The research on controlled fusion technology has been carried out by mankind for decades. During this time, although mankind has not broken through the shackles of this technology, he has accumulated a huge amount of research data, which has provided Hawke with a very important reference.
In particular, the phenomenon that occurred on Jupiter during the Jupiter-Moon collision taught Hawke a very important lesson.
On top of this, and with the powerful computing power of the photonic computer, Hawke has finally, today, made a very important technological breakthrough.
At Base II, in the controlled fusion research room, there is a huge glass case, the outside of which is covered with various wiring across the board - wiring that will generate a specific magnetic field. Bound by this magnetic field, in the centre of the glass case, a very bright and dazzling point of light hangs in mid-air, radiating enormous amounts of light and heat all the time, making it impossible to look at it.
They are undergoing nuclear fusion, converting deuterium and tritium into helium. In the process, part of the mass is converted into energy.
Hawke allocated ten per cent of his computing power to watching this place, doing all sorts of calculations in a hurry.
Looking at the experimental data, Hawke's heart was inexplicably excited. He had been waiting for this moment for far too long.
Relying on chemical fuel for interstellar navigation was unrealistic. If he really had to rely on chemical fuel to travel from the Solar System to the Sky Court four star system, Hawke estimated that he would have to build a kilometre class ship and fill more than ninety percent of its space with fuel to be barely enough.
Without controlled fusion, relying on chemical fuel alone, Hawk would be confined to the solar system for eternity, unable to get out.
"All right, new generation of fusion-powered ships, start building!"
Hawke began a new plan. He was going to build a groundbreaking ship that used the latest technology, whether it was the power system or the structural materials, or the control system.
All the construction carried out in the previous phase was in service of this purpose.
The huge special steel smelting blast furnace is constantly flowing with dark red steel. This steel would, after condensation, be turned into individual ingots for processing. However, before condensing, Hawke added another process.
This was to expose the steel to radiation from the One for about five minutes before condensing.
After testing, Hawke found that when the metal was in a hot liquid state, the radiation from the One gave the greatest performance gains with the least amount of radiation. So, poor One was captured by Hawke and used as a hard labourer to sell his blood.
The five minutes of radiation exposure was enough to increase the performance of these special steels to more than three times their original level.
In the process of smelting the steel, Hawke also added the corpses of the black insects in a certain proportion, so that the steel had been greatly improved in terms of insulation and radiation protection.
Hawke is doing his best to build the best quality materials he can. These materials, after being processed in the equipment manufacturing room, will be turned into parts for this great, epoch-making ship.
Within the huge assembly hall of the main base, there are components from at least hundreds of equipment manufacturing rooms. At least hundreds of robots were busy assembling the various precision components, and it took half a year to complete the ship.
It was a twenty-metre diameter, five-metre high disc-shaped ship, powered by a nuclear fusion engine, controlled by the latest photonic computer, and built with the finest steel Hawke could produce. This is the most advanced ship that Hawke could have built with his current technology.
To build this ship, the radiation intensity of the One was reduced to 30 per cent of the maximum radiation intensity, and 70 per cent of the radiation intensity was used up. Nearly two hundred tons of black worm bodies were used up, accounting for thirty percent of the current storage capacity.
Despite this huge consumption, Hawke believed that it was worth it. Even if the radiation intensity of the One was used up, he could still go to Jupiter to capture it again, and as for the black bug corpses, Hawke was not worried. In that time, Hawke had discovered at least a thousand more of these creatures in at least a thousand larger lakes on Titan, and it was expected that the total stockpile would reach millions of tons, enough to build a large fleet.
Today is the day that the ship will take its test flight.
Hawke stopped most of the construction and allocated at least forty percent of the computing power - forty percent of the photonic computer's total computing power, which is almost the same as the entire computing power of all the supercomputers on Earth.
"Let's make sure everything is in order." Hawke thought to himself, "You carry the hope of my interstellar voyage. Let's call you the Hope."
