Time flies by, never paying attention to people's calls. In the blink of an eye, year after year flowed like this, leaving no trace. In the blink of an eye, the empire came to the year 107.

Ten years have passed. In the past decade, the most exciting thing is that ultra-long-distance communication technology has finally made breakthroughs. Input signal from one end, and the other end can receive the signal within an hour; The farthest communication distance, that is, the theoretical distance, is 100 light years, and the current communication distance is 40 light years - 40 light years, and the communication time is only one hour. That is, the energy consumption is somewhat large, and it takes a 100 million cubic meter lead-acid physical battery to complete a signal communication - a call needs to consume 1 billion kWh! And each signal can only transmit ten seconds and no more than one megabyte of information.

Today, electricity is still the most prevalent energy technology; As for other forms of energy such as magnetic energy, they are still only used in small quantities in cutting-edge fields. This is because compared to power technology, these energy technologies are unpredictable and cannot be stored.

However, in the past ten years, the people have not been without changes. The scientific and technological development of human society here in the solar system has reached a temporary peak, with the public sale of the 100,000-ton engine of Gentian-1, whether it is an empire or a republic, space technology has advanced by leaps and bounds. Ten years have made interstellar travel between Venus, Earth and Mars commonplace, and dozens of interstellar travel companies, large and small, have provided cheap interstellar travel services for human beings: 5 yuan per 10,000 kilometers! The service fee for each space trip is 1,000 yuan. If calculated according to the orbits of the Earth and Venus today, the shortest distance is 25 million kilometers; Even if you add food and drink and other things like travel expenses. 30,000 yuan can sit a round trip! -- That's what a passenger thought!

What the? Why did I spend 50,000 yuan on a round-trip ticket alone? The customer angrily asked the waiter!

Waiter: The planet also has to move. The shortest distance of 25 million kilometers is true, but the actual flight distance of the spacecraft is 38 million kilometers; And the return journey is as high as 58 million kilometers. Speaking of this, the waiter looked helpless: we can't let the planet stop without moving!

Customer: I don't believe in advertising anymore......

Waiter: It's not an advertising error, we've already made it clear that this is the closest time between Venus and Earth; However, the spacecraft has to catch up with the moving Earth during its flight, and it has to catch up with the moving Venus when it returns, so the actual distance must be much larger. Besides, your price calculation is calculated according to your calculation method inside the planet, not according to interstellar standards, of course there is a deviation.

With the development of technology, star tourism has become commonplace. And things like this happen all the time. Many people still haven't changed their minds -- it's just that technology is developing too fast, too fast! People have not yet had time to adapt to the relationship between the relatively stationary ground and the perpetually moving space. Many units of calculation are still calculated according to the laws of the ground.

But this year. Society began to calm down a lot, to be exact, there was a kind of depression!

Because, today, in the calculation, the time when the whale constellation signal returns - the specific time cannot be accurately estimated. After all, the starry sky is also in constant motion. And there are too many mysteries in the starry sky. 12 light years away. It's normal for the signal to be off for dozens of days. The more humans study the starry sky, the more they can feel the mystery of the starry sky. For example, under a high-powered telescope. Some stars will disappear out of thin air for a period of time and reappear after a period of time - this is because there is a black hole partition effect in the starry sky: maybe there is a black hole in the middle of a planet and the earth, so we can't see the star; Or some non-luminous nebulae in the starry sky, and so on. In fact, after modern scientific measurement and calculation, the mass of luminous objects in the universe is only 2~3% of the mass of the entire universe! And the human eye can only see 4% of all light waves! Therefore, the task of studying the universe is really a long way to go!

At the beginning of this year, the Empire's warship was finally completed, and this spaceship was built by a dozen large groups of the Empire to make an expedition to Grise, a living planet 20 light-years away. For this goal, over the years, the group companies of the empire have also gone crazy! Under the supervision of the empire, it "attracted" 1,000 masters of the Jindan period with ultra-high conditions, and a number of ordinary cultivators in the Xudan period; At the same time, he is also cultivating some cultivators. In addition, it is a price of 300 million yuan to 20 million yuan per mecha, and 30,000 military war mechas are purchased from the Empire. These mechs range from 10 meters in size to 100 meters in size monster mechs. There are also 200,000 fighters of various kinds!

In addition, the empire was entrusted with training 500,000 real soldiers suitable for space warfare and 10,000 non-commissioned officers, large and small.

For the sake of their dreams, these group companies threw out 80% of the wealth accumulated in the past hundred years! It can't be described as crazy anymore. And in order to save costs, the spacecraft was built using the technology of the Imperial Hope spacecraft - mature technology!

