Epoch of Twilight

Chapter 469: Megastructures

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

The massive spaceship of the Glassians which floated in space was the humans’ last hope - the future Noah’s ark.

The habitation, which was originally empty, had become very crowded after many rounds of migration. There were currently around 10,000 people staying there.

The extraterrestrial botanical garden that was located at the center of the spaceship had been demolished with only some of the biological samples kept for research purposes. The place was then sterilized and replaced with several tents. This had occupied almost the entire habitation area.

Though these extraterrestrial creatures and different types of bacterial viruses were not harmful to the Glassians, that might not have been the case for the humans and therefore it would have been risky to not have them removed.

Some of the tents were to be relocated by today as they were going to launch a trial-manufacture of the human’s first internal building on the spaceship.

In these three months, with the aid of information provided by the intellectual brain as well as many engineers who had been working day and night, the project of manufacturing the Glassians’ modular factories was launched. A variety of engineering machinery and infrastructural equipment had been manufactured lately, hence, it was now the perfect time for the humans to modify the spaceship.

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Luo Yuan purposely returned to the spaceship and organized a simple ceremony to launch the construction project at eight o’clock in the morning. Hundreds of engineering vehicle then gradually entered the construction site.

Luo Yuan was surprised when he saw the familiar appearance of the engineering vehicles used for construction. However, compared to the machines used in the Reconstruction Area which were rugged and black in color, the ones here looked big and were silvery white. Its surface was smooth and shiny and the important components had been assembled tightly, showing no visible gap between the joints.

The Glassians’ precise processing machinery and their advanced materials technology had transformed the appearance of the engineering vehicles which now exuded a strong sense of elegance. Technological deterioration after the disaster was clearly shown in the performance of these vehicles. For instance, these engineering vehicles did not have any electronic devices and most of the technologies adopted were from the 50s or 60s (of course, this was partly because they were working on a tight deadline).

There was a shortage of fuel oil here and Hope City’s storage cells were not sufficient to supply the high horsepower necessary to operate the vehicle. Therefore, these engineering vehicles carried an electric cable on top of them all the time which was somehow awkward and embarrassing!

Luo Yuan nodded his head as he listened to the chief engineer’s introduction. Regardless of whether it was ugly or not, at least they were still able to use it. The project had commenced and numerous trucks carried prefabricated metal parts to the construction site. Looking at the obviously overloaded vehicles, Luo Yuan felt that it was not too bad to use electric cables. Even the Reconstruction Area which was technologically advanced would not be able to move these overloaded vehicles if only storage cells had been used.

Luo Yuan then noticed that each of the prefabricated metal parts were standardized at six meters by six meters while its thickness was set at 0.15 meters. He doubted and asked, "It is so thin. Are you sure it’s fine?"

The construction of the internal part of a spaceship was different from its surface as the spaceship’s speed would be increased or reduced accordingly during a flight. The compressive strength of the materials used for the construction of a skyscraper would certainly not be the same as the ones used for the construction of a building in a spaceship.

The chief engineer that was standing at the side immediately explained, "Mayor, the intellectual brain recommended a high-tensile strength metal which had undergone a complicated production process. It had been passed through a demagnetizer after fusion in a furnace. Then, it was coated with a layer of heat insulator before it was forged and compressed and so on... Therefore, it is at least 10 times stronger than the normal flight deck. A trial was done and with this thickness, the skyscraper could withstand a G-force of 200 G."

Luo Yuan nodded his head. The manned spaceship would normally experience gradual acceleration and a sudden deceleration or instant braking would rarely happen unless necessary. If ever the skyscraper had to withstand a force of 200 G’s, before the skyscraper collapses, most of the humans would already be dead.

Since it was prefabricated with metal, v-blocks had been attached between two metal arms and the need for welding was greatly reduced. The progress of the construction project was quite fast as three floors of the skyscraper were built in just a few hours.

With this rate of progress, it was estimated that the project could be completed in less than a month. It was going to be a mega building with a height of 200 meters, a length of 300 meters, and a width of 30 meters. Upon the completion of this building, it could hold 800,000 to 1,000,000 people. At the same time, it would have its own street, shop lots, agricultural area, park and all kinds of residential facilities.

The building was like a small city which could sustain all the people within it. According to the plan, the whole residential area was going to have 12 similar buildings like this. Most of them had been built to resettle the survivors and five of them were built in case there was an increase in the number of survivors. The streets connecting the buildings would be the only spaces left of the habitation area.

It would be a small city that could hold at most 1,200,0000 people and it was unbelievable that a spaceship like this could have accommodated so many people.

...

In the afternoon, Luo Yuan visited the research centers in the industrial area. He lingered for some time at the genetic research center, however, everything was still in the investigation process.

The instruments used in the lab were more complicated than the machines used in the factory and most of them involved gene-editing techniques as well as some professional knowledge. One would not be able to use it even if he or she knew the functions of each instrument.

The Glassians’ available technology was way more advanced than the human’s technology and as introduced by the intellectual brain, the Glassians now had the ability to alter genes like how Luo Yuan could. The Glassians could only modify the genes of fertilized eggs on a nano-level, however, this was already a fantasy to the human race.

Technology advances by steps and not by leaps. The humans had a lot to learn and improve on before they could completely adopt the Glassians’ technology. Luo Yuan was disappointed and agitated by the apparent gap between the two species. The Glassians’ had a mature technology of synthesizing artificial organic molecules and their artificial food was synthesized through the mixture of elements during their journey to Earth.

The research center in the spaceship had a miniaturized instrument like this and once the humans could master this technology, food supply would no longer be restricted. They could even artificially manufacture the wisdom heart. Although the spaceship’s intellectual brain could now automatically synthesize food, the intellectual brain was not from the Earth. The process of biological evolution would somehow be different as many of the protein sources contained metals which would be harmful to a human’s health.

Before Luo Yuan left, he provided the research center with a sample of the wisdom heart. He then returned to Hope City and would only be coming back during the next migration.