Upon receiving the order, Li Keke acknowledged and was about to load the satellite for launch when Ling Xiao swiftly grabbed her wrist.
Li Keke raised an eyebrow, "What are you doing?"
If the situation weren't so inappropriate, she would have grabbed Ling Xiao's collar and interrogated him fiercely: "You're hitting on me, are you out of your mind?"
Ling Xiao pointed to the screen, "Are you an idiot? What speed are we traveling at, and you want to launch a satellite?"
The battleship's speed was too great; directly releasing the satellite would cause it to escape Saturn's gravity. What would happen if it were launched with an electromagnetic cannon?
Li Keke looked at him with disdain, "You're the idiot. Don't you know what reverse is... Is my hand slippery or not? Is it tender?"
Ling Xiao froze, realizing he was still holding Li Keke's wrist. He quickly let go, wiping his palm on his clothes.
Li Keke's eyebrows shot up, and she gritted out, "Ling, you just wait!"
Ling Xiao wasn't like Ou Zhanpeng with his low emotional intelligence; he immediately realized his mistake. However, with so many people present, he couldn't bring himself to apologize.
He became even more brazen, rubbing his hand a few more times, tilting his neck slightly with an air of defiance.
Women are so troublesome. Touching them is considered harassment, but letting them go brings about complaints and dissatisfaction.
It is truly difficult to raise women and petty people; the ancients did not deceive me!
"I won't stoop to your level!" Li Keke tapped her finger, loading the satellite for launch.
Although she said this, she noted down this grievance in her heart.
Ou Zhanpeng burst out laughing, "Ling Xiao, a beautiful woman is a desirable companion for a gentleman. Our Keke is quite attractive. It's not surprising you have feelings, but if you do, just say it. Can you be more sincere and less scheming?"
As he spoke, he lightly tapped the controls, and the battleship immediately began a 180-degree turn.
Xu Qing blinked her big eyes, looking at her man with newfound respect – after so much exposure, this blockhead finally started to catch on.
Ling Xiao was flustered, "Hey, hey, what's going on? I just got dazed and made a small mistake. Do you have to keep harping on it?"
He wanted to say, "I wouldn't scheme against anyone but Li Keke," but he had already sobered up. The previous incident hadn't been resolved yet, and if he were to speak carelessly again, it would surely lead to another conflict. Therefore, he wisely chose to downplay the situation.
Ou Zhanpeng smirked, "Your touching her is a small matter. Our Keke isn't that petty, but what you did afterward was wrong, right, Keke?" He then mimed wiping his hands with a playful grin.
Previously, Ling Xiao was always teasing him and Xu Qing. Today, having finally seized the opportunity, he had to get back at him.
Li Keke nodded vigorously and pressed lightly, successfully launching the satellite. "Launch power is normal, relative velocity is stable, orbital altitude is increasing!"
The casual teasing of the two bored men was interrupted by this statement. As Ou Zhanpeng was about to turn the battleship back, another idea struck him, "Load ordinary shells, let's give those mushrooms a few shots."
"One ordinary shell loaded!" Li Keke responded immediately, "Target locked... Three, two, one, done!"
The shell shot out, flying directly towards the left of Saturn.
The battleship's speed was fast, and it was far from Saturn. To ensure the shell hit the target, the lag time had to be precisely controlled.
This was the most basic of basics. Li Keke would never make a mistake on such a common knowledge issue.
Unlike Ling Xiao!
She shot a dissatisfied glance at the person in question.
Just as the Yunhe was about to fly away from Saturn, it received an image transmitted by a satellite. The shell had entered Saturn's atmosphere, accurately hitting an orange mushroom, and silently drilled a hole.
Half a minute later, the floating mushroom began to descend, gradually disappearing into the clouds.
Ling Xiao's face was filled with surprise, "Why is this thing like a balloon?"
"It might just be a balloon," Ou Zhanpeng said.
He pulled up the video captured by the battleship and watched it repeatedly. "For now, this thing doesn't seem to pose any danger. Let the higher-ups deal with the rest."
This was not the Yunhe's mission; he had done all he could.
A few minutes later, the Yunhe completed its acceleration and orbital change, leaving Saturn and entering the final stage of its journey. From then on, it would fly in a straight line towards its destination.
The subsequent voyage was extremely smooth. It was no exaggeration to say that ever since crossing Jupiter's orbit, every second of the Yunhe's journey was making history, and every moment was setting new records for human spaceflight.
Although everyone knew this, no one paid much attention to it. Those on duty continued their shifts, and those who needed to sleep went to bed.