The mass of the Hope was around three thousand tons, and this class of ship was classified as a "village" class ship. If a ship of 10,000 tons or more was built, it would be classified as a "village" ship, and so on, as the tonnage increased, up to "county", "city" and "provincial". ", "provincial", "national" and so on.
The village class ship, the Hope, slowly left the ground as a pale blue flame erupted from the bottom of the ship under Hawke's full attention.
Yes, the Hope did not need a rocket to get it into interstellar space, but had the ability to take off directly. Because of its powerful, efficient power system it can provide enough sustained and powerful power, while the advanced material technology ensures that it is not designed aerodynamically and will not be torn apart by the planet's gravity and air resistance in the midst of its high-speed motion.
Ten seconds later, the Hope was three thousand metres off the ground. The tremendous friction had left its shell slightly red, with an estimated temperature of over eight hundred degrees Celsius. But Hawke wasn't the least bit worried. The ship's shell, made of special steel mixed with black insect carcasses, could withstand such temperatures with little difficulty.
It was gaining speed and a minute later, Hope was a hundred kilometres above the ground and in orbit around Titan, but it was still accelerating.
At this point, communication between Hawke and Hope was entirely dependent on the twelve Battlestar Galactica satellites that had been launched earlier.
Hawke steered Hope away from Titan and came to a screeching halt in the middle of the star, reducing its speed violently from three kilometres per second to near standstill.
"Ship overload resistance test ... passed."
The acceleration of gravity above Earth is nine point eight metres per second, which means that on a ship that is accelerating at nine point eight metres per second every moment, because of inertia, a person feels the same gravity as if they were above Earth.
If the ship were accelerating at nineteen point six metres per second, the person would feel twice the gravity of Earth.
This is overload. A specially trained pilot can withstand ten times the overload, which means that the human body can withstand a limit of ninety-eight metres per second of acceleration. Beyond this acceleration, the human body will suffer irreparable damage or even death.
The hull of an airship also has an overload limit. The average large aircraft can withstand a maximum of about twenty times the overload, beyond which the hull will be torn apart by inertial forces and air resistance.
Before the destruction of the Earth, the spacecraft built by mankind could probably withstand an overload of thirty to forty times the maximum acceleration of four hundred metres per second, beyond which the spacecraft would also be torn apart by inertial forces.
Hawke had just done tests on his own spacecraft. The results showed that it could withstand a maximum overload of about two hundred and thirty times! In other words, Hawke's spacecraft could withstand a maximum acceleration of two thousand two hundred metres per second!
This means that Hawke's ship can go from a standstill to a state of two thousand metres per second in less than a second, or it can stop instantly at a high speed of two thousand metres per second.
This means great flexibility. With this agility, combined with Hawke's terrifying calculation speed, even if there were tens of thousands of people and tens of thousands of guns firing at Hope at the same time, Hawke would still be able to steer Hope and dodge the bullets in just a few seconds.
Once the overload test was completed, Hawke launched into another test.
"Regular fuel storage capacity, maximum operating speed test."
In cosmic navigation, the only operations that consume fuel are acceleration and deceleration, as well as changing course. The usual flight relies mainly on inertia, and this phase consumes no fuel.
The fastest, chemically-fuelled or nuclear fission-powered spacecraft ever built by man was Voyager I, which reached a speed of roughly eighteen kilometres per second relative to the sun. Why can't its speed be increased any further? Precisely because of fuel limitations. Hawk had reached a speed of sixty kilometres per second before reaching Titan because of the extra fuel it received to replenish it.
Now all Hawke had to test was the maximum speed that Hope could support with the regular amount of fuel it carried.
A powerful blue flame erupted from the Hope's tail and it began to accelerate at a terrifying speed, faster and faster and faster.
"Conventional fuel reserves, maximum operating speed ... three hundred kilometres per second! The conventional fuel reserves can support the Hope making more than six such acceleration and deceleration attempts! If we disregard the deceleration problem and just consider the maximum power of the engine and keep accelerating, its speed can reach one thousand kilometres per second when the fuel is consumed!"
This figure was very shocking to Hawke.