At this moment, Chen Yue was not only proud, but also proud.

Once again, he truly realized his advantages over human civilization, a collective civilization.

No internal friction, no mistakes, no waste. Once he had decided on a goal, he could immediately mobilize the equivalent of an entire civilization and devote himself to it, without any constraints or disagreement. All the power can be used in one place.

Because of this, the nuclear-powered ion propulsion technology, whose scientific and technological content far exceeded that of human civilization at its peak, was born in the hands of Chen Yue.

Mastering this technology in the laboratory is still a long way from being truly industrialized and applied on a large scale. However, this distance is not long, and there are no insurmountable obstacles.

Only five years later, the first physical spacecraft finally rolled off the assembly line in the "First Spaceship Manufacturing Plant" built by Chen Yue.

The ship is disc-shaped, with a flat bottom and a large number of ion propulsion vents, with a raised upper part and space inside that can be used as a cargo compartment.

The miniaturized nuclear fission reactor was installed there.

It is a nuclear fission power station with a maximum power of 200,000 kWh. At full power, it can generate almost 1.72 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity per year, consuming less than two tons of nuclear fuel at a concentration of 5%.

It reaches a diameter of 50 meters and a height of 16 meters at its highest point. It has a total mass of 4,000 tonnes and can carry up to 2,500 tonnes of weight inside.

The surging energy from the internal nuclear fission reactor will be converted into electricity, which in turn will be converted into the kinetic energy of the plasma, which will be ejected at nearly the speed of light from up to 100 jets at the bottom, providing the ship with a huge counterthrust.

According to different needs and different loads, Chen Yue can easily adjust the power generation of the nuclear fission reactor and the propulsion power of the ion thruster assembly. In this way, the behemoth, which can weigh up to 6,500 tons, can accelerate or decelerate at an acceleration of up to 10 meters per square second.

Such strong maneuverability means that it has extremely high structural strength. This means that it can land on the surface of certain planets, unlike some early spaceships, which can only exist in a gravity-free environment in space, and once landed, its own weight will collapse itself.

Of course, the mass of the landed planet still cannot be too large. If the gravitational force of mass exceeds the gravitational pull of the Earth by 1.5 times, it will still be crushed by its own weight.

From this point of view, near Jupiter, Saturn and other gas planets, it is still unreachable. However, Galilean moons like Europa, or planets such as Pluto, Earth, Mars, Venus, etc., can be unimpeded.

At this moment, with Chen Yue's command, the central computer of the spacecraft immediately began to manipulate the fission reactor to increase the power supply. A number of extremely power-hungry plasma thrusters begin to accelerate the ions and eject them from the nozzles. A huge anti-thrust force immediately acted on the ship.

The thin air above Europa roared and roared, and the multi-thousand-ton behemoth left the surface of the earth and soared into space.

The faint blue tail flame glows brightly in the dim sky.

Arriving in space is like a dragon coming to the sea for this spaceship. Chen Yue manipulated it and flew swiftly towards another Galilean satellite, Io, at its highest power.

Io has a bit more mass than Europa, but the larger ones are limited. At the moment, it is only about 300,000 kilometers away from Europa.

Under the rapid acceleration of this ion-propelled spacecraft, it had already crossed half of this long distance in just over an hour.

At the moment, it reaches the maximum speed of sailing, up to 55 kilometers per second. After that, the Attitude Adjustment Engine kicks in, propelling it to make a light turn in space, and begins to spew plasma in the direction of Io, slowing itself down.

So, after another hour or so, when it reached the vicinity of Io, its speed dropped to a speed that could enter Io's orbit.

The entire voyage took the spacecraft less than three hours. In the past, when Chen Yue still used chemically powered spacecraft, this voyage would take at least three days.

The efficiency gains are so great that they can be called a leap forward.

At this time, because it was too far away from Europa, Chen Yue's communication with it inevitably had a more obvious delay. As a result, Chen Yue adjusted its control mode from direct control to indirect control.

The indirect control mode was developed by Chen Yue and is specially used for the control of distant targets with large communication delays.

In this mode, Chen Yue will not directly control the target operation, but will only control the central computer of the target device. Depending on the communication delay time, Chen Yue will contact the central computer of the target device every few seconds to tens of seconds, read the feedback of its work data in the previous time period, and issue instructions to it for the next time period, so as to achieve as comprehensive control as possible.

The indirect control model is obviously not as good as the direct control mode. In the direct control mode, Chen Yue can manipulate the target equipment as he wants, without mistakes, with sensitive and fast response and the highest efficiency.

The error rate of the indirect control mode is higher, the response will be slower, and the efficiency will be lower. But there's no way around it.

Before mastering the faster-than-light communication technology, Chen Yue could only accept this situation.

At this moment, under indirect control mode, the ship landed directly on Io in a straight line, and finally reached its pothole-ridden surface.

The hatch opens, and a robot steps out.

The surface of Io is yellow, and the air is full of sulfur, like hell.

There's no way, there's just too much sulfur on Europa. Even Chen Yue obtained a plasma ring of huge energy from it, which only appeared because of the eruption of the Io volcano, which ejected its own sulfur into space.

"It's also a resource-rich planet."

Chen Yue sighed in his heart: "It's really a waste if you don't dig it well." It just so happens that Europa's resources are no longer sufficient for my needs. Now that I have a nuclear-powered ion propulsion spacecraft again, it's time to put the development of Europa on the agenda. ”

When there were no nuclear-powered spaceships, it was very difficult for Chen Yue to have large-scale resource interactions with the rest of the planets.

But now the situation is different.

A nuclear-powered spacecraft is like a bridge that connects different planets from afar.