Four thrusters were thrown out of the Star Ocean spacecraft and began to tumble through space. But they only rolled for a moment before a pale blue flame erupted from their tails. Driven by these fireworks, their motion quickly stabilized, and then began to fly towards the distant deep space of the universe.

All operations on this voyage to the signal source are automated, and there is no need for Weifeng to intervene. After launching the four thrusters, Wei Feng entered an idle state again.

Being idle doesn't mean doing nothing all day, but rather some boring recovery training. The daily routine is a step-by-step exercise, then resting, and so on.

In the six years that had been asleep before, there had also been some notifications sent to Wei Feng from the Earth side. Wei Feng flipped through it and found that most of those things were compiled and sent to him by the Time Traveler team, and most of the things described in them were some subtle changes in human civilization. Although these things have no exact value, they clearly describe the development of events. This made Wei Feng's mood start to be heavy again.

The more time passes, the worse it gets. Wait until things get to the extreme...... What will change?

"Hopefully, all I'm thinking about is just unfounded." Wei Feng comforted himself like this, "There are so many wise people in human civilization that there are so many people, how can they not think of anything I can think of?" They must have figured out how to deal with it, or maybe I was simply wrong. I'd better do my thing first. A probe of an alien civilization. Presumably, the government will be interested in this thing. ”

Time spent two months in this boring waiting. At this moment, there is already a distance of 15 billion kilometers between the Xinghai spacecraft and the four probes. And this distance is increasing rapidly with the passage of time. Every second that passes means that the distance between the two increases by 3,000 kilometers.

The distance of 15 billion kilometers means that the delay of one-way communication between the two sides has been as high as about 14 hours, and it takes a total of 28 hours for each command to be sent from the Star Ocean spacecraft to the signal source and received by the thrusters, and then the thrusters will return the command results to the Star Ocean spacecraft. In other words, when Wei Feng issues an order, it needs to wait twenty-eight hours to get the result of the order.

And to perform such a task, which is not up to the task of an artificial intelligence program, at the same time. Different instructions cannot be carried out at the same time, they have a causal relationship, that is, Weifeng needs to use the feedback results of the previous command as a basis to decide the next command, which means that Weifeng cannot send all the instructions in one go and then hand them over to the thruster for execution, but must wait patiently and slowly execute this task at the speed of one more instruction a day.

Whereas...... With each passing day, the two-way communication delay between the two parties increases by about an hour.

It's a job that requires a lot of patience. Because there is no standard execution process for this task, Weifeng must constantly explore and rely on his own experience to judge the correct task execution steps. One step was executed incorrectly. It may mean that all the task steps performed in the previous ten days have been wasted. Sometimes, when receiving wrong feedback data, Wei Feng is so manic that he can't wait to rush out and do it himself.

Time is wasted in this situation. The end result is: It took Weifeng more than a month to fix the four thrusters on the signal source and set the propulsion and orbit parameters for them.

But this time has greatly exceeded Weifeng's expectations. In Ye Luo's calculations, even if everything goes well after that, to push the signal source to a distance of 100 kilometers from the Xinghai spacecraft, the original calculation of thirteen years is far from enough. The latest calculations show that it will take forty-seven years.

Forty-seven years...... Even for today's average human life expectancy, it is equivalent to a quarter of a person's life cycle. For such a long time, all Wei Feng could do was bring an insignificant little guy from deep space to him.

Although the cost is huge, Wei Feng has to do it. Because this is Weifeng's only option.

"The ignition push command has been sent." Ye Luo still maintained a calm tone, "In about twenty-six days, we will receive feedback on the execution of the order. ”

"Whew......" Wei Feng let out a long breath. Twenty-six days...... With the addition of these twenty-six days, Wei Feng has been waking up this time for nearly five months. Compared to the two months of waking up before, this time is much, much more.

Of these five months, less than a day was actually spent on work, and the rest of the time was wasted on increasingly serious communication delays. By now, the delay time of two-way communication has risen to a terrifying 26 days.

