Chapter 366 - 363: Reverting to the Historical Version

12:30 PM.

After lunch at the Aerospace City cafeteria on Cianlan Island, Li Qingye made his way to the ground command center.

Jose, Antonio, and the others were all busy.

He didn't disturb them. Instead, he sat down in a VIP room and quietly watched the large screen outside, which showed a view of the Ape-Eating Eagle 1 on the launch tower.

The launch tower was 4.5 kilometers from the command center.

The sky was cloudless, perfect for a space launch.

This was the debut of the Ape-eating Eagle-class Carrier Rocket, so the vehicle for the official launch was brand new. It wasn't the one used in previous tests, as that test rocket had already been reused six times.

Soon, the launch preparations were complete. Everyone in the command center took their positions and began the countdown.

In the VIP room, Li Qingye also saw the countdown on the large screen.

[10…]

[5…]

BEEP...

BOOM! The Ape-Eating Eagle 1's four massive methane-liquid oxygen engines, along with two auxiliary solid rocket boosters, spewed out pale blue, scorching flames.

HISSSSS... At the base of the tower, the water in the cooling pool was instantly vaporized by the high temperature, erupting into dense clouds of white steam.

The launch tower's support arms rapidly sprang open to the sides.

With 4,500 tons of thrust, the Ape-Eating Eagle 1 soared into the sky, hurtling toward outer space.

"Beginning flight attitude adjustment."

The engine nozzles made a slight adjustment, and the Ape-eating Eagle 1 tilted eastward. This maneuver took advantage of Earth's angular velocity, allowing the carrier rocket to exit the atmosphere more efficiently.

Everyone in the ground command center stared at their computers.

After six successful test launches, the Ape-Eating Eagle 1 was considered highly reliable. Still, now that the moment of truth had arrived, they couldn't help but feel tense.

Li Qingye, however, wasn't too nervous. After all, the Homo Sapiens Company could afford to fail.

After entering mass production, the average cost of an Ape-eating Eagle-class Carrier Rocket was only about 6.37 million Jin-yuan.

The value of the resources, personnel, and technology that the Homo Sapiens Company had invested in the aerospace sector amounted to roughly 253.4 billion Jin-yuan in the year '23.

This investment was dozens of times that of NASA, and moreover, their capital efficiency was on completely different levels.

The Homo Sapiens Company truly put every single penny where it counted.

NASA, however, was no longer the NASA of the last century. They had now lost the ability to research, develop, and manufacture their own spacecraft, needing to rely on a bidding process for their space programs.

This meant that a large portion of the money NASA spent had to be ceded as profit to contractors like the Space Exploration Company, Blue Origin, General Electric, the Boeing Company, and Lockheed Martin.

'Would private companies short-change themselves to help America develop its space program? In their dreams. They wouldn't touch the space industry without a profit.'

The pursuit of profit is an instinct that all private enterprises find hard to overcome, at least until they evolve into mega-corporations.

Even if the City of the Council stepped in and made the major corporations lower some of their inflated prices, the necessary profit margin still had to be maintained.

After all, this was the foundation of America. Capital must always pursue profit as it operates. To stop pursuing profit would go against core American values.

Of course, due to the rise and pressure from the Homo Sapiens Company, the City of the Council had been forced to make changes. It no longer pursued neoliberalism; in truth, it was no longer sustainable.

To counter the fierce competition from the Homo Sapiens Company, major capitalist clans like the Morgans, Rockefellers, Clevelands, DuPonts, and Mellons took the lead in paying taxes, while also forcing the middle class, the lesser rich, and the newly rich of North America to pay taxes.

For example, people like Musk and Buffett were hit with a hefty tax bill.

The comprehensive tax rate in North America had now risen to about 63% of personal income.

The City of the Council had no other choice.

Thomas Morgan, who led the Wall Street Financial Group, surveyed the globe, then quietly summoned the leaders of the other great families and decided to increase the intensity of the harvest within North America.

The reason Thomas Morgan made this decision was simple: he had discovered that America could no longer carve flesh from other regions.

The European Union had just been carved up by them and was now nothing but a skeleton.

Lucia had been so thoroughly harvested in the 1990s that it was left devastated and has yet to recover.

East Japan and South Korea weren't large enough; their blood was not enough to satisfy America's hunger.

The only "blood bag" that could restore America to full health was also a slippery old chess master.

As for the other peripheral regions—West Asia, South Asia, Central Asia, Africa, Oceania, and Latin America—there was simply not much flesh left to carve.

Moreover, with the Homo Sapiens Company now watching like a hungry tiger, if America harvested too ruthlessly, it might push those countries into the arms of the Homo Sapiens Company.

After considering all options, Thomas Morgan could only turn his gaze toward their own host: North America.

To be precise, he turned his gaze to the middle class, the lesser rich, and the newly rich.

In truth, Thomas Morgan was incredibly envious, jealous, and hateful of the Homo Sapiens Company's model.

North America's current predicament was that wealth had been concentrated, but not completely.

The great capitalist clans, the mega-rich, and the lesser rich controlled about 80% of North America's assets. Under these circumstances, they had automatically formed internal factions like the Wall Street Financial Group, the military-industrial complex, and emerging tech enterprises.

These could then be further subdivided based on ideology, region, ethnicity, and industry.

This led to the formation of several hundred large and small factions (the more influential ones) within North America. In this fervent land of freedom, they grew untamed.

However, resources were ultimately finite. When they found they could no longer satisfy the interests of their various internal factions by plundering the outside world, it meant that fierce infighting was about to erupt among them.

Although this struggle did not manifest as open warfare, its brutality was in no way lesser.

Now, Thomas Morgan felt that the Council's mechanism was limiting North America's strength, with too many resources being consumed by unnecessary internal friction and waste.

Homo Sapiens got three cents of work done for every cent spent.

America got one cent of work done for every three cents spent.

The aerospace sector was a prime example of this.

If America wanted to achieve the same output in its aerospace industry as the Homo Sapiens Company, it would need to invest at least 5 trillion US dollars into the sector.

5 trillion US dollars—it was an astronomical figure.

Unless they sacrificed the Morgan Clan every year, there was no way they could come up with that kind of money.

Thomas could only look helplessly at North America's vast resources, finding it incredibly difficult to mobilize them.

He even wanted to create a Morgan Company similar to the Homo Sapiens Company, but alas, the existence of the other great families made it very difficult for him to transform America into the Morgan Company.

In truth, the other great families had similar ideas.

But their internal squabbling meant that the City of the Council's system would be difficult to change in the short term.

This bloated system could only be patched up and continue to be used.

Right now, Thomas and the others were merely reverting to a historical version, using an older model to improve overall internal efficiency.

But some of the system's underlying logic was an inherent flaw; unless it was torn down and rebuilt, they could only treat the symptoms, not the root cause.

The development of events is always two-sided.

America's global hegemony was in decline, and with the sharp decrease in plunderable external resources, it should have collapsed outright.

But the appearance of the Homo Sapiens Company forced them to unite and face the Homo Sapiens threat together.

It was precisely this immense external pressure that kept America from shattering into pieces.