After passing Neptune's orbit, the Yunhe officially entered the outer Neptune region, where small celestial bodies were numerous, consisting of large and small dirty snowballs.
At first, Ou Zhanpeng and Xu Qing were quite interested, sitting in the bridge and looking at the stars in various ways. But no matter how novel the scenery, after seeing it every day, they quickly grew tired of it and began to ignore it.
Although dirty snowballs were numerous, they were also widely distributed. Ou Zhanpeng had initially been a little worried about encountering danger, but after flying for a while, he confirmed that the celestial body density in the outer Neptune region was much lower than imagined. The Yunhe could continue to its target without any problems.
Unless they deliberately crashed into an asteroid, there was nothing to worry about.
The most dangerous encounter was with an asteroid, with the closest distance between them being over thirty kilometers.
A very safe distance.
However, the battleship's warning system didn't care about that. The warning range of this system was 100,000 kilometers, the intervention distance was 70,000 kilometers, and the destruction distance was 5,000 kilometers!
Once a small celestial body entered the alert range, it would immediately issue a warning, calculate the celestial body's trajectory, and determine if there was a risk of collision.
Don't think 100,000 kilometers is far. The Yunhe's current speed reached a record-breaking 260 kilometers per second. It would take just over six minutes to cover 100,000 kilometers.
If there was no risk of collision, they would go their separate ways.
If the system determined there was a risk of collision, it was different. The battleship would immediately issue a warning and activate its laser cannons at a distance of 70,000 kilometers from the target, continuously illuminating the target with low power to alter its flight path.
Destroying the target was naturally easier, but destruction would create a large amount of debris. At the Yunhe's speed, even a small piece of debris could cause an irreparable disaster.
Therefore, the Yunhe had always been like a gentle warm man, dealing with asteroids with soft methods instead of resorting to immediate destruction.
Unless absolutely necessary.
The subsequent voyage was smooth. By the end of September 2071, the Yunhe had traveled over 50 astronomical units, with only ten days left to reach its destination.
The battleship, under Ou Zhanpeng's control, turned 180 degrees and activated its main thrusters, entering the deceleration phase.
These thrusters had not been activated since departure. Captain Ou was particularly worried that they might fail, but luckily, they started successfully.
However, with only these main thrusters, it would take at least several months to reduce the battleship's speed. The real trump card was the four nuclear-powered pulse engines!
These engines were derived from the U.S.'s Project Orion, proposed more than a hundred years ago, but due to too many technical difficulties, they had never been put into practical use.
Luojiangshan absorbed the U.S.'s concept and redesigned it by concentrating its most elite forces. The biggest improvement was the placement of a protective field in the propulsion chamber. Through the field, the impact of micro-nuclear explosions on the battleship was reduced, not only increasing efficiency but also effectively reducing damage to the supporting structure.
Another improvement was the addition of buffering structures, including large hydraulic buffering, multiple elastic buffering, and pressure buffering.
Each activation of a nuclear pulse engine was like a barrage of heavy artillery. A flash of light from the bell mouth, the engine lurched forward, and the force field and hydraulic devices smoothed out the violent thrust and transmitted it to the battleship's main body, then slowly reset under the action of the hydraulic system.
Although multi-layered buffering structures were used, the working method of this engine was too special. Ever since entering the deceleration phase, the battleship had experienced uncontrollable vibrations, as if an invisible giant was continuously pounding the soles of the Yunhe's feet with a giant hammer.
Fortunately, the thrusters were effective. The Yunhe, like a wild horse with a bridle, decelerated at a visibly noticeable rate, stretching a journey of only ten days into over a month!
When the battleship arrived at the designated airspace, its speed was just right.
"This is it!" Ou Zhanpeng let out a long sigh, recalling the bits and pieces of the journey, and suddenly felt a surge of emotion.
Although there was the Kuiper Belt outside and the Oort Cloud, and it was still far from the edge of the solar system, he had a feeling that this was the edge of the solar system.
Having flown this far in just over a year, the Yunhe was indeed extraordinary, but looking at the vast, dark void outside the ship, no one could feel happy.
Ling Xiao scratched the back of his head vigorously, voicing everyone's thoughts, "No way, we're here already? Where's the target?"
Ou Zhanpeng was also troubled, "I don't know either. This is the location given by the experts."
"The experts are this good?" Ling Xiao's face contorted, as if they were about to have a parting feast.
