Rebirth: Starting from Lighting Up the Tech Tree

Chapter 272 Manned Deep Space

While the Titan probe plan was finalized, another matter weighed on Zuo Cheng's schedule.

Option C. Humanity must venture out of the solar system on its own. Probes can scout ahead, and the Web Weavers can knock on Titan's door in our place, but ultimately, humanity itself must set foot on those distant nodes. Not through a conscious bridge, not through remote perception, but through flesh and blood standing beside Titan's methane lake, on Triton's nitrogen ice cliffs, before each node of the Web, telling it, "We have arrived." The Creators waited four billion years not for a probe, but for a group of people.

This requires a spaceship. A spaceship that doesn't yet exist within the current technological capabilities of humankind. But its design must begin now.

Chen Hao pulled all the key personnel of the aerospace division into a new group. The group name was only two characters: Pioneer. The profile picture used the four characters that Zuo Cheng wrote on the whiteboard that night in Chapter 270: Master of the Web.

A week later, the preliminary design of the Pioneer was placed on Zuo Cheng's desk. Thirty-two pages. Zuo Cheng flipped through it from beginning to end, and then flipped through it again. Then he took a pen and wrote a line on the title page: Start by breaking down the problem.

Pioneer was designed to carry a crew of six, operate autonomously in space for at least five years, and reach as far as Triton. It has five core systems.

The first feature is closed-loop life support. Water, oxygen, and food are all recycled and regenerated within the spacecraft. External resupply is zero. The plant compartment uses LED light sources to grow high-density crops, and the daily oxygen production per cubic meter has been increased by 40% after Shen Yiming's AI optimization. Human respiration, plant photosynthesis, and microbial decomposition form a complete closed loop within the same compartment. Not a single drop of water or breath of air comes from outside.

The second element is artificial gravity. The midsection of the spacecraft is a rotating section with a diameter of twenty meters. Centrifugal force is used to simulate the gravity of Earth. At four revolutions per minute, the equivalent gravity generated is approximately ninety percent of that on Earth. That's sufficient. Bone loss and muscle atrophy caused by microgravity are an unacceptable cost during years of deep space travel.

Thirdly, radiation protection. Jupiter's radiation belts are intense enough to kill an unprotected human within days. The Pioneer spacecraft needed a 30-centimeter-thick layer of water as a radiation barrier on the inside of its bulkheads, in addition to a carbon fiber composite protective layer. Yu Ying's calculations showed that the cumulative radiation dose to the crew over the five-year voyage would be less than 15 percent of the safe threshold.

Fourthly, quantum communication. Equipped with the latest quantum-encrypted communication system, it maintains a continuous data connection with Earth through a celestial interplanetary network. Even with delays measured in minutes, the continuity and security of the data itself are unaffected by distance.

Fifthly, the consciousness interface. Each crew member is equipped with a lightweight brain-computer interface device. In routine use, it is used for sleep monitoring and physiological status tracking. In emergencies, it can send a distress signal to Earth via a consciousness bridge, with a delay of 0.04 milliseconds.

The sixth item was added by Chen Hao at the end: the propulsion system. A hybrid nuclear thermal and electric propulsion scheme. Nuclear thermal propulsion is used for leaving Earth orbit and high-speed interplanetary transfer. Electric propulsion is used for deep space cruise and orbital fine-tuning. Both engines share the same liquid hydrogen storage tank.

After Chen Hao finished explaining the six systems, he paused for a long time and then said something.

"The Pioneer is estimated to weigh 400 tons."

No one responded in the conference room. The Sky-3 deep-space version has a payload capacity of eight tons, reaching Earth-Mars transfer orbit. Four hundred tons means it's not a matter of one launch; it's fifty launches.

"Layered launch, in-orbit assembly," Zuo Cheng said.

The Pioneer spacecraft was disassembled into fifty modules, with one module launched into low Earth orbit every three to four days. Astronauts then reassembled the modules during spacewalks. The International Space Station took ten years to build. When Zuo Cheng said that to Chen Hao, his voice was calm: "We don't have ten years. We'll find a way to compress it to three years."

Chen Hao looked at him. "Three years. Fifty modules assembled in orbit. No country has ever done this before. Nor has any company."

"There are many things no country has done before. There are even more things no company has done before," Zuo Cheng said. "No private enterprise had ever led a Mars exploration mission before, but we did. No real-time communication network spanning three planets had ever existed before, but we built it."

Chen Hao didn't speak. He picked up the design plan on Zuo Cheng's desk, flipped to the page with the six systems he had written, and read it through from beginning to end. Then he closed it.

"OK."

Han Lu's budget will be available that afternoon.

She projected the cost estimate onto the large screen; the entire table consisted of fewer than thirty lines from top to bottom, with the last line containing a single number: Two hundred billion US dollars.

The entire conference room fell silent for about five seconds. Then Liu Wei put down his coffee cup. He and Han Lu exchanged a glance. These two were the most financially savvy people in Room 402. Han Lu was in charge of business, and Liu Wei was in charge of logistics. They simultaneously calculated a figure: Room 402's entire annual revenue wouldn't even amount to a fraction of this sum.

"This is not a project that one company can undertake alone," Han Lu said.

Zuo Cheng stood in front of the large screen. He switched the screen back to the whiteboard, picked up a marker, and wrote four words in the blank space: Corporate Bonds.

"From now on, 402's valuation is not for fundraising purposes."

Han Lu's eyebrows twitched.

"It's for collateral." Zuo Cheng wrote down the second phrase: revenue for the next ten years. "Convert all projected revenue for the next ten years to present value and issue a $20 billion corporate bond globally. Use all of 402's technologies and patents as credit backing. Use the projected revenue from the four business units—Sky Constellation, Quantum Computing, Brain-Computer Interface, and Space Photovoltaics—as repayment guarantee."

He put down his pen. "If the Pioneer spacecraft can't be built, or if humanity doesn't leave the solar system after it's built, the bonds are just worthless paper. Those willing to buy them aren't buying into 402's balance sheet; they're buying into humanity's ability to reach that point."

Han Lu remained silent for a long time. The pen that had slipped from her fingers onto the table, but she didn't pick it up. Liu Wei watched from the side, also without saying a word.

"You're betting the entire company."

"It's not gambling." Zuo Cheng's tone was exactly the same as when he said Chen Hao's words—calm, not excited, not triumphant, but the kind of tranquility that comes after calculating all the variables. "It's an investment. An investment in all of humanity."

Han Lu picked up the pen. Her next action wasn't to object. She took a picture of what Zuo Cheng had written on the whiteboard and sent it to the business team's work group with a message.

"Conduct a feasibility assessment of global bonds. A first draft will be available next week."

That evening, Yu Ying sent a message. She had discovered a problem while calculating the energy system requirements for Pioneer. Even considering the full capacity of space photovoltaics, the energy density required by Pioneer in deep space far exceeded the limits of any existing on-orbit energy system. The only way to achieve this was to build an energy array in space three times larger than all current ground-based receiving stations combined.

She wrote one last sentence.

"We need more than just a bigger spaceship. We need a completely new way of obtaining energy. Not collecting sunlight. We need creating sunlight."

Zuo Cheng stared at that line of text for a long time. Satellites were streaking across the sky outside the window, one after another like a string of points of light. The node map of the Web Lord on his system panel was still quietly lit up, 5/9.

To produce sunlight. This phrase has a formal name in physics.

Controlled nuclear fusion.