Weifeng has never been more eager to have over-distance communication technology than it is now. If there was over-distance communication technology, Weifeng would have done this thing a long time ago.

But at the same time, Wei Feng also knew that the problem of communication delay was not only bothering him, but also all humans in the solar system. Although the footsteps of human civilization have stepped on the icy land of Pluto, the two-way communication between the Earth and Pluto has a minimum delay of ten and a half hours, which has seriously hindered the communication between people.

Scientists have conducted a lot of research on the technology of ultra-long-distance communication, and many scientists have dedicated their lives to this problem, but unfortunately, until the time of Weifeng's departure, human civilization has still not seen the dawn of mastering the technology of ultra-long-range communication.

Difficulties in the exchange of information inevitably lead to psychological and physical isolation. The notice sent to Wei Feng by the Time Traveler team clearly describes the problem: "We have found that people born in the four larger human settlements of Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn have a deep psychological barrier to the rest of the world. People tend to have a deep sense of identity with their place of birth, but they only have a broad concept of the entire human civilization, and they do not have much identity. Similarly, in the political arena, people born in different places will naturally form their own small circles, and different small circles will often break out into fierce conflicts about the overall allocation of resources and policy preferences of human civilization. They look like the leaders of different countries in the age of the nation, not like the regional leaders of a unified human government. ”

This is due to the inconvenience of transportation and the delay in communication. If either of these two can be solved, it is impossible for human civilization to form such a situation.

The existence of communication delay has not yet caused serious consequences in human civilization, but for Weifeng, the consequences of communication delay have made Weifeng a little unbearable.

Because of the communication delay, Weifeng must stay awake for a long time to maintain the continuity of the mission. If the recovery is maintained for a long time, the spaceship's various life-sustaining equipment must also be turned on at the same time to ensure the survival of Wei Feng, and at the same time, food will be consumed continuously, which will pose a great challenge to the material and energy reserves in the Star Ocean spaceship.

Wei Feng was originally scheduled to wake up for two months each time, and hibernation time for ten years each time, but now Wei Feng has been awake for five months in a row, so this means that Wei Feng's awakening this time has consumed twenty-five years of material reserves in the budget.

This is the vast space, and it is impossible for Wei Feng to get any resources to replenish it here. Therefore, for every bit of resource reserves in the spaceship, Wei Feng must be carefully calculated.

"I can't wait any longer." Wei Feng said, "Spending these 26 days while waiting is a great waste of resources, and our material reserves cannot support it. I'm going to go to a short hibernation, wake me up if something goes wrong after 26 days, and if the mission goes well, replace it with a long hibernation and wake me up after 10 years. ”

"Okay captain." Ye Luo said, "You are very wise to do this. ”

Wei Feng once again entered hibernation, and the Star Ocean spacecraft once again entered an icy state. But the cold state didn't last long. This point even Wei Feng, who had woken up, felt it. Therefore, the first question Wei Feng asked after waking up was: "How long have I been hibernating?" I felt like I had only been asleep for a while. ”

"Yes, you've only hibernated for twenty-six days. You're being woken up because something went wrong with the task. Ye Luo said calmly, "Our budget for the mass of that alien device is fifty tons, and in order to prevent accidents, we actually use the mass of one hundred tons to fill the fuel for the thruster. However, the four thrusters were activated at full strength, but the alien device did not move at all. This means that the quality has far exceeded our expectations. ”

"How so?" Wei Feng frowned deeply, "So...... What is its mass that you calculated? ”

"I can't give you precise data, but I can give you a lower limit on the quality of this device. If you calculate it based on the accuracy of my observation and the thrust of the thrusters...... The lower mass limit of this extraterrestrial device is five million tons. (To be continued......)

PS: If you haven't paid attention to the rainbow public account, go and pay attention to it~ You can find the rainbow by searching caihongzhimen1990 on the official account~ The song recorded by the rainbow has been uploaded to the official account, and some people actually say that it is not good, but the rainbow feels good, haha, as for whether it sounds good or not, it is better to judge it yourself~