"The experts found by the higher-ups, how could their skill be lacking?" Ou Zhanpeng sighed, already thinking about where the problem lay. "The coordinates given by the experts are definitely not wrong, but this kind of precision is relative. When it comes to star charts, a slight tap results in this situation."
Yes, it was just a slight tap, but this tap encompassed a vast space with a radius of over 300,000 kilometers.
In other words, if you drew a sphere with the Moon's orbit as a reference, it would only be slightly larger than the airspace before them.
The asteroid could be at the edge of this sphere or at its center.
Ling Xiao was even more troubled, "How about we contact the higher-ups and ask the experts to recalculate?"
"Without data, contacting them or not is the same," Ou Zhanpeng recalled the scene from his dream, gesturing with both hands for a while before finally saying, "The target's shape is irregular, and its volume won't be too small!"
Ling Xiao covered his face, "That's as good as saying nothing!"
Ou Zhanpeng simply brought up the drawing interface and quickly sketched the approximate outline of the asteroid, "Is this clearer now?"
Everyone broke into wry smiles. It was clearer, but the shape was too ordinary, not much different from the common dirty snowballs. There was no characteristic to help with identification.
If only it had a particularly sharp corner!
"Is there anything else?" Xu Qing couldn't help but ask, "What about its size?"
Ou Zhanpeng was having a headache, "Without a comparison, I can't say for sure... Let's eliminate the small ones first, only keeping celestial bodies with a diameter of 10 meters... no, below 8 meters!"
"Okay!" Zeng Qiao responded and immediately imported Ou Zhanpeng's drawing into the radar system, setting the detection data, and began scanning the target area.
She was the ship's electronic engineer, responsible for communications, radar, and other electronic equipment.
A moment later, the radar began to scan the target star sector.
The Yunhe's radar was very advanced, capable of detecting tens of thousands of signals simultaneously and processing the shape characteristics of each signal.
But Zeng Qiao didn't do it that way; she scanned in stages.
The first round of detection counted the total number; the target count exceeded 100,000. The second round of detection looked at volume; after removing small celestial bodies with a diameter below 8 meters, the target count was directly halved. The third round of detection calculated the target's shape; the target count was halved again. The fourth round of detection reduced the target to only 8,000.
"We have results," Zeng Qiao said.
Ou Zhanpeng took a look and broke into another wry smile.
There were over 6,400 small celestial bodies with a diameter of 8 meters to 30 meters, and over 1,500 with a diameter of over 30 meters. Even a cursory flyby would take a month or more.
"Think more carefully!" Ling Xiao suggested helplessly.
"Yes, are there any other clues?" Xu Qing also asked.
Ou Zhanpeng rubbed his temples vigorously, continuing to recall the scene from his dream, and suddenly tapped a few times on the drawing interface, "I remember there were other celestial bodies in these positions, but I don't remember their specific shapes."
Xu Qing turned to Zeng Qiao, who nodded, "I'll try!"
Changing the radar's working method to scan and compare by celestial body position still yielded no results.
Everyone was dejected, and a wail echoed through the bridge.
"I can't think of any more solutions. You guys continue!" Ling Xiao lay on his seat like a dead dog, his face filled with despair.
"Hmph, so useless!" Li Keke pouted and mocked him.
Ling Xiao pretended not to hear and rolled his eyes.
He wanted to retort, "You haven't used it either, how do you know if I'm useful or not?" But it was impossible to reason with this young woman. He couldn't provoke her, so he'd avoid her.
Xu Qing looked at Ou Zhanpeng, wanting to speak, but Ou Zhanpeng quickly waved his hand, "Let me rest, let me rest... Zeng Qiao, can you measure the orbital velocity of the celestial bodies and deduce the situation five years ago?"
"Five years ago?" Zeng Qiao was stunned on the spot, "That long?"
The others were also dizzy. Tracing back five years? That would be more than just a radius of 300,000 kilometers; it would be more than three million kilometers!
"What's the specific time?" Zeng Qiao asked.
"Between June and July," Ou Zhanpeng said.
"I'll try," Zeng Qiao adjusted the system, trying to make the onboard computer understand her intent. In just a few seconds, the processor's operating power surged to 100% and remained at a high level, fluctuating between 99% and 100%.
Don't think 12 minutes is short. To successfully complete the mission, Yanjing had specially allocated a supercomputer to the Yunhe.
Although it wasn't the latest model, and a third of the equipment was discarded due to limited onboard space, reducing the calculation speed significantly.
But a supercomputer was a supercomputer. Even facing such complex calculations, it only took a short while.