Chapter 52: Battleship!
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What shocked Li Qingsong was not merely this.
Further analysis revealed that the primary components of these gases unexpectedly included carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, hydrogen sulfide, and chlorofluorocarbons, among others.
These gases all shared one common characteristic: they were each intimately connected with industrial activity!
Li Qingsong knew that due to his own long-term, large-scale industrial activities on Lotus, which had massively discharged industrial exhaust into the natural environment, the celestial body had already acquired an extremely thin atmosphere.
The principal gas components of Lotus's atmosphere were likewise composed of these exact gases!
If the gases on Lotus were emitted by himself, then who had emitted the gases on that dwarf planet?
A highly reasonable conjecture emerged within Li Qingsong's mind.
On that dwarf planet, located a mere forty-plus million kilometers away from him, intelligent life of some kind—currently undetermined whether human or otherwise—also existed and was engaged in large-scale industrial activities!
He actually had a neighbor!
Since a neighbor existed, then who was the one who had detonated infrared bombs near Lotus back then, luring the flock of strange birds and causing him massive trouble?
It could only be them!
Why, then, would they do such a thing? Were they... connected in any way to the inexplicable disappearance of human civilization?
A strong sense of crisis rose within Li Qingsong's heart.
Regardless, judging by their actions of launching and detonating infrared bombs to kill with a borrowed knife, they were enemies rather than friends.
"I must send a probe over there to figure out their situation."
Li Qingsong thought rapidly: "Although a distance of forty million kilometers is not far, accurately launching a probe across it still somewhat exceeds my current capabilities."
The radius of that dwarf planet was approximately 800 kilometers.
Launching a probe across an interval of forty million kilometers required a precision comparable to accurately hitting a mosquito from a distance of over a dozen kilometers.
Even if his probe could carry more fuel and continuously adjust its course in space, he still needed to have sufficient remote sensing technology, spatial positioning, and long-range communication technology to provide support.
Currently, all of these technologies remained essentially blank slates for him.
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"Next, I must go all out to develop these technologies. Beyond that, there is an even more important matter: building warships!
Regardless of whether they are outdated or not, I will first throw everything into building the most advanced warships of the current stage, and the more the number, the better! No matter what, I must at least have some self-preservation capability!
Fortunately, the previous Kaitian-I spacecraft has already accumulated a massive amount of spacecraft manufacturing technology for me, and the space laboratory is continuously churning out new technologies. Building warships at this stage is entirely feasible for me.
Right now, I can only hope my neighbor will leave me some time and not come looking for trouble just yet..."
Li Qingsong pondered in secret and decisively made his decision.
The present stage was not an opportune moment to go all out in developing technology. Scientific research consumed too many resources and manpower, which he could not temporarily sustain at this juncture.
Thus, after mobilizing the brainpower of tens of thousands of clones to complete the design of his first-generation warship in a short period, Li Qingsong retained only a little over thirty thousand clones to continue key scientific research breakthroughs, such as remote sensing technology, deep-space communication, and deep-space positioning.
All remaining research clones were completely reassigned and plunged headfirst into production.
He had to produce a large quantity of warships in a short period!
Numerous factories and bases immediately fell into a state of busy operation.
The design of this first-generation warship was based on the Kaitian-I spacecraft, upon which a large number of technological innovations were carried out and many modules were added.
The most crucial of these was obviously the weapon system.
What kind of warship could it be without weapons?
In addition, the radar system was also of paramount importance. After all, in the vacuum of space, radar was equivalent to a warship's eyes.
Furthermore, the attitude control system, power system, communication system, and others were likewise vital.
Inside the huge factory building, countless robotic arms moved with flexibility and precision under the control of computer chips, installing the massive array of components shipped from other factories one by one into the empty hull of the spacecraft.
For the construction of the very first warship in this first generation, Li Qingsong specially drew upon 1,000 clones who did nothing else but specialize in thinking.
Blueprints and physical manufacturing were ultimately two different things. During the actual manufacturing process, a vast number of previously undiscovered problems would be exposed.
Therefore, whenever a new problem arose, these 1,000 clones would inspect it on the spot, think on the spot, modify the blueprints and adjust the architecture on the spot, and provide solutions on the spot.
The modification plans originating here would be instantly synchronized to the thousands of factories involved in the spacecraft's industrial chain, meaning that almost every component constituting the spacecraft would undergo modifications and then be sent back to the final assembly workshop to face the test of physical manufacturing once more.
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Once problems arose, they were modified again; once fixed, they were shipped over once more, repeating the cycle.
After bustling about for roughly half a month, encountering various stumbles along the way, and undergoing at least hundreds of modifications—including more than a dozen major overhauls involving the overall structure—the very first warship of this first generation was finally built.
Only under Li Qingsong could such high efficiency be achieved, completing so many processes in a mere half-month span.
If left to a normal intelligent civilization, accomplishing all of this would be impossible without taking a dozen years or more.
At this moment, amidst the violent combustion of methane and oxygen, this warship surged rapidly into outer space at a speed far exceeding that of a cargo spacecraft.
Its exterior remained hemispherical, but unlike the cargo spacecraft, it featured many newly added facilities.
First were two machine guns capable of free rotation.
Powered by chemical propellants, their maximum rate of fire could reach around 2,000 rounds per minute, and the muzzle velocity of the bullets could reach 1 kilometer per second.
This already exceeded the first cosmic velocity of Lotus. This meant that even if fired from the surface of Lotus, these bullets could enter Lotus's orbiting trajectory after being shot out and would never fall back down.
In the ammunition compartment, Li Qingsong configured it with as many as 400,000 bullets. Calculated at a mass of 10 grams per bullet, the ammunition alone weighed 4 tons.
It was also equipped with two autocannons capable of firing shells carrying internal self-contained ammunition.
Each shell had a mass of approximately 15 kilograms, and carrying 200 of them amounted to 3 tons.
Aside from the machine guns and autocannons, there were also 8 missile launchers on its bottom, capable of carrying 8 first-generation guided missiles independently designed by Li Qingsong. Each missile had a mass of 600 kilograms, totaling 4.8 tons.
Excluding everything else, solely in terms of various weapons, the payload of this warship reached 11.8 tons!
If its "fuel tank" were filled to capacity, it could take on a total of 50 tons of liquid oxygen and methane, at which point its overall mass would reach 120 tons.
At this very moment, such a behemoth had arrived in outer space.