"You guys' ideas are good......"

At the Kunpeng Aerospace Research Center in northwest Antania, Vasily is training a few young people.

"It's true that we've made great strides in space technology, but that doesn't mean we can lose our basics and replace science with imagination and aesthetics."

Relying on PEI's simultaneous translation intelligence, Vasily speaks Russian, and other people's AR vision will hang the required subtitles, and there is no communication problem.

"We have not made a major breakthrough in aerospace materials so far. I can't imagine that the huge spaceship that is still made of titanium alloy for the skeleton and shell, plus various coatings with complex processes, can withstand the violent acceleration in space, not to mention the battle, so ...... are not qualified. ”

Vasily waved his hand, and a bunch of models of design solutions in the AR vision turned into powder, making the young designers mourn.

"We are engineering research, and needs come first!"

A certain designer bravely stood up against authority, Vasily was a core member of the Springboard project, after the establishment of Starlink, not only responsible for the overall design of the spacecraft, but also in charge of the power system of the spacecraft, is one of the top astronaut designers in the world.

However, in the eyes of these new generations, Vasily came from the age of rockets, too rigid in tradition. And professionally, the best thing is the power system, and in the overall design of spacecraft in the new era, it is not enough to educate them.

"If we can't do it, we ask for it, rather than deciding what spacecraft we can build based on what we can build based on the materials we have."

The young designer waved his hand and sent the design indicators into the air, which was the design description sent by the Starlink Management Committee to Kunpeng.

This explanation is the demand plan that Xia Ming came up with after soaking in the core laboratory for several days after returning from the United Nations headquarters.

The plan requires that in the future, Starlink must have a powerful space combat platform, that is, a space warship, which has considerable capabilities in firepower, protection, mobility and self-sustaining power, and can cope with various combat environments.

In terms of firepower, Xia Ming proposed that the battleship must be equipped with both powerful laser weapons and kinetic weapons, and the platform must also leave ample space to carry missile weapons and new weapons in the future. For example, ion cannons.

At present, the maximum power of laser weapons with practical value is 200 megawatts, and in general, a 100 kilowatt laser cannon can destroy a small missile in 2 seconds, and 500 kilowatts can destroy ballistic missiles and fighter jets. This is still in the atmosphere, and it will be more powerful and range in space. 200 megawatts is enough to burn through the armor of a World War II-era battleship in three seconds, and the plan requires the platform to carry at least two of these weapons.

The kinetic weapon is naturally an electromagnetic railgun, and the plan requires that the battleship be equipped with at least two railguns with a caliber of 200 mm and a kinetic energy of 1000 megajoules. Such a railgun can directly penetrate the lair of the giant ship of the mutant Borg.

In addition, it will be equipped with an ultra-high frequency microwave weapon with extremely high range and strength, which can weaken or even destroy all biological targets within hundreds of kilometers.

In addition to these primary weapons, there will also be a large number of weapons of medium and medium power. In addition, a considerable number of small and medium-caliber gunpowder weapons will be installed to deal with emergencies after the power supply fails.

In terms of protection, after all, there is no black technology such as energy shield, and from a scientific point of view, this kind of technology is still far from anti-gravity technology, so it can only be carried by materials. Considering the problem of maneuverability, the scheme has very low requirements in terms of hard protection of the warship, only requiring the shell to resist general gunpowder weapons, and the core area to resist the small and medium-sized weapons equipped by the battleship itself, and focusing more on intelligent damage management.

Compared with hard protection, warships have more consideration in soft protection, and the protection of various rays is very thoughtful, requiring that the design scheme taken out should have sufficient redundancy.

In terms of maneuverability, the plan requires the warship to have a 20-day cruising speed from the earth to the stargate, and has a certain tactical maneuverability, such as a radius of rotation, etc., although it is much lower than a fighter in the atmosphere, but it must also have the ability to quickly avoid the combat restricted area and prevent being hit by friendly fire.

In terms of self-sustainment, Xia Ming hopes to reach a level that can support a three-month cruise, and has primary smelting and manufacturing capabilities, which can rely on asteroid resources to replenish basic materials and repair damage to a certain extent.

It can be seen that this plan is not a decisive weapon like a "space fortress", but a kind of warship that can be built in large quantities, strong in strength and weak in defense, and strong in adaptability. If you compare it with naval warfare thinking, it is equivalent to a cruiser. Unlike the UNOC, in Younas's reconstruction plan, the emphasis is on robotic fighters.

