Although the loss of contact with Princess White Lotus 2 had been predicted, Cao Chuan still felt a sense of urgency for the future, so he decided to be more careful and deal with the possible crisis from the Void Universe.

Another few years have passed, and sure enough, after reaching the scale of the universe, even the frequency of crises will become much slower, so in the past few years, the Galaxy Echo has gone a few light-years deeper along the path of deep space, and it has always been extremely safe.

It is less than 5 light years away from the location where Princess White Lotus 2 was lost.

"Master, discover something new!" The avatar of the White Lotus, who was patrolling around, lit up in front of him without any hesitation, "The strength of the ship's shell is weakening. ”

"Weakened?" Cao Chuan asked suspiciously, "I didn't collide with any stars, why did the strength of the shell weaken?" ”

Bai Lian touched her head: "I don't know, the test report says so... The ship's hull material is hollow, or decaying, causing the hull to deteriorate when it could have withstood a 33,000 km/s and a five-fold jump. ”

Cao Chuan stared, and after a while he guessed the possible reason, he hurriedly sent a robot to the location mentioned by Bai Lian to check, and found that things were indeed the same as he guessed.

Their spacecraft is currently in a zone of stardust matter, which is certainly inferior to the famous nebulae in the universe where stardust matter is concentrated, but there are still millions of atoms per unit of space.

Imagine what would happen if the spacecraft were continuously hit by these atoms at a relative velocity of 30,000 km/s? These high-energy atoms will continue to peck at the originally neatly arranged molecular materials, and for the molecular materials, a small piece will be defected, which has a great impact on the overall structural strength.

Even, if the energy level of the high-energy atoms is high enough, the impact process reaches the level of "shattered bones". When the finer electrons and neutrons interact with the material on the surface of the outer shell, the material elements will change and become another atom, bringing unpredictable results.

The front end of the ship is protected by a deflecting magnetic field, and there is nothing that can be done about this slow wear. A more powerful deflection magnetic field or something else is necessary to avoid constant wear and tear.

"Can't ignore this little issue... If the shell is still weakened, it will one day reach a critical point, causing the ship's structure to deteriorate, and in the universe, there is no way to deal with an accident of this level. ”

Time was pressing, and Cao Chuan had to come up with a simple temporary plan first, that is, to increase the power of the deflected magnetic field, like this. Any stardust material that hits it will be ejected, and it will have no effect on the shell.

As for the future, how to completely solve this problem, one way may be to use the self-repairing armor layer, even if the armor layer is in continuous consumption, through continuous repair, the armor layer can not disappear completely; Another way to get is to deflect a strengthened version of the magnetic field, the protective force field. A larger energy shield is constructed outside the spaceship, and no matter what hits, more than half of it will be consumed first.

Although temporarily increasing the power of the deflected magnetic field solves the problem. Cao Chuan noticed that the energy on the spaceship was starting to dry up again.

"Master, it looks like you're going to have to solve this problem once and for all!" 3 Lori said.

Cao Chuan thought that time was still a little short, and he suddenly encountered energy problems, and he had to find a temporary plan first, so that he could take time out to solve them completely.

"How to solve the energy problem? There are no materials around that can replenish energy, and everything happens together. If there is no way to solve the problem in 3 years, then Galaxy Echo must leave the deep space road ahead of schedule and find supplies for planetary production and construction. ”

"About 100 years ago, when humans were exploring the asteroid belt, some scientists proposed a technology called star stream resupply. Suppose the spaceship is lost in the remote depths of the universe. There are no airports and planets around, but at least there will be dense stardust matter, and the main components of stardust matter are hydrogen and helium, which will solve the above problems by absorbing these elements and easily converting them into fuel for spacecraft combustion and providing power in the era when chemical energy fuels in the asteroid belt were prevalent. Nana used her mental model's expertise to quickly search for some information.

"Starstream supply technology? It does have some reference value... But it wasn't the same then. In an era when fusion energy completely unifies 95% of the world's spacecraft energy market, from the perspective of energy conversion rate, it is not a particularly good way to use the stardust material around us, or it is a bit ahead of its time. ”

"If we develop the ultimate version of hydrogen helium fusion technology, then the stardust substance, which is mostly hydrogen and helium, will become an excellent source of energy for us, and we can use 100% of it, and now, it is too expensive to extract a sufficient amount of helium-3, deuterium-tritium, from the stardust material."

"But it's also an option, or does the owner plan to consider the way to save energy, and to save energy, we must make major changes to the engine and the Higgs particle generator, we are currently on the voyage, and it is impossible to do such a large-scale transformation."

"There's a lot of truth to what you're saying," Cao Chuan pondered, "or is there a way to get energy from the wandering stars in the starry sky?" No, it's too dangerous, it's too dangerous to approach a wandering star at 33,000 km/s, you can't get enough energy, and slowing down will only waste more. ”

After a comprehensive comparison, Nana's suggestion was still reasonable, and Cao Chuan had to hurriedly look for materials in the spaceship cabin and temporarily create a stardust material recovery device.

The surface area of this recovery device is not large, only about 10 square meters, and it protrudes slightly from the front of the ship, but because of the clever design here, it uses a deflected magnetic field to drive the stardust material over, so that it can suck in about 50% of the stardust material flowing to the spacecraft in the front.

Through a simple refining equipment inside the spacecraft, helium-3 and deuterium-tritium, which contain 0.02% of the substance composed of pure hydrogen and helium, can be filtered out, and these operations do not consume much energy.

It's just that the efficiency is relatively slow, there is no way, the density of stardust matter is too low, and the fundamental supply of sucking and sucking is not much, providing about 5% of the normal consumption.

"After all, the small problem is temporarily solved... Ha, shouldn't it take a few years to completely solve these two problems? Perhaps the third generation of ships will use these technologies. Cao Chuan saw that after a round of inspections, the Galaxy Echo had temporarily returned to normal, and thought to himself. (To be continued.) )