Chapter 78: The Vast River
In the vast Deep Space, the massive cargo container gradually disappeared from sight.
At this moment, at the starting point of a 30-kilometer-long railway track built on a gentle slope of God-Enemy Star, another cargo container was ready for launch.
Simultaneously, in the port of this launch base, products from tens of thousands of factories across God-Enemy Star were surging in by train.
They were transferred at the port, then sorted and loaded into standard cargo containers. These standard cargo containers then lined up and arrived at the starting point of the launch track, secured onto the launch vehicle, preparing for launch.
Thus, cargo containers were launched into space, and under the automatic control of the traffic AI, they completed subsequent acceleration and were thrown onto the flight path towards Loshen Star.
On average, a standard cargo container was launched every half hour.
Calculating with an average mass of 1500 tons per cargo container, this single launcher alone could launch approximately 25 million tons of goods annually.
And Tom built a total of 20 such launchers on God-Enemy Star, next to various industrial clusters, based on the principle of advantageous transportation!
On average, 500 million tons of goods could be launched annually!
This was already fully capable of meeting the transportation needs between God-Enemy Star and Loshen Star.
"Although this method is good, its power consumption is truly massive..."
Tom silently sighed as he watched the No. 1 launcher, which had already begun operating.
Accelerating a standard cargo container of standard weight from zero to 800 meters per second required a total of 4.8 * 10^11 joules of energy.
Converted into electricity, that was 133,000 kilowatt-hours.
However, electrical energy obviously could not be 100% converted into kinetic energy; there were losses. For example, this launcher had a conversion efficiency of only about 50%.
Thus, launching one cargo container required approximately 260,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity.
Launching 48 cargo containers a day meant 12.48 million kilowatt-hours of electricity! Plus other losses, this single launch base alone consumed as much as 13 million kilowatt-hours of electricity per day.
This required a power plant with an installed capacity of approximately 550,000 kilowatts to operate 24 hours a day without interruption, running at full capacity, to meet the demands of this single launch base.
But its high power consumption was not the main problem.
The main problem was that such a large amount of electricity was not released steadily, but concentrated within a short period.
Launching a cargo container took approximately 80 seconds. During these 80 seconds, all 260,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity would be released.
Each launch cycle was 30 minutes, or 1800 seconds. After deducting these 80 seconds, for the remaining 1720 seconds, power consumption would fall to a trough.
Such massive power fluctuations were the biggest technical challenge in building this launch base.
But for Tom, solving this problem was only slightly more complex, not too difficult.
The reason was simple: he had 20 launch bases!
In this way, by simply staggering the launch times of different launch bases, the effect of always having one cargo container in the launch phase at any given time could be achieved, thus stabilizing power consumption.
Even if there were occasional instabilities, it didn’t matter.
Tom’s overall industrial scale was large enough, with tens of thousands of factories. How much electricity would they consume annually? The overall power consumption was sufficient, so the power grid would inevitably be strong enough.
Since the power grid was strong, this level of fluctuation and load on the power grid could be minimized and was completely tolerable.
Similarly, for the complex power dispatching involved, how much power each power plant should output, whether to increase or decrease power, Tom still entrusted to the power AI.
The Clones in the power industry still only served as supervisors, maintainers, and decision-makers.
At this moment, having completed these 20 launch bases, Tom had finished all construction tasks on God-Enemy Star.
In the future, a continuous stream of resources would automatically fly over without him needing to invest much effort here.
At this point, in just a few days, thousands of cargo containers, totaling over a million tons of goods, had embarked on their journey to Loshen Star.
"It’s time to go back."
With a command, half of the 3.3 million Clones originally brought to God-Enemy Star were directly withdrawn, returning to the massive cargo spacecraft.
When they arrived, these cargo spacecraft were fully loaded with equipment needed for construction.
Now on their return journey, the spacecraft were filled with various resources produced on God-Enemy Star.
After several months, the massive fleet finally returned to Loshen Star, and the delay between Tom and the Clones finally disappeared.
No delay meant that some time-sensitive and more complex tasks could finally begin.
"You’ve rested long enough, haven’t you? Let’s get to work!"
Under Tom’s command, the massive construction resumed.
Brand new research bases, more advanced research equipment, intelligent upgrades for factories, and so on.
However, at this stage, Tom’s construction work was always somewhat constrained, unable to proceed at full strength, and the project progress was also a bit slow.
This was due to the insufficient local resource output here on Loshen Star.
But it didn’t matter; resource supplies from God-Enemy Star would arrive soon.
While carrying out preliminary preparatory work, Tom eagerly waited.
A year slowly passed. Finally, with Tom’s almost desperate anticipation, the first cargo container finally flew to Loshen Star, and without external intervention, it accurately entered Loshen Star’s orbiting trajectory on its own, beginning to orbit Loshen Star!
By this point, the work became simple: it was merely a matter of dispatching some specialized deceleration thrusters to attach to the cargo container, slow it down, and then transport it into Loshen Star’s port.
Thus, the first cargo container slowly landed in the port. After unpacking, the container body was sent for recycling—they themselves were part of the cargo—and the more than a thousand tons of initially refined oxygen ore inside the container were quickly loaded onto trains, whistling along with the trains into the factories.
After the first cargo container came the second, the third...
Container after container of oxygen ore, methane ore, steel, aluminum ingots, copper ingots, rare earth elements, castings, primary chips, lubricants, starch...
These cargo containers flowed like a vast river onto Loshen Star, revitalizing the many factories that had been parched by the drying up of their resource river.
The resource depletion crisis Tom faced was completely resolved at this moment. Various projects that had been restricted, unable to operate at full capacity or conduct full research, and had temporarily slowed down, were finally unchained.
"Finally, I can push technological development with full effort again."
Tom silently sighed: "Then... it’s time to start the research and development of the second-tier battleship, the Venus-class Battleship!"