Even if it is only a space cruiser and not a space battleship, it is still technically difficult for mankind to achieve it now, and the first problem is the material.

Qianyi's "intellectual quality" is something that humans can't obtain, not even Xia Ming. The second-level Zhiyin is all on Xia Ming's Scavenger and Siyuan space station, and they can't be counted on, unless they get the Zhiyin core, they can only rely on the existing material technology of human beings.

For humans, the largest spacecraft is the new generation of the International Space Station, and it is still hung up by shelves. It is still difficult to make a leap to the point of building a spacecraft with a long axis of several hundred meters or even thousands of meters.

The reason is that the larger the spacecraft, the faster the speed, and the higher the requirements for structural strength. If you still rely on a material such as titanium alloy as a skeleton, the structure of each part of the spacecraft will be deformed if you accelerate, decelerate, or change direction slightly.

Like the spaceship larger than the moon in "Independence Day 2", the technology in materials does not know that it surpasses human beings for hundreds of years and thousands of years, and it will be beaten by humans, which is really sorry for science. Of course, you can't even bring your brains to watch popcorn movies, let alone science.

The plan proposed by Xia Ming already has an outline in the size of the battleship.

The size of the battleship is determined by the weapons to be carried, and each of the main weapons has to devour the power of a power plant. Even if the nuclear fusion reactor can be miniaturized, it will not be able to be small without comprehensive follow-up of supporting technology. Moreover, whether it is a laser cannon or a railgun, the energy density required is also amazing, and the capacitor system also takes up a lot of space.

The second is power, to propel such a large battleship, to reach a speed close to that of the Scavenger, and to have considerable maneuverability, it will require multiple large ion engines. Ion engines do not consume much combustion, and there is also a huge demand for electricity, which in turn increases the size of the warship.

Counting the needs of crew living space, life support systems, weapons and ammunition storage, etc., the minimum size of the warship calculated by GEI is the sum of the three Ford-class aircraft carriers.

One of the tasks of the designers in the overall design is to find the most reasonable space allocation scheme, and according to the indicators of each part of the scheme, put forward the requirements for the corresponding subsystem. If you can't even figure this out, there's no need to think about it anymore.

With the help of the Alfalfa Engine and Design GEI, the young designers unleashed their imagination and came up with a variety of exterior schemes. There is the style of democracy and freedom that is concise and concise, the wind of authoritarianism-dictatorship violence full of edges and spikes, and the asymmetrical fantasy style, and so on.

But Vasily told them that no matter what the wind was, it was useless!

The designer who stood up was very dissatisfied with Vasily's attitude, which was a clear denial of Xia Ming's demand plan?

Some people took the lead, and other designers followed.

"Mutant Borg's lair, although the material is not Zhiyin, it is almost the same, before we research new materials, it can be used to dismantle the nest!"

"The long axis of the nest is more than a hundred kilometers, what is the mechanism of its construction that can overcome the problem of strength?"

"If all axial lengths are limited to 500 meters, the requirements for material strength are not so high, right? The plan I designed is just right! ”

Vasily waved his hand and said solemnly: "Disconnect the AR connection, turn off the data terminal, and prohibit video recording." ”

The designers complied, half-alarmed, and Vasily inserted a memory card into the PEI on his wrist, and the image appeared on the big screen.

"These are still confidential, you can see it, and you can't leak it to the outside world."

As soon as Vasily finished speaking, the designers gasped, their eyes glued to the screen.

Dark passages, eerie chambers, apparently mutant Borg's lair.

The footage is supposed to be a person's helmet camera, observing with a terahertz scanner as he walks, and whispering to himself.

"Starlink Academy of Sciences, Aerospace Design Center, Ministry of Engineering, Weilong, July 16, 2023, Mutant Borg Nest Research, Day 12."

"I have completed the model restoration of the functional compartment of the power system, and today I have transferred to the structure group to figure out how such a big guy can solve the problem of material strength."