The empire does not simply build a spaceship, but it needs to build and research at the same time, so it costs a lot of money and takes a long time! But this is not the case with these businessmen, who directly adopt the mature second-generation spacecraft technology, so that they do not have to invest a lot of money in research and do not need to spend a lot of time on public relations - they can simply copy it.

In this way, the cost of the spaceship has been reduced by 40%, and the construction time has been directly reduced to ten years!

However, not all new technologies have not been adopted, and some low-cost new technologies are still needed; In particular, the energy protection layer technology of the Monster Group, ten years of research and development has achieved preliminary good results, and it can already achieve the effect of defending against sniper rifle bullets.

In addition, the weapons of war in the spaceship cannot be reduced, which is also a big expense. Many use new technology, and some of the assault weapons are terrifying.

The final spacecraft was 180 kilometers long. 55 km in diameter, 300 km in diameter for solar sails; It uses 10 million Gentian 2 engines and 10 million Dragon Wing 1 engines, with a maximum acceleration capacity of 5 m/s^2 and a maximum deceleration of 4.3 m/s^2 - mainly for the role of solar sails.

Now the war spacecraft is ready to go, just waiting for the signal from the whale constellation, and it will be scheduled to depart immediately.

In addition, after ten years of continuous discussions, exploration, technical research, etc., the Earth side has become more determined to go to Barnard; In addition, the Guangguang spacecraft has been improved a lot, and even two 10-kilometer-long auxiliary compartments have been added. Electrolyzed hydrogen and oxygen are stored in the secondary compartment, which is a cheap, environmentally friendly and efficient way of energy storage and combustion. It is also a very traditional and very mature spacecraft propulsion technology. After adding the secondary compartment. The power of the Bright spacecraft is even more powerful than that of the War!

Of course, power cannot be regarded as the only criterion for a spacecraft, survivability, armed forces, internal environment construction, and so on. It's all big questions! The Empire's spaceships are the kind that can survive in the universe for hundreds of years, at least in theory. The nuclear energy inside is exhausted. It is also possible to capture solar energy with solar sails. Let the ecology inside the ship barely maintain.

But in the same way, Earth's Bright spacecraft is also waiting for information from the constellation Whales. The information of an outer star system is conducive to the objective judgment and evaluation of external star systems. Let's be honest. Based on observations, people were surprised to find that the solar system is too rich! There are countless celestial bodies around that provide resources for humanity! On the other hand, some galaxies have only a lone star and a few fragments! Such a star system is not even worth remodeling - basic rocks are not enough.

However, there is another big event about to happen this year: after rigorous exploration and calculation, the empire is actually preparing to build 6 life planets in the asteroid belt!

It turns out that the asteroid belt is very empty, with a distance of 550 million kilometers between Mars and Jupiter, almost 3.7 times the distance between the Earth and the Sun, and even the asteroid belt was as wide as 220 million kilometers and divided into two layers.

Therefore, after strict calculations, the empire can arrange six planets within the scope of the asteroid belt! These six planets are combined in pairs, satellites and orbiting each other; The distance between each pair of planets can be controlled at a distance of 420,000 kilometers.

Of course, in view of the poor natural light here in the asteroid belt, the empire is ready to borrow from Mars's modification technology and build a large number of mirrors in the orbit of Venus to provide sufficient light for these planets. Anyway, these mirrors are much simpler to build - compared to the mirrors that can be used to propel a spaceship forward, it's like building blocks.

However, this plan has not yet been implemented, and it will not be until the Empire's War and the Republic's Bright are gone. After all, building planets out of thin air is not only a challenge to the Empire's technology, but also affects the gravitational balance of the solar system. If the impact is caused while the ship is moving, the consequences can be catastrophic. Even if this effect is theoretically negligible!

Therefore, it is only after the ship has completely left that the empire will set out to build such a planet.

A qiē, all waiting for a signal from 12 light years away to return!

From the end of 2162 A.D., the year 107 of the Imperial Calendar, people began to wait for information about the first heroes of mankind.

Although, people are full of confidence!

Although, people are full of pride!

Although, the earth technology is well developed!

But...... All the qiē can't escape a "just in case"!

Citizens of the Empire who have relatives on expeditions even refresh the Empire's official website every day.

It's really a broken finger...... F5 sucks......

The whole human society seems to be stuck, just waiting for the signal of the warrior to return!

lived up to expectations, and in everyone's expectations, the first wave of signals came out! That is, the clear image of the whale constellation taken by the spaceship, and even the space probe launched by the civilization here!

A cosmic probe for an alien civilization? This made many people start to worry...... It seems that this alien civilization is not without the ability to resist at all!

From this moment on, there is a constant return of signals...... (To be continued......)