been only how many years since we left the new planet? The resources that we predicted would last for several decades have already been exhausted by fifty percent. Energy storage is slightly better due to the polymerized reactors, the level maintains at 70 percent, but the moment we start to use the high-tech plasmatic technology, the energy storage will drastically lower, especially if we commit to warp drive... I had no idea it was already looking so bad for the Hope."

Yao Yuan didn’t reply. He sifted through the documents on his table and pulled from it one report and passed it to Guang Zhen. As Guang Zhen read it, his expression darkened.

The report was written by Bo Li, the latest update on the Hope’s science development. It reported on the Hope’s storage levels, including the 50 percent material storage and 70 percent energy storage. The report brought up the issue of increased exhaustion with the advancement in science. High tech scientific experiments and products would require a large amount of materials.

Other than that, the higher the technological level, the greater the amount of energy it would exhaust. This could be easily understood with a simple analogy, the prehistoric man could survive with a campfire, but modern man required gas, coal, and electricity. Therefore, an improvement in science would normally lead to a material and energy crisis (back on Earth, this was called environmental crisis).

The report concluded with a projection into the future. It predicted that the Hope’s storage would be emptied in the next three years. After these three years, the Hope would have nothing left, so it would have to restock before then.

Guang Zhen’s face was drawn because according to this report, the Hope could only survive for another three years. Three years... this was a short period of time even back on Earth, much less in space. He turned towards Yao Yuan anxiously. "Ol’ Yao, we have to do something. I find this report by Bo Li to be extremely reliable. Since we’ve reached the critical threshold, why don’t we stop to resupply here?"

Yao Yuan shook his head. "We cannot do that, because nothing is more important than saving the Noah One. Therefore, we cannot stop and start mining. Furthermore, Ol’ Wong, I want to ask you one question: do you think we took too few materials and energy sources when we left new planet?"

"Of course not," Guang Zhen denied it immediately. "We filled the Hope back then..."

By then, Guang Zhen knew what the problem was. Yao Yuan continued, "Looks like you too have realized the issue. It was not that we didn’t take enough, but the size of this ship didn’t allow us to take more. When we left the new planet, the Hope was already filled to the brim, but what was the result? The resources that were predicted to last us for several decades was halved in just a few years. The remaining can only last us for another three years. What does this suggest? The Hope this too small.

"Now I finally understand why those space civilizations’ mother ships are always the size of a small planet. Other than population, the other big thing is resource storage. Think about it, for a large civilization that needs to survive for thousands of years in space, how large would their storage have to be? I’m afraid one will really need to break open a terrestrial planet to satisfy their resource exhaustion."

Yao Yuan then pulled out another report for Guang Zhen. "Read this. After the conclusion of this Noah One project, be it success or fail, this will be our next step and our main mission."

The report was sealed with a red double-S stamp, signifying the report’s confidentiality level. Currently, the reports that had reached that level of confidentiality were all related to the Hope’s life and death, something to do with the hope of humanity. The number of people that had access to double-S files were less than five, and Guang Zhen was one of them.

He flied through the report cautiously and the first page was a construction design. It was full of data, structure, layers, and elaborations of many kinds of weapons. The whole design looked like a giant mountain, and the general shape was oval with a large base and cinched in top.

"This is the new generation of human mothership that has been secretly designed by Bo Li and her group. It is large enough to accommodate millions upon millions of people. It will be fitted with a large amount of anti-gravitational units, but sadly enough, with our current computing power, even including the AI robots, we cannot calculate this mother ship’s anti-gravity balance. Therefore, this mothership cannot land on a terrestrial planet but only exist as a space base...

"It is called Kun Lun! Humanity’s real space mothership!"

As Guang Zhen listened to Yao Yuan and studied the design, his heart lit up with passion.

This was a product designed using 5th revolution, or level 3 space civilization level, technology. Many designs and technologies were not available to mankind yet, but they would be there in the next 10 years. In other words, in another ten years, progress on the Kun Lun could start in earnest!

The mothership was 674,000 meters tall, 540,000 meters long, and 300,000 meters wide. Its size was several thousand times the Hope’s size. It would have 12 super large polymerized reactors, 36 large reactors, and 72 mid-sized reaction. At the same time, the energy circuit would be upgraded to the plasma system and there would be 8 Genesis cannons and 1 Requiem. At the same time, it would also have innumerable Gaussian heavy artillery weapons and a propulsion system using a super large particle acceleration that enables it to commit to warp drive and space warp...

This would be the Kun Lun! Mankind’s strongest product at the 5th revolution period while being a low level civilization.

"F*ck! This is amazing! This data is too unbelievable. With our access to the alien plant’s super alloy, especially that superconductor that is perfect for creating energy circuits, the Kun Lun’s electromagnetic shield will be beyond our imagination. With that strong of a shield, even if we physically run into a spaceship like the space merchants’, theirs will be slammed into pieces! Build, we must build this!"

After Guang Zhen finished reading the report, he was laughing with an excited blush. Yao Yuan nodded with a smile. Just as he was going to say something, his communicator rang. He frowned while looking at the caller ID. After he picked it up, his smile turned into a thin line.

After he put down the communicator, Guang Zhen asked immediately, "Why? What’s wrong?"

"That was Eva..."

Yao Yuan looked at Guang Zhen and said, "She saw images of the future, where 29 days from now, aliens will board the Hope!"