"The materials department of the Academy of Sciences has figured out the composition of the nest's shell, and unfortunately, except for the part that has been eroded by mutated organisms, the rest of the parts are ordinary titanium, and even alloy steel. In terms of composition, that is, the level of the eighties of mankind. ”

"Even the eroded part, which is similar in structure to Zhiyin, is much worse than the Zhiyin on the Scavenger and Siyuan in all aspects, and like the materials on the corpse of the mutant Borg, it shows a strange rusting phenomenon...... Anyway, the original materials may have had some biological characteristics like Zhiyin, but now, they are all dead. ”

"I don't have much hope for new research topics, and it can be seen from the mutant Borg's power system that they are still using chemical rockets! I really can't figure it out, how can such a large spaceship be built with this level of technology? I wondered, will it eventually be discovered that the skeleton of this spaceship is actually a huge biological skeleton? ”

"This spaceship, more and more like it was descended by Cthulhu......"

Fast forward to the picture, day after day, Weilong's research topic has also continued to progress, and by July 25, Weilong finally has a conclusion, and the designers have understood.

"How is that possible?"

The conclusion made them unbelievable, this huge lair was not a giant ship at all, it could only be barely called a spaceship.

It has no skeleton at all, but several segments pieced together, and the connections between each segment are reinforced with a reinforcing material in the shell, which only ensures that the segments are not staggered by the movement in the transverse direction.

In other words, the ship could only go in one direction, not even slow down, and even the slightest movement in other directions could cause the ship to fall apart.

"It's a sad story......"

Wei Long's summary was full of pity, this spaceship was carrying a civilization that was heading for the stargate, and most of the cabins were divided into dense sleeping pods. Not a cryogenic cabin, but a device that puts the crew into a deep sleep, a total of two or three hundred million.

The spaceship was supposed to be built in space, and they relied on rudimentary chemical rockets to fly straight to the stargate, as if they thought that the stargate was a heavenly new world.

Why this civilization did what it did was not something that Wei Long and the designers could understand, they only knew that this spaceship, at least in terms of space technology, did not leave them with anything usable.

Humans can build such a spaceship, but it is impossible to do so unless they are destroyed or tempted by something to abandon their homeland. If you really want to build it, there will also be technologies such as intelligence and ion engines.

"Something related to the mutant Borg civilization has nothing to do with our work", the image disappeared, and Vasily's words sobered up the designers, "I let you see this, just to tell you that we are going to build a battleship, not this oversized wooden platoon of the nature of a refuge." If we can't cross the threshold of materials, we can only reduce the size of the warship and lower the indicators in all aspects. ”

The designer who stood up first sighed: "So, do you want us to reflect with Xiao Xia that his demand plan is unrealistic?" ”

"Of course not," Vasily shrugged, "but to ask Xiao Xia what level of material technology can be reached in the next two years, and then we can figure out what kind of space battleship can be built." ”

In Antania, in the core laboratory like a huge chimney, Xia Ming leaned on the railing, looked down, and in the space tens of meters deep, there was a thick column, and the blue lights that kept beating on the surface seemed to roll up a canopy.

"Upgrading Qianyan at the knot, it seems that you are also in a hurry."

Xia Ming muttered, in the AR field of vision, Xiaotang put his glasses on his head, and said very seriously: "Qianyan's depiction of the crystal structure of Zhiyin has penetrated deep into the atomic layer, and the biological features discovered need to be further analyzed, and the computing power needs to be increased by more than a thousand times in both neural computing and supercomputing." The existing artificial synaptic architecture could no longer meet this demand and had to be upgraded. ”

She sighed: "You're not worried about the progress of scientific research, but about the new neural unit, right?" ”

Xia Ming scratched his head: "It's not that I'm worried about anything, but ...... It's still a bit ethically and emotionally tangled. ”

"I understand, but you agreed, didn't you?" Xiaotang blinked: "If you are entangled in this matter, you are not afraid that I will be jealous?" ”

Xia Ming smiled, knowing that Xiaotang was comforting him.

The nature of Qianyan's upgrade this time is completely different from the previous times. After studying the brain composition of the mutant borg, Xiaotang thought that Qianyan could learn from this principle and clone and modify the neural synapses of more complex higher-level organisms by discarding artificial synapses based on low-level biological creations.

Originally, the priority of this project was not so high, after all, now it is up to Qianyan to support the research and development of a lot of core technologies. But Xiaotang's material project has made progress, and it is almost a kick in the door, so he is ruthless and advances the project.

The reason why Xia Ming was a little entangled in this direction was that Qianyan's new neuronal unit would use a human crystallized neuron clone. The cloned object is the brain tissue donated by Lin Qianyan to a medical institution. Xiaotang believes that since Lin Qianyan has carried R3AI, cloning and transforming her neural unit should be very compatible with the existing Qianyan.

