The materials laboratory is mainly engaged in the research and development of materials with high fatigue resistance and excellent resistance to high temperatures and radiation.

Chen Yue's envisioned nuclear-powered spacecraft would have an acceleration capacity of at least 10 meters per square second – roughly similar to Earth's gravity.

Moreover, this acceleration ability must be maintained for a period of time, and it must be maintained for more than a minute.

The engine can only be mounted on the tail of the ship. Relying on the thrust at the tail, the entire huge spacecraft will be pushed to change its motion state with an acceleration of 10 meters per square second, and it will last for another minute, and it will have to accelerate many times, so it is foreseeable how much pressure the spacecraft as a whole will be under.

None of the materials available could meet the demand. Chen Yue had to develop sufficiently advanced new materials, supplemented by engineering means, such as more reasonable layouts and more load-bearing keels, in order to achieve the ultimate goal.

There are more than 60 sub-laboratories under the materials laboratory, which carry out the research and development and manufacturing experiments of tens of thousands of new materials. In addition to alloys, Chen Yue also involves nanomaterials, polymer materials, molecular polymer materials and so on.

In the communication laboratory, a variety of new communication equipment with high reliability is being developed; In electrical laboratories, all kinds of high-reliability electrical equipment are being devastated under high radiation environments......

Time passed slowly. In the blink of an eye, 50 years have passed.

At this moment it is the year 464 of the new calendar.

After 50 years of hard research and development, Chen Yue still failed to build the final nuclear-powered spacecraft.

"Well, scientific research is like that, there is no shortcut. Accumulation little by little, iteration little by little, only so, only so. ”

Chen Yue once again realized this truth.

"I just hope that during this time, those alien civilizations didn't notice me......"

However, in the past fifty years, Chen Yue has not gained a little. At the very least, the major labs have made some progress, and the technology has been iterated for more than a dozen rounds, which is a great improvement compared to the beginning. It's just that the final performance is still not up to par.

And, during this period of time, Chen Yue's chip process has once again made a breakthrough.

The next generation of processes after 5 nanometers is 3 nanometers. The chip with the 3-nanometer process is already the technology reached by human civilization at its peak. At this moment, Chen Yue has finally caught up with the peak of human beings in chip technology.

A new 3nm process supercomputer has been built. Compared with the supercomputer used by Chen Yue at the moment, its computing power has been increased by up to 10 times.

It is precisely because of the re-improvement of computing power that Chen Yue can support the increasingly huge demand for computing power.

You must know that the later the scientific research is, the more terrifying the demand for computing power becomes. Even though many sub-supercomputers have been built to undertake most of the scientific research calculations, Chen Yue has only played a role similar to that of a "human", and the computing power he has mastered is still being rapidly devoured.

The rapid increase in demand for computing power made Chen Yue a little worried.

Because of the technical ceiling of silicon-based chips, I am about to touch it.

The 3nm process is followed by 2nm.

The 2nm process is the highest process for silicon-based chips, and it is impossible to make any progress after that, and there can be no 1nm or a few tenths of a nanometer process.

Because once the chip process is less than 2 nanometers, the electrons between the different circuits of the chip will directly penetrate due to the quantum tunneling effect, resulting in circuit failure.

"There has to be a new model of computer development."

Chen Yue thought.

This requires a completely new path of computer development.

At the moment, the only thing that has the potential to go beyond the limits of silicon-based is quantum computer technology.

"It's time to spare a little computing power for pre-research on quantum computer technology."

So a quantum lab was built, and quantum computer technology was studied.

On the other hand, nuclear-powered spacecraft technology is also being promoted in an all-round way.

Time is still passing rapidly, and Chen Yue is so engrossed in the research of various disciplines, not knowing the sun and the moon.

Just like water dripping all the time, the stone will also be broken down, and just like the rope has been sawed all the time, and the wood can also be sawn, the hard scientific barrier has finally loosened under Chen Yue's hundreds of years of hard work, under the performance improvement and technological iteration bit by bit.

On this day, a major breakthrough in ion propulsion technology finally occurred.

The total mass of the new generation of ion thrusters has been reduced to 500 tons, and the thrust has been increased to the point where it can push a large rock.

This is already an astonishing step forward. This means that Chen Yue's technology in ion propulsion, at least, has far surpassed that of humans at their peak. But Chen Yue was not complacent at all.

"It's not enough, we have to continue to improve."

Time slowly came to the year 528 of the new calendar.

At this moment, it has been 114 years since Chen Yue started the research of nuclear-powered spacecraft.

In the ion propulsion laboratory, a new round of ion propulsion experiments began.

"The power supply self-test is normal, and the equipment self-test is normal. 3, 2, 1, ignition! ”

Under the huge power supply, a small ion thruster with a diameter of only one meter, a thickness of half a meter, and a total mass of only 0.9 tons immediately sprayed a bright blue and extremely hot light.

Under superconductivity technology, electricity is converted into kinetic energy of ions with very low losses, and then ejected from the tail at a very high speed. The high-velocity ejection of ions brings a tremendous amount of reverse thrust. Chen Yue saw that the high-strength steel that withstood the thrust of the engine showed a slight deformation at this moment. On the thrust value sensor, that value spiked instantly......

At this moment, Chen Yue had an urge to burst into tears.

"For more than 100 years, more than 50% of the perennial computing power has been invested, tens of thousands of factories, tens of thousands of laboratories, hundreds of millions of robots have been scrapped from the beginning to the present, little by little accumulation, little by little improvement, and finally created......

It's just too hard, it's too hard.

If it is calculated in terms of GDP, it is equivalent to Chen Yue devoting at least 9% of his GDP to the research and development of nuclear-powered spacecraft, and it lasted for more than 100 years before finally developing it.

What is the concept of 9%? You must know that in the Earth era, all the military investment of a country is usually only about 3%. In addition, Chen Yue's social operation mode has very low losses, and the overall error rate is only less than 3%. The overall error rate of human society is as high as more than 95%.

Chen Yue's 9% investment is basically equivalent to the entire human society doing nothing, and only doing this one thing.

But even so, it took Chen Yue more than 100 years to complete the research and development.

"That's where my real strength lies. There is no internal friction, no error, no waste, and you can devote your full attention to scientific research with great efficiency. ”