Ethically speaking, this is indeed a bit taboo, and emotionally speaking, it is not a very pleasant thing for the brain tissue of first love to be cloned and modified and used to build a biological computer.

However, the threat of the stargate was like a sword of Damocles, hanging over his head, and in the end he chose to treat the matter rationally.

"If you really want to comfort people, just come to something real", Xia Ming sent an aggrieved expression to Xiaotang.

"No problem, give Xiao Huan one tonight", Xiaotang threw back a white fruit eye.

While chatting, Lou Xinghai sent a communication request.

"Vasily is forcing the palace", after listening to Lou Xinghai's report, Xia Ming smiled and said: "Not only him, do you think I'm making a big leap forward?" ”

Lou Xinghai was very frank: "Yes, we all think that it is safer to engage in space fighters and miniaturized warships first, and to get on large warships all at once, materials are just a problem, and there are energy problems, which will take a long time to solve." ”

"The question is, will the next opponent still be at the level of skill of the Sumu?"

Xia Ming said helplessly, the Sumu people are the civilization of the mutant Borg. The Academy of Interstellar Sciences and the Academy of Space Sciences have teamed up to decipher the text inside the lair, and "Sum" is the civilization's name for the home planet, just as humans call the home planet Earth.

The Sumu people were completely abducted into the stargate by high-dimensional space-time intelligence, and they selected more than 200 million people, the smartest and most energetic of the tens of billions of races, and went straight to the stargate in a simple huge spaceship, thinking that they could start a great star sea era. As a result, not only did these people become mutant Borgs, but the cosmic bubble where their home star was located was also reduced to a lifeless planetary shell.

"The focus is not on fighters or warships, but on weapons", Xia Ming's words made Lou Xinghai suddenly: "We must deploy the most powerful weapons at this stage in the star gate!" ”

"The Battle of Stargate also proved that the current nuclear weapons of mankind are not of much use in the universe, and we can only rely on lasers, railguns, and microwave weapons, the more powerful the better! Platforms such as fighter jets or small warships cannot carry heavy weapons, and we must have large warships. ”

Xia Ming sighed: "I also know that there are still too many technologies that can't be solved, but this direction is the most priority, even if you can't build a warship that can be flexible and mobile, you must deploy some batteries first." ”

"As for fighter jets, manned space fighters are a senseless waste of people, unmanned fighters have too high requirements for intelligence, and they are not very reliable until they get new communication technologies, and if the UNOC wants to take this path, let them go. Before the large warships are done, the miniaturization of warships is a good direction. ”

Xia Ming said: "I have already done this, and I will give you the plan the day after tomorrow at the latest." It will not be built on the earth, and when the logistics base of the asteroid belt is completed, it will be built directly in the stargate. ”

Lou Xinghai smiled bitterly, no wonder Xia Ming only stared at them to get a large battleship, and in the other direction Xia Ming took care of it himself, as for why Xia Ming still personally engaged in such a topic, it was obvious that his interests and hobbies were ......

Lou Xinghai sneered, I hope it is not an enlarged version of the titanium fighter, or the shape in other movies and games.

After talking to Xia Ming about the design progress of the Rainbow Bridge for a while, Lou Xinghai said goodbye, Xia Ming called up a very strange-looking spaceship in his field of vision, and said secretly, this is indeed a personal interest.

The "Warhammer" destroyer resembles the Oracle-class Titan in EVE, which is mushroom-shaped. However, the front and back are just the opposite of the Divine Messenger class, with a total length of 48 meters, and the diameter of the rear "mushroom" is 30 meters, which is slightly smaller than the Scavenger overall.

In line with the principle of loading as many high-power weapons as possible, the Warhammer destroyer is equipped with a 100 mm caliber and a 300 megajoule railgun, and the mushroom root at the front end is to accommodate the track. In addition, there are a number of secondary weapons, but they are only slightly more powerful than those contained in power armor.

This type of destroyer has a crew of three people, two months of self-sustaining power, and a radius of one billion kilometers. This is not for the earth, but when necessary, it can undertake various chores such as escort and transportation from the earth to the stargate.

"Technology is secondary, and the most important thing is people......

Admiring his work and imagining the picture of it inviting him to swim in space, Xia Ming sighed helplessly.

Even if you don't need a large warship, even if you only need three people to operate a destroyer, and you want to build a space fleet, what the Star Alliance lacks most now is people. (To